A certain sort of writers often assume that it is the tendency of our modern specialized production to stunt the mind of the workman by a meaningless routine; but fair opportunities of observation and some practical acquaintance with machinery and the men who use it lead me to think that this is not the _general_ fact. On the contrary, it is precisely the broad or cultural traits of general intelligence, self-reliance, and adaptability that make a man at home and efficient in the midst of modern machinery, and it is because the American workman has these traits in a comparatively high degree that he surpasses others in the most highly specialized production. One who goes into our shops will find that the intelligent and adaptive workman is almost always preferred and gets higher wages; and if there are large numbers employed upon deadening routine it is partly because there is unfortunately a part of our population whose education makes them unfit for anything else. The type of mechanic which a complex industrial system requires, and which it is even now, on the whole, evolving, is one that combines an intimate knowledge of particular tools and processes with an intelligent apprehension of the system in which he works. If he lacks the latter he requires constant oversight and so becomes a nuisance. Anyone acquainted with such matters knows that “gumption” in workmen is fully as important and much harder to find than mere manual skill; and that those who possess it are usually given superior positions. During the late war with Spain it became obvious that the complicated machinery of a modern warship is ineffectual without intelligent, self-reliant, and determined “men behind the guns” to work it; and, of course, the same holds true of other kinds of machinery. And if we pass from tools to personal relations we shall find that the specialized production so much deprecated is only one phase of a wider general life, a life of comparative freedom, intelligence, education, and opportunity, whose general effect is to enlarge the individual. No doubt there are cases in which intelligence seems to have passed out of the man into the machine, leaving the former a mere “tender”; but I think these are not representative of the change as a whole. The idea of a necessary antagonism between specialization and breadth seems to me an illusion of the same class as that which opposes the individual to the social order. First one aspect and then another is looked at in artificial isolation, and it is not perceived that we are beholding but one thing, after all. Not only does the sympathetic life of a man reflect and imply the _state_ of society, but we may also discern in it some inkling of those processes, or principles of change, that we see at large in the general movement of mankind. This is a matter rather beyond the scope of this book; but a few illustrations will show, in a general way, what I mean.