In the time of the Roman empire it is said that only thirty-seven different trades and professions were in existence. Today the number runs into the thousands. It would be practically impossible to make a list of them all. This is the age of specialists. Men no longer call themselves shoemakers but cutters, lasters, welters, sole-makers. Even in the engineering profession we have electrical engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, locomotive engineers, stationary engineers, mining engineers, marine engineers, and chemical engineers. =Advantages and Disadvantages of Division of Labor.=—Division of labor has brought many economic advantages. It enables the worker, by constant practice at a single operation, to acquire skill and dexterity. It enables almost every worker to find some task that he is able to do and for which he has a special liking or aptitude. It stimulates the invention of new processes and methods by reducing each operation to the simplest possible form, at which point it can often be taken over by machinery. But the elaborate division of labor which marks modern industry also has its defects. It increases the monotony and irksomeness of labor. It prevents the development of all-round craftsmen, men who can turn their hands to a variety of things. Hence when a worker in modern industry loses his regular employment it is difficult for him to change to anything else. Confining men and women to a single, simple task day after day and year after year tends to narrow them; it certainly does not conduce to the extension of their intelligence. No great inspiration comes from his work to the man who spends his life in making the nineteenth part of a pin.[13] Division of labor has come to stay, however, and in spite of all these disadvantages the world is on the whole far better for its coming. It has made the production of goods so much easier that to give it up now would carry the world back to primitive conditions and lower the standard of living. Our aim should be to utilize all its advantages while reducing its evils to the minimum. This we may hope to do by several methods; for example, by reducing the daily hours of labor, by promoting vocational education, by the restriction of child employment, by a better organization of the labor market (see p. 418), and by providing wholesome recreation for the workers. [Sidenote: Labor is a service.]