Yet neither the habit of regarding work as participation in a social task nor the element of comradeship which we may reasonably expect to grow out of such a way of conceiving work, nor yet the amelioration of the purely external conditions of modern industrial production, can possibly be accepted as furnishing a final solution of the problem of work. It is probable that under existing conditions, some such changes as these are all we can hope for over large areas of industrial life; perhaps, indeed, without a general recognition of the real social significance of large scale production, the best we can ever do will consist of further modification of industrial conditions along these lines. Yet all this does virtually nothing to make work a means of worthy self-expression. The high degree of specialisation which has followed the introduction and improvement of industrial machinery, confines large multitudes of people to occupations which consist of repeating the same small routine operation all day and every day; and the mentally benumbing and demoralising consequences of this type of work is one of the commonplaces of social observation. Not the least of the social services of Trade Unionism is that it has furnished to men occupied in purely mechanical work an interest which has helped to keep their minds alive. It is rarely recognised how inevitably certain of our graver social evils are connected with the devitalising influences of modern industrial conditions. Undoubtedly one of the most powerful causes of the deadly grip of the drink traffic upon society is the opportunity it provides of reaction from the depressing and deadening round of the shop. The saloon strikes a kind of psychological balance with the factory. The well-meaning persons who suppose that open spaces, museums, art galleries, and the like will furnish effectual off-sets to the public house, overlook the fact that the peculiar depression to which the factory worker is subjected demands a relief more vivid and more violent than these more refined avenues of diversion offer. Temperance reformers have greatly neglected this aspect of their problem; and prohibition without any accompanying provision for the healthy equilibration of human energies is likely to have consequences that may astonish and perhaps confound its advocates.