PRE-WAR PRINCIPLES AND METHODS IS

a craftsman in any sense, but is an animated tool of the
management. He has no need of special craft knowledge or
craft skill, or any power to acquire them if he had, and any
man who walks the street is a competitor for his job.
There is no body of skilled workmen to-day safe from the
one or the other of these forces tending to deprive them of
their unique craft knowledge and skill. Only what may be
termed frontier trades are dependent now on all-around
craftsmen. These trades are likely at any time to be standardized
 and systematized and to fall under the influence of
this double process of specialization. The problem thus
raised is the greatest one which organized labor faces. For
if we do not wish to see the American workman reduced to
a great semi-skilled and perhaps little organized mass, a new
mode of protection must be found for the working conditions
and standards of living which unions have secured, and some
means must be discovered of giving back to the worker what
he is fast losing in the narrowing of the skill and the theft
of his craft knowledge. It is another problem which the
organized workmen must solve for themselves and for
society.
Under these circumstances the progressive degeneration of
craftsmanship and the progressive degradation of skilled
craftsmen seem inevitable.

The movement thus described by Mr. Frey more than a
decade ago has been intensified since the war by mass production
 methods, and the work of all-around skilled craftsmen
 in manufacturing and mining practically restricted to
fields where machinery cannot be utilized.

Practical RESULTS

The period before the war, so far as wage determinations
 were concerned, may, therefore, be said to have been
one which was not marked by the development and acceptance
 of any new principles of constructive action. In aca-