THE REIGN OF THE MACHINE >
wasteful. The killing, cutting, and canning processes in the meat
trade, the picking, preparation and packing of fruit, many pro-
cesses in the tanning and leather trade, the finer sorts of cabinet-
making, are examples of this unadaptability of organic materials
to purely mechanical treatment. Where very valuable inor-
ganic materials are used in making high-grade products, similar
limitations in the machine economy exist. The finest jewellery
and watch-making still require the skill and judgment of the
practised human hand and eye. Some of the irregularities in
such processes are, indeed, so small and so uninteresting as to
afford little, if any, abatement of human costs; but they remove
the labour from the direct control of a machine.
A more important irregularity which restricts machinery in
manufacture exists where the personal needs or taste of the con-
sumer help to determine the nature of the process and the prod-
uct. Here again we are confronted by the antagonism of mech-
anism and organism. For the true demand of consumers is the
highest expression of the uniqueness which distinguishes the or-
ganic. As no two consumers are exactly identical in size, shape,
physical or mental capacities, tastes and needs, the goods re-
quired for their consumption should exhibit similar differences.
Machine economy cannot properly meet this requirement. It
can only deal with consumers so far as their human nature is com-
mon: it cannot supply the needs of their individuality. So far
as they are willing to sink their differences, consenting to con-
sume large quantities of goods of identical shapes, sizes and qual-
ities, the machine can supply them. But since no two consumers
are really identical in needs and tastes, or remain quite constant
in their needs and tastes, the fundamental assumption of routine-
economy is opposed to the human facts.
Consumers who refuse to sink their individuality and are
‘particular’ in the sort of clothes they wear, the sort of houses
and furniture and other goods they will consent to buy, exercise
a power antagonistic to routine labour. They demand that pro-
ducers shall put out the technical skill, the care, taste and judg-
ment required to satisfy their feelings as consumers. That is to
say, they demand the labour not of the routine-worker but of the
craftsman, work which, though not creative in the full free ar-
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