properties  of  similar  material,  will  be  analogous.  The
passage  of  weavers  from  the  woollen  mills  of  Yorkshire
to  the  cotton  mills  of  Lancashire  has  been  not  uncommon;
watchmakers  in  Coventry  have  adapted  themselves  to  the
less  refined  processes  of  the  bicycle  trade,  while  this
last  has  also  drawn  indiscriminately  from  the  Birmingham
metal  trades  those  who  could  easily  adapt  themselves  to

proving  the  increasing  importance  of  general  over  special
attainments  and  of  bringing  an  increased  freedom  and
choice  of  occupation  to  the  workers,  they  fail  to  take
account  of  two  counter-acting  forces.  Along  with  this
“  despecialisation  ”  and  more  general  in  its  operation  is
the  constant  and  finer  sub-division  of  labour,  among  the
great  mass  of  subordinate  workers.  The  machine-tender,
the  typical  modern  worker,  is  constantly  being  narrowed
in  his  work;  the  “general”  mechanic  in  the  building
trades  has  disappeared,  the  elaborate  and  many-sided
work  of  the  “plumber”  has  been  so  specialised  and
taken  over  by  machinery  that  he  is  now  nothing  but  a
“fitter.”  This  subdivision,  this  “specialisation”  is  surely
the  main  stream  of  tendency  of  which  the  other  is  only
a  counter-acting  current  of  inferior  power.  Those  who
speak  of  the  increased  importance  of  “  general  ”  as  opposed
to  special  capacities  in  the  modem  worker  deceive  themselves, ­
  if  they  think,  as  they  appear  to  do,  that  the  fact
implies  greater  economic  freedom.  The  modern  workman
is  not  “  despecialised  ”  ;  on  the  average  he  is  more  highly
“  specialised  ”  but  he  is  less  deeply  set  in  his  special
groove  and  therefore  loses  less  if  he  is  taken  out  of  it.
It  is  not  so  much  that  his  work  nowadays  calls  for  a