But the change of standards and points of view is gradual only,
and it seldom results in the subversion or entire suppression of
a standpoint once accepted. A distinction is still habitually
made between industrial and non-industrial occupations; and this
modern distinction is a transmuted form of the barbarian
distinction between exploit and drudgery. Such employments as
warfare, politics, public worship, and public merrymaking, are
felt, in the popular apprehension, to differ intrinsically from
the labour that has to do with elaborating the material means of
life. The precise line of demarcation is not the same as it was
in the early barbarian scheme, but the broad distinction has not
fallen into disuse.
The tacit, common-sense distinction to-day is, in effect, that
any effort is to be accounted industrial only so far as its
ultimate purpose is the utilisation of non-human things. The
coercive utilisation of man by man is not felt to be an
industrial function; but all effort directed to enhance human
life by taking advantage of the non-human environment is classed
together as industrial activity. By the economists who have best
retained and adapted the classical tradition, man's "power over
nature" is currently postulated as the characteristic fact of
industrial productivity.
Pages:
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31