Similarly in agricultural industry of the traditional kind, which
closely resembles handicraft in the nature of the demands made
upon the workman. In both, the workman is himself the prime mover
chiefly depended upon, and the natural forces engaged are in
large part apprehended as inscrutable and fortuitous agencies,
whose working lies beyond the workman's control or discretion. In
popular apprehension there is in these forms of industry
relatively little of the industrial process left to the fateful
swing of a comprehensive mechanical sequence which must be
comprehended in terms of causation and to which the operations of
industry and the movements of the workmen must be adapted. As
industrial methods develop, the virtues of the handicraftsman
count for less and less as an offset to scanty intelligence or a
halting acceptance of the sequence of cause and effect. The
industrial organization assumes more and more of the character of
a mechanism, in which it is man's office to discriminate and
select what natural forces shall work out their effects in his
service. The workman's part in industry changes from that of a
prime mover to that of discrimination and valuation of
quantitative sequences and mechanical facts.
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