Once again we are having an upsurge of the wonders of doing manual labor. This time it’s”Shop Class as Soulcraft” by Matthew Crawford. A short time ago it was Richard Sennett singing the praises of manual labor in “The Crafts Man.” When my own book “Ten thousand Working Days” came out in 1978, it too was cited as a praise of good old hard manual work.
I spent the first third of my working life working as a plumbers’ helper, a machinist apprentice, a machinist, a tool and die maker, and finally as New York State President of the Machinists Union. I have some ideas about manual work. In “Shop Class,” Crawford writes about how unsatisfying he found working in front of a computer screen all day. By the end of the day he had no real sense of what in fact he had accomplished. I guess one could say he was truly alienated from his work. In his youth out in San Francisco with the hippies he discovered manual work by rebuilding old Volkswagen engines. That was his introduction to work that had a “product” at the end of the day.
Mr. Crawford went on to get a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and then to a job in a Washington DC think tank. His experience at the “tank” drove him to consider the difference between working with ideas as against making or fixing something with your hands. As someone who has always worked with his hands, I could not agree more with Crawford regarding the joys and satisfaction of understanding how things work. What flows from that knowledge is the notion of how one might go about fixing things that don’t work. Anyone who has met me knows that I am an inveterate “do it yourselfer,” no matter if it is plumbing, electricity, woodworking or cars. The latter has given me the creeps since they put in the micro processors. Now diagnosing a car requires a computer to tell you what’s wrong with it. I miss listening to the engine like a doctor with a stethoscope and making decisions like, “Yup, the valves need adjustment.”
Okay, having sung the praises of manual labor, why did I leave it? It was probably some time around 1946-7. I was working in a toolroom making dies for high speed presses. There were about a dozen other guys working on that floor. It was lunch time. We were sitting outside enjoying a sunny spring day. Somehow the talk got around to the mutual health problems of the tool room gang. Now keep in mind these men were at the top of the machine shop pecking order. All them over 40 said they were having serious varicose leg problems from the constant standing. They were all wearing heavy glasses from the constant eye strain from reading the fine lines on micrometers as well as other instruments that could read ten thousands of an inch. As I looked around at their skin conditions it struck me that these men have sacrificed a major part of their physical conditions in order to do the kind of work they loved. In some unconscious way I decided then and there I was not going to end my life half-blind with varicose veins and serious skin infections from exposure to toxic cutting oils. Some years later, at the age of 47, I decided to go get a college degree so I would not have to live my life out in a factory.
It has often struck me that folks who discover the wonders of working with one’s hands are often professionals with at least a post graduate degree, as in the case of Matthew Crawford. He decided to open his own business; a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Virginia. Well that’s very nice. He does not punch a clock. He can come and go as he pleases. He is not doing mind-numbing, repetitive work that resembles sitting in front of a computer screen all day doing claims adjustments at an insurance office. My point is that most corporate work has been broken down into tiny pieces so that no real skill is required to do it. That is the dirty little secret behind the success of mass production; interchangeable parts as well as interchangeable people. That is the price we have paid so that we can all drive around in our nifty automobiles.
After spending years working as a manager in a variety of places, I went back to my childhood avocation in my spare time; fixing things like an old country house, building a bulkhead, and of late making antique furniture reproductions. I do not confuse those tasks with any repetitive type job in business or industry. This whole story is a classic case of lack of differentiation. Yes, it’s great to understand how the internal combustion engine runs an automobile or what happens when you flick a light switch, but please don’t confuse that with working with your hands doing hard physical labor that is not only not very satisfying but is also physically very destructive. If you want to get into some manual work as a hobby, I will be happy to advise.
Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.
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It has often struck me that folks who discover the wonders of working with one’s hands are often professionals with at least a post graduate degree, as in the case of Matthew Crawford. He decided to open his own business; a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Virginia. Well that’s very nice. He does not punch a clock. He can come and go as he pleases. He is not doing mind-numbing, repetitive work that resembles sitting in front of a computer screen all day doing claims adjustments at an insurance office. My point is that most corporate work has been broken down into tiny pieces so that no real skill is required to do it. That is the dirty little secret behind the success of mass production; interchangeable parts as well as interchangeable people.
That is actually a major theme of Crawford's book. He has much to say about how, a century ago, following Frederick Winslow Taylor, work was broken down and the intelligence was removed from work. He sheds a lot of light on that development, he is very critical of it, and that is not the kind of work he is advocating.
I haven't read Crawford's book yet but I did spend many years working as a machinist. I was on the next spot down the skill chain from the tool and die guys as a machinery erector. Since those days, right of out of high school until my late 20s, I had the best blue collar job possible: traveling the world over setting up newspaper printing presses. Alienation is a complicated concept, not an easy check off the box survey item. In retrospect I loved that job, while doing it there was no end of complaints. Sort of brings to mind the old Schrank question: Compared to what? Keep on blogging Roberto!--Steve Sleigh
Hi, Bob!
Your comments on working with your hands as "Quaint Work" struck a chord. The first thing crossing my mind was "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," especially the welding section. That led to thinking about the chain of perception we have broken by divorcing hands-on from the work done these days by the educated. That's the kind of work I do, mainly, but I grew up with a father who was a toolmaker and a grandfather who was a cabinet maker and they taught me to work with wood and metal. And I taught myself house wiring and plumbing. All of this I used in restoring our 1853 Brooklyn brownstone. There's a touch and feel of something very basic that you get from such work and not from my "educated" work with a computer screen or as a manager or a writer. But, the chain is broken, I fear. I'm the last of my generation, at least in our famiily, to be able to do such things. My daughter can't rewire a light fixture or do any of those sorts of things. Maybe that's my fault for not teaching her, but she and the times and the things she was interested in doing and not doing all mitigated against passing on that hands-on ability. It's a loss of some touch with--a tether to--a physical reality whose consequences I can't enumerate but feel are important.
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