He made about 34,000 uniform movements daily and had been
doing that for the past 14 years. But he gave me the same account,
that the work was interesting and stimulating, while he himself made
the impression of an intelligent workingman. At the beginning, he
reported, the work had sometimes been quite fatiguing, but later he
began to like it more and more. I imagined that this meant that at
first he had to do the work with full attention and that the complex
movement had slowly become automatic, allowing him to perform it like
a reflex movement and to turn his thoughts to other things. But he
explained to me in full detail that this was not the case, that he
still feels obliged to devote his thoughts entirely to the work at
hand, and that he is able only under these conditions to bring in the
daily wage which he needs for his family, as he is paid for every
thousand holes. But he added especially that it is not only the wage
which satisfies him, but that he takes decided pleasure in the
activity itself.
On the other hand, I not seldom found wage-earners, both men and
women, who seemed to have really interesting and varied activities and
who nevertheless complained bitterly over the monotonous, tiresome
factory labor. I became more and more convinced that the feeling of
monotony depends much less upon the particular kind of work than upon
the special disposition of the individual.
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