A young worker at the C & NW RR 40th Street shops, Chicago, Ill, photograph by Jack Delano, 1942. Library of Congress.

A young worker at the C & NW RR 40th Street shops, Chicago, Illinois, 1942. Photograph by Jack Delano. Library of Congress.

Lines of Work

Volume IV, Number 2 | spring 2011

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Women become skilled shop technicians after careful training in the school at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant, Long Beach, CA, photograph by Alfred T. Palmer, 1942. Library of Congress.

Preamble

The Servant Problem

By Lewis H. Lapham

It is man’s nature to be doing something, or at least to fancy that he’s doing something, but to what purpose?

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Tools of the Trade

By Peter Stothard

Slavery was the energy industry of the ancients—no part of the empire was untouched by its effects.

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Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

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1778 | Paris

Clear-Sighted Ambition

Mozart does not care to wrestle with dwarfs.More

1776 | London

Divide and Conquer

Adam Smith’s parable of the pin maker.More

1714 | London

The Hive Mind

Bernard Mandeville’s fable of the bees.More

Charts & Graphs

Famous people and their unemployment.

Fired!

Famous people and their unemployment.

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Bust of Hesiod

Portrait bust of Roman poet Virgil.

Black and white photograph of American novelist John Steinbeck.

German writer, composer, and painter E. T. A. Hoffmann.

Roman playwright Terence.

Engraving of Pliny the Elder.

American singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

—Roald Dahl, 1984

Philip Dormer Stanhope & Louis C.K.

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