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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Pushing Paper

By Ben Kafka

Paperwork has never fit comfortably into our idea of what work means—it has no heroes and few sympathies.

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Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

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c. 321 BC | India

Instruction Manual

Mastering the techniques of ancient Indian surgery.More

c. 445 BC | Athens

Public Works

The architecture of Periclean Athens.More

1776 | London

Divide and Conquer

Adam Smith’s parable of the pin maker.More

Charts & Graphs

Sexual harassment in the workplace.

Cruel and/or Unusual

Sexual harassment in the workplace.

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Black and white photograph of Sven Birkerts sitting in front of a bookshelf.

Black and white photograph of American novelist John Steinbeck.

Black and white photograph of German-language writer Franz Kafka.

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Bust of Hesiod

American singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie.

Photograph of American writer Ralph Ellison.

Engraving of Pliny the Elder.

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

—Anatole France, 1881

Philip Dormer Stanhope & Louis C.K.

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