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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Idle Hours, by Julian Alden Weir, 1888. The Metropolitian Museum of Art. Gift of Several Gentlemen, 1888

The Mother of Possibility

By Sven Birkerts

Idleness is what happens when we thwart the impulse to plan forward, and instead enjoy the present.

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Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

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1851 | Atlantic Ocean

Between Sharks and Spades

Queequeg at the end of a monkey rope.More

c. 1750 | Ingolstadt

A Single-Minded Scientist

Mary Shelley on the arduous quest to reanimate matter.More

c. 335 BC | Henan

Skilled Labor

A Chinese butcher masters his craft.More

Charts & Graphs

Advertisements for odd jobs.

Help Wanted

Advertisements for odd jobs.

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Painted portrait of Florentine statesman and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli.

English cook and author Isabella Mary Beeton.

American writer and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich.

Portrait bust of presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer.

American animator, writer, and director Mike Judge.

Portrait of Chinese Daoist Zhuangzi.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

—Billie Holiday, 1956

Color painting early Chinese philosopher Mengzi.

Black and white photograph of a young John Ruskin wearing a suit.

Mencius & John Ruskin

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