Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1910 — MAKING MEN LOP-SIDED. [ARTICLE]

MAKING MEN LOP-SIDED.

Modern Methods Placing the Mischief with Handicraft^ Sir Frederick Treves, among the most notable of English surgeons, declares that modern scientific and engineering discovery is playfhg the mischief with handicraft, once so greatly admired and so patiently trained for. At the present time not a year passes tihat does not add some wonder to the list of things manufactured. If must not be inferred from this that man as a master of handicraft Is becoming every year more adept. Handlcraftsmanshlp has a limit just as there is a limit to the power of-vision and of hearing. Has that limit even now been reached, or is it by any possibility declining? In response to the question, “Are we losing the use of our hands?” I would venture an answer l{i the affirmative and say that we are. A machine shop of big equipment strikes the layman with awe. He marvels at the skill which has built the mechanisms. Yet there are men working In many of these larger plants who are utterly lacking in handicraft. Some can run a drill press day after day and month after month and never be able to sharpen the tools they use. They get them sharpened from a storekeeper and turn in the dull ones. Men work at lathes whd wouldn’t know how to. go about it to "make a cold chisel.. Some labor at intricate machines at astonishing speed and with seemingly finely trained eyes, but shlften from that particular work they are lofct and bewildered. Industrialism is~to be -blamed for more than the ruin of handicraft. It has twisted good men awry and made broad-minded \ men mentally narrow and lop-sided.—Toledo Blade.