Work experience

“ The peculiar experience which a successful business career gives—the power both of handling details and managing large interests; the capacity of organization; the energy and the careful judgment and knowledge of men which such a life develops,—are the qualities most needed in managing moral and benevolent "causes." ”

“ The ideal for every employee, therefore, is that he should be employed in that position which he is best fitted to fill, doing work which by natural aptitudes, training, and experience he is best qualified to do, and working under conditions of material environment—tools, rates of pay, hours of labor, and periods of rest, superintendence and management, future prospects, and education—which will develop and make useful to himself and his employer his best and finest latent abilities and capacities. ”

“ The craftsman, the artist, the scientist, the professional man, and to some extent the business man make new experience the basis of organized activity, of work, and produce thereby social values. The division of labor which removes the problematical from the various operations of the work makes the task totally unstimulating. ”

“ By occupation I mean a mode of activity on the part of the child which reproduces, or runs parallel to, some form of work carried on in social life. In the University Elementary School these occupations are represented by the shopwork with wood and tools; by cooking, sewing, and by the textile work herewith reported upon.
The fundamental point in the psychology of an occupation is that it maintains a balance between the intellectual and the practical phases of experience. As an occupation it is active or motor; it finds expression through the physical organs—the eyes, hands, etc. ”

“ Thought may well be ever ranging,
And opinion ever changing,
Task-work be, though ill begun,
Dealt with by experience better;
By the law and by the letter
Duty done is duty done:
Do it, Time is on the wing! ”

“ The attention of the worker is, therefore, strongly demanded at the beginning and when, later, it is not needed except for new and unfamiliar work, an opportunity arises for invention and mental advancement. ”

“ For in all those higher forms of work which involve not only expert workmanship but a spiritual content of some kind, the worker must bring to his task not only skill but ideas, force, personality, temperament; and, sound workmanship being secured, his rank will depend not on specific expertness, but on the depth, energy, and splendour of the personality which the work reveals. ”

“ There are only a few of the possible combinations, any of which are used, as best suits the worker and the work. 17
Untrained Worker Requires Appeal to Most Senses. — The value of appeal to many senses is best realized in teaching an inexperienced worker. ”

“ But now, you see," said he, leading me on a little, "we have learned the trick of handicraft, and have added the utmost refinement of workmanship to the freedom of fancy and imagination."
I looked, and wondered indeed at the deftness and abundance of beauty of the work of men who had at last learned to accept life itself as a pleasure, and the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the preparation for them, as work fit for the best of the race. ”

“ A considerable part of the knowledge essential to success in any pursuit is acquired by actually working at the occupation, or, as we say, by practical experience. Some features of any occupation can be obtained in no other way. ”

“ They Enlist the Judgment of the Worker. — Under really successful management, it is realized that the worker is of an inquiring mind, and that, unless this inquiring tendency of his is recognized, and his curiosity is satisfied, he can never do his best work. ”

“ In work of the finer order, dealing with the more impressionable material, there are discoverable not only the character and quality of the worker, but the conditions under which he lives; the stage of civilisation, the vigour or languor of vital energy, the richness or poverty of social life, the character of the soil and of the landscape, the pallor or the bloom of vegetation, the shining or the veiling of the skies. ”

“ With our worker, just as sure as the sun rises and sets, if he continues to work and is no fool, he will rise to earn a competency, to improve himself, to own his own labor, to own his own home, to hire the labor of other men who are beginners as he once was himself. ”

“ This gave us a good opportunity to show the workmen, as well as the owners and managers of the works, on a fairly large scale the advantages of task work over the old-fashioned day work and piece work, in doing a very elementary class of work. ”

“ Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite--ultimately recovering some measure of power. ”

“ I know not how to offer you specific advice respecting this important matter, and fortunately I think it is not needed; for all general knowledge expands the mind, clears it of prejudice, and qualifies it for application to any particular subject; and where the field is so wide, and the labour required so vast and diversified, each labourer must select that style of work which he finds most congenial to his taste and best suited to his powers. ”

“ Illustrated with pictures of successful work that the workers themselves have done, often containing pictures of the men themselves that illustrate successful methods, with mention of the names of men who have offered valuable suggestions or inventions, they make the worker feel his part in successful results. They conserve the old spirit of coöperation between the master and his apprentices. ”

“ The wiser man, the labourer, begins at his corner of the wood, and makes out a task for himself for each day. Let not our imaginations be employed on one side only. Think, that large as may appear the work to be done—so too the result of any endeavour, however small in itself, may be of infinite extent in the future. ”

“ By degrees I rose in society, and leagued myself with a set of professional sharpers, who found me so fine a subject to work upon, that a short time, with plenty of practice, put me in possession of all the most desperate jobs. ”

“ As I grew into young manhood, and went into business, I found on every hand that quantity counted for more than quality. The emphasis was almost always placed on how much work one could do in a day, rather than upon how well the work was done. ”

“ Through his senses, the worker takes in the directions as to what he is to do, and on the accuracy with which his senses record the impressions made upon them, depends the mental model which he ultimately follows, and the accuracy of his criticism of the resulting physical object of his work. ”

“ For the most part the various vocations are said to be actuated by much the same motives, the leading satisfactions being honor, truth, position, beauty, progress, fees or salary, and welfare. These enumerations, of course, help us in no way to distinguish between the particular satisfactions or interests involved in the different types of work. Quite the same thing is true of the abilities required. Most of them call for energy, industry, judgment and ability to deal with people. ”

“ Though in reality more attached to field labour than any other kind of work, his love of it was for the moment all obscured by the vision of the brilliant prospects open in the new career as bookseller. ”

“ In applying these new principles, in place of the old individual effort of each workman, both sides share almost equally in the daily performance of each task, the management doing that part of the work for which they are best fitted, and the workmen the balance. ”

“ They pride themselves on the fact that the great majority of the men have been in their employ for several years, with the result that they have around them a class of workmen who are steady, reliable and, above all, skilful in the particular work they are engaged upon. ”

“ Through work there comes to us the pleasure of a growing knowledge of the great world and its wonders, the delight of intercourse with other people, and the happiness of friendship with our fellow-workers. ”

“ The same kind-hearted employer, whom I have quoted before, speaks thus upon the subject. “Another point which has appeared to me of great importance is to provide as many resources as possible of interest and amusement for their leisure hours; something to which they may return with renewed relish when their daily work is done; which may render their homes cheerful and happy, and may afford subjects of thought, conversation and pursuit among them.” Moreover, a habit of attention, and even scientific modes of thought, are often called out in young people when they are learning some game. ”

“ First, men who love their work and take pride in it; second, mutuality of interests in that work; third, mutual understanding between employer and employee. By this we mean an understanding by each of the other's point of view, personality, ability, motives, intentions, ambitions, and desires. Already Civilization is groping toward the establishment of a new relation upon this basis. Scientific methods of employment are being adopted in more and more of our industrial and commercial plants. ”

“ The instinct of workmanship, on the other hand, occupies the interest with practical expedients, ways and means, devices and contrivances of efficiency and economy, proficiency, creative work and technological mastery of facts. Much of the functional content of the instinct of workmanship is a proclivity for taking pains. ”

“ Some of the most efficient workers I know are of the ultra-scatterbrained type. One friend, who does a prodigious quantity of work, has in fact confessed to me that, if he wants to get ideas on any subject, he sits down to work at something else, his best results coming through his mind-wanderings. ”

“ The duty of work is written on the thews and muscles of the limbs, the mechanism of the hand, the nerves and lobes of the brain—the sum of whose healthy action is satisfaction and enjoyment. In the school of labor is taught the best practical wisdom; nor is a life of manual employment, as we shall hereafter find, incompatible with high mental culture. ”

“ Sound work, clean work, finished work; feeble work, slack work, sham work—these words express an identical contrast in many different departments of activity. In so far forth, then, even the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain small degree of power to judge of good work generally. ”

“ It is otherwise with the more developed man. The stern discipline of social life has gradually increased the aptitude for persistent industry; until, among us, and still more among you, work has become with many a passion. ”

“ When you speak to the average person about labor—industrial work, especially—he seems to [Pg 122] get the idea at once that you are opposed to his head being educated—that you simply wish to put him to work. ”

“ But these are the mere opening requirements of this hope of mine of a quickened social consciousness among the more fortunate and leisurely section of the community I believe that much profounder changes in the conditions of labour are possible than those I have suggested I am beginning to suspect that scarcely any of our preconceptions about the way work must be done, about the hours of work and the habits of work, will stand an exhaustive scientific analysis. ”

“ In conclusion, a word may be said to the girl or woman who has been at work for some years. She should take stock at intervals of the work she is doing, and of her prospects and possibilities. Let her devote some clear thinking as to whether her work could not be re-arranged to the advantage of her employer and herself. Purely routine work is scarcely ever as well done as it might be. She should ask herself, "Can I improve my work? Is there any new line in which I can develop? What special knowledge and skill have I? ”

“ If we take into account the qualities necessary for the successful conduct of any important undertaking,—that it requires special aptitude, promptitude of action on emergencies, capacity for organizing the labours often of large numbers of men, great tact and knowledge of human nature, constant self-culture, and growing experience in the practical affairs of life,—it must, we think, be obvious that the school of business is by no means so narrow as some writers would have us believe. ”

“ There are, of course, in every calling, those who go about the work of the day before them, doing it according to the rules of their craft, and asking no questions of the past or of the future, or of the aim and end to which their special labor is contributing. ”

“ All of us are grown-up children, and it is equally true that the average workman will work with the greatest satisfaction, both to himself and to his employer, when he is given each day a definite task which he is to perform in a given time, and which constitutes a proper day's work for a good workman. ”

“ Work in the factory or in the office, work which brings us into contact with the outside world, calls for the exercise of qualities and attainments which we had no need of before, for the abandonment of habits and ideas which can only hamper our progress in our changed surroundings. ”

“ The result of this scientific selection of the workman is not only better work, but also, and more important from the psychological side, the development of his individuality. It is not always recognized that the work itself is a great educator, and that acute cleverness in the line of work to which he is fitted comes to the worker. ”

“ In any work there is possible, first, more or less of the workman's interest—an interest not merely in a conventional standard of excellence in the finished result but also in betterment of the standard and in a corresponding heightened excellence of technique and spirit in the execution.49 These interests, without reference to the useful result and "for their own sake" (i.e., for the workman's sake, in ways not specifiable in advance) , may command a share of one's available time, strength, and resources. ”