ing;" and "the common experience of a class creates the characteristic mental attitude of that class towards the world in which it lives."
Under the Guild system, the Journeyman worked in the small shop and, so long as he was unmarried, usually lived in the house of his master as a member of the family. All the different parts of the process of manufacture were usually carried on in the same place; as for instance, the shoemaker was a tanner also. The completed product was the handiwork of one man—an individual production—and as such, the workman might well take a large measure of pride in this evidence of his patience, industry and skill. But the capitalists introduced the factory system of production, and the journeyman, though still working with hand tools, did only a portion of the labor on an article and passed it on to another to do another portion. The completed product was the handiwork of a number of men—a group production—and as such, the workman took pride in it only to the extent that he could trace his own labor in the completed article. Otherwise, it was a matter of indifference to him whether it was well or poorly made. His interest in the whole thing ceased when he received his stipulated wage.
The development of the steam engine stimulated invention and, within the last 100 years, machinery has so vastly supplanted hand labor, that the average proletarian attending the machine turns out a product about twenty times greater than the product of the old time journeyman. Yet, with all these great modern aids to his productivity, the average proletarian finds himself in a state of chronic poverty many removes below the journeyman. The small factory of the early capitalist has become the great industrial plant of a group of Plutocrats, and the small group of fairly skilled mechanics has become a veritable army of industry. Where formerly the individual touch might be seen upon an article, now
