But if the term imitation be required, as it is, to designate the sort of labour which consists in constant repetition of a single act or process, it would be better to mark this distinction between free agent and subordinate in a different way.The subordination of the secretary or the clerk involves the human cost of a surrender of his personal judgment and initiative.
To the extent that he does this, he becomes an instrument of another's will.The extent to which this involves a human cost will vary greatly with the particular conditions, technical or personal.Where such subordination belongs to genuine education or apprenticeship, or where close sympathy and mutual understanding happen to exist between superior and subordinate, so that the mind of one is the mind of both, no human cost at all but a human utility may emerge.Or, in other cases, the technical nature of the work may involve the necessity of leaving to the subordinate a good deal of discretion and a correspondingly large field for personal expression.
But where the subordinate becomes the mere tool of his master, a heavy cost is entailed.That cost is heavier indeed than in ordinary manual routine labour, because it involves more directly the subordination of the mind and will of the worker.Part of the distaste for domestic and other closely personal service is due to the closer bondage of the whole personality that is involved in the relation.It is not so much that the work is intrinsically dull or unpleasant as that it encroaches upon personality and inhibits initiative and achievement.
§7.The work of the highest, most honoured and best remunerated members of the professions retains essentially the quality of personal achievement.It consists of a number of detached and usually brief acts of intellectual skill, the formation of a judgment upon the meaning or merits of a complicated case, the presentation of that judgment in advice or argument, the bringing intellectual and moral influences to bear upon some line of conduct.
In some instances, as in the argument of a difficult case in court, or the conduct of a complicated Bill in Parliament, prolonged and arduous exertion, both mental and physical, may be involved.Even where the separate acts require no prolonged output of energy, a professional career, comprising long series of such acts, may strain or exhaust the mental and physical resources even of a strong man.Though each case will be different, and will call for qualities of personal skill and judgment, interesting and agreeable in their exercise, all will fall within the limits of a special line of practice, and this specialism will wear upon the nervous system, bringing the activity under an economy of costs.The temptations of a busy and successful professional career insidiously sap the interest and joy which attend the earlier struggle, unless a man has the rare wisdom and the strength of will to limit his amount of work and income.
What is said here of the competitive professions is in large measure applicable to the official grades of the public services.The higher sorts of official work continually involve qualities of judgment and imagination, and there is little mere repetition.As one descends to the lower official levels, the routine or repetitive element increases, until one reaches a sort of official, the liberty, initiative, skill, and interest of whose work hardly exceeds that of the ordinary machine-feeder in a factory.In all such distinctively routine work there is a heavy mental and even physical cost.But there is this distinction between the case of the official and of the professional man.The former is not subject to the constant drive of the competitive system and is usually relieved from the sense of insecurity and anxiety which wears upon the mind of most professional men.
§8.The psychology of the entrepreneur or business man is one of great interest and complexity.If we take the ordinary activities of the manager of a well-established business in a staple trade, they do not seem to involve much in the way of high intellectual skill, imagination, or exploit -- but merely a limited amount of special trade knowledge, ordinary intelligence, and common sense.He has to perform a number of little acts of calculation and decision.What we call his character, viz., honesty, reliability, sense of responsibility, really counts for more than intellect:
there is little demand for constructive or creative imagination, or for high enterprise.The conduct of such a business, even on the part of its manager, though not destitute of interesting incident, involves a good deal of dull routine and even drudgery which carries a distinct 'cost'
in mental wear and tear.
The subordinate officials in such business are, of course, subjected to a closer routine, though never to a merely mechanical repetition, and their working life is less affected by hopes and fears relating to the profits or loss on the half-year's working.
But a large proportion of business men work under very different conditions from these.
Most industries to-day are subjected to rapid changes in regard to instruments and methods of work, markets for materials and for finished products, wages and conditions of employment.A keen eye for novelties, a rapid judgment, long-sighted calculation, commanding character, courage in undertaking risks -- these are leading notes in the modern business life.
