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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Treasure Hunt

By Alain de Botton

A person’s vocation has become more than a job—it should transform us into who we are.

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Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

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c. 30 BC | Lombardy

Work Ethic

Virgil on the relentless efforts of early man.More

1935 | New York City

Unemployment Benefits

Down and out in New York City.More

1789 | England

Sound Investment

Olaudah Equiano estimates his value.More

Charts & Graphs

Sexual harassment in the workplace.

Cruel and/or Unusual

Sexual harassment in the workplace.

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Russian author Anton Chekhov.

Bust of Marcus Aurelius

French art historian and member of the French Resistance Agnès Humbert.

American poet Theodore Roethke.

Photograph of African-American poet and writer Langston Hughes.

American singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie.

American journalist Susan Orlean.

American author, essayist, and editor Donovan Hohn.

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

—Anatole France, 1881

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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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

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