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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Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan, by Diego Velázquez, 1630. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Lost Tools

By Donovan Hohn

A tour of the antique tool trade confirms that they just don’t make things like they used to.

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Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

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1935 | New York City

Unemployment Benefits

Down and out in New York City.More

1899 | Chicago

Spending Time

Thorstein Veblen considers the nonproductive consumption of time.More

1714 | London

The Hive Mind

Bernard Mandeville’s fable of the bees.More

Charts & Graphs

Workplace disasters.

Mistakes Were Made

Workplace disasters.

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Professor of critical theory and cultural history Ben Kafka.

Black and white image of English scholar, writer, and clergyman Robert Burton.

Russian author Anton Chekhov.

German writer, composer, and painter E. T. A. Hoffmann.

Black and white photograph of a young Mark Twain with dark hair.

British writer Bernard Mandeville.

American writer Lydia Davis.

Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

—Thomas Carlyle, 1836

Color portrait of German theologian and reformer Martin Luther.

British philosopher, logician, and social critic Bertrand Russell.

Martin Luther & Bertrand Russell

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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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