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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Pushing Paper

By Ben Kafka

Paperwork has never fit comfortably into our idea of what work means—it has no heroes and few sympathies.

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Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

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1714 | London

The Hive Mind

Bernard Mandeville’s fable of the bees.More

1988 | Austin, TX

Price Adjustment

Calculating the cost of pain and suffering.More

1923 | New York City

Trading Commodities

Preventing damage to the pocketbook and to the soul.More

Charts & Graphs

Detail of world map with numbered list

Workers of the World Unite

Labor unions and strikes throughout time.

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American writer and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich.

Image of Chinese poet Bai Juyi.

Irish writer George Moore.

Black and white photograph of German-language writer Franz Kafka.

Photo of stone Aristotle statue face

Image of Japanese poet and essayist Yoshida Kenko.

Portrait bust of presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer.

Roman playwright Terence.

Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.

—Slogan of the National Labor Union of the United States, 1866

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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