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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A Talent for Sloth

By Philip Connors

Ten years as a lookout on a fire tower requires a particular aptitude for idleness.

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Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

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3761 BC | Eden

Labor Contract

God’s punishment for pursuing low-hanging fruit.More

c. 30 BC | Lombardy

Work Ethic

Virgil on the relentless efforts of early man.More

c. 445 BC | Athens

Public Works

The architecture of Periclean Athens.More

Charts & Graphs

Famous people and their unemployment.

Fired!

Famous people and their unemployment.

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Photograph of African-American poet and writer Langston Hughes.

English author Robert Southey.

American author, essayist, and editor Donovan Hohn.

Seated man with a large white beard wearing a dark suit

Chinese-American journalist Leslie T. Chang.

Black and white image of American writer Herman Melville.

Engraving of Scottish economist Adam Smith.

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

—Victor Hugo, 1862

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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