The science of social adjustment / by Sir Josiah Stamp.

  • Josiah Stamp, 1st Baron Stamp
Date:
1937
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The science of social adjustment / by Sir Josiah Stamp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/192 page 19
    10 iiiitliinka.blo. Then life itself is not mueli worth living without social ties and the allegiances of ])lace and kin. These three indispensable elements of the good life bring out defensive mechanisms for their ])rotection. No one likes to see a man highly trained for a special service or s])ecially fitted by natural aptitudes cut oft’ from opportunity to use his powers and reduced to the level of an unskilled biped. No one likes to see the results of abstinence and specially directed labour which is embodied in a great machine or factory rendered impotent long before it has given its life’s usefulness. Waste of skill and of capital are alike grave faults by which we should judge and condemn an industrial organization. Since man does not live by bread alone, if a ruthless industrial organization con¬ tinually tears up the family from its roots, transferring it without choice to new surroundings, destroying the ties of kin, home and social life, of educational and recreational environments, it is far from ideal. Human labour can never be indefinitely fluid and transferable in a society that has a soul above consumption of mere commodities. These three obstructions to change are not final and rigid limitations upon it. Men die, and their skill and home associations with them. Plant and equipment wear out. Their successor presents a natural oppor¬ tunity in each of the three cases for the introduction of change in position, in aptitude, in purpose or design, without waste or human distress. The length of working life and the durability of materials mark the natural phase or periodicity of a smoothly changing society—its quanta, so to speak. But the impetus for change or the irritant has no such intervals. It proceeds from various causes : varying harvests,
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