Machines in the Workshop, Part 5 –
Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
Part 4 is here
HANDWORKER: Are we not approaching the matter from different angles? You regard the operation as nothing more than a means to an end. I do not agree. If we were speaking of the trade in which the production of so many pieces of furniture is all that matters there might be something in it. For the home woodworker the case is entirely different. My belief is that, although a man may need, say, a sideboard, this need is more or less incidental to the fact of his making it. The real reason which sets a man at work is the interest in the work itself, the expression he is able to give to his ideas, and the desire to construct something useful and beautiful. In using a machine he is robbing himself of half of his pleasure. He may make the job more quickly, but he will have lost a great deal of satisfaction. It is like a man in a motor car. He will glance at fifty times as many things as the man who is walking, but it is the latter who really sees more.
