Btill more decisive against thrift on the part o£ workmen is the fact that the modern large organization of industry requires a high degree of mobility on the part of employees. It requires, in fact, that the labor force and the labor units be I mobile, interchangeable, distributable, after the ff*" iirisame impersonal fashion as the mechanical conI ' J trivances engaged are movable and distributable. I iO^ The working population is required to be standardized, movable, and interchangeable in much the same impersonal manner as the raw or halfwrought materials of industry. From which it ' follows that the modem workman cannot advanI tageously own a home. By force of this latter feature of the case he is discouraged from invest- ■ ing his savings in real property, or, indeed, in any of the impedimenta of living. And the savingsbank account, it may be added, offers no adequate substitute, as an incentive to thrift, in the place of such property as a dwelliug-place, which is tangibly and usefully under the owner's hand and persistently requires maintenance and improvement.
The conditions of life imposed upon the working population by the machine industry discourage thrift. But after allowance has been made for this almost physical restraint upon the aquisition of property by the working classes, something is apparently left over, to be ascrilied to the moral
CIVILIZATION AND THE MACHINE PROCESS 327
effect of the machine technology. The induatrial classes appear to be losing the instinct of individual ownership. The acquisition of property