Note 21 — Chapter V · THE ACHIEVEMENT OF FREEDOM.

It is worth noticing that on the other hand, the growth of the machine industry has itself indirectly co-operated in this process. “It follows as a consequence of the large and increasing requirements enforced by the machine technology that the period of preliminary training is necessarily longer, and the schooling demanded for general preparation grows unremittingly more exacting. So that, apart from all question of humanitarian sentiment or of popular fitness for democratic citizenship, it has become a matter of economic expediency, simply as a proposition in technological efficiency at large, to enforce the exemption of children from industrial employment until a later date and to extend their effective school age appreciably beyond what would once have been sufficient to meet all the commonplace requirements of skilled workmanship.” (Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship, p. 309.) This educational process has had consequences beyond those immediately sought. The quickening and enlargement of mind which have followed even the very inadequate education hitherto provided in the common schools, have made a very considerable contribution to the movement for economic emancipation.