On Beating a Dead Horse: As we push harder at one end for technology, there are cries of too much from the other

Dead Horse and the Featherbird" is the amusing title of a serious pamphlet that tells us we are on the way to demoralization by "unwork." The "unwork" is growing within our technological society. There is a growing number of jobs, existing for their own sake, which make no pretense of doing anything useful. The situation arose from man's long history of want and the very short history of high productivity through technology. Automation is seen as a striking influence on the latter. "Dead horse" is a term from the unionized printing industry given to copy, set in type but never to be used, on advertisements arriving in the print shop already in type. The "feather-bird" is the nonfunctional airline pilot, is analogous to what is called "featherbedding" in the railroads. Paul Jacobs, staff director of a Study of the Trade Union for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and also on the University ...