"But it would never do."
"Why not?"
"Because these men have always stood at their work."
"But why can they not sit down now?"
"Because they never have sat down."
"Do they not sit down to eat?"
"Yes, but not to work. It is very different. You do not understand the psychic immobility of labour. Habits grow stronger as the mentality is simplified. I have heard that there are animals in the zoological garden that still perform useless operations that their remote ancestors required in their jungle life."
"Then do you infer that these men who must stand at their work inherited the idea from their ancestors?"
"That is a matter of eugenics. I do not know, but I do know that we are preparing for trouble with these changes. Still I hope to work it out without serious difficulty, if you do not insist on these transfers. When workmen have already been forced to change their habitual method of work and then see their fellows being removed to other and still stranger work it breeds dangerous unrest."
"One thing is certain," I replied; "we cannot delay the installation of the new method; as fast as the equipment is ready the new operation must replace the old."