The effect of the vocations and the division of labor is to produce, in the first instance, not social groups, but vocational types: the actor, the plumber, and the lumber-jack. The organizations, like the trade and labor unions which men of the same trade or profession form, are based on common interests. In this respect they differ from forms of association like the neighborhood, which are based on contiguity, personal association, and the common ties of humanity. The different trades and professions seem disposed to group themselves in classes, that is to say, the artisan, business, and professional classes. But in the modern democratic state the classes have as yet attained no effective organization. Socialism, founded on an effort to create an organization based on “class consciousness,” has never succeeded, except, perhaps, in Russia, in creating more than a political party.
The effects of the division of labor as a discipline, i.e., as means of molding character, may therefore be best studied in the vocational types it has produced. Among the types which it would be interesting to study are: the shopgirl, the policeman, the peddler, the cabman, the nightwatchman, the clairvoyant, the vaudeville performer, the quack doctor, the bartender, the ward boss, the strike-breaker, the labor agitator, the school teacher, the reporter, the stockbroker, the pawnbroker; all of these are characteristic products of the conditions of city life; each, with its special experience, insight, and point of view determines for each vocational group and for the city as a whole its individuality.
To what extent is the grade of intelligence represented in the different trades and professions dependent upon natural ability?
To what extent is intelligence determined by the character of the occupation and the conditions under which it is practiced?
To what extent is success in the occupations dependent upon sound judgment and common sense; to what extent upon technical ability?
Does native ability or special training determine success in the different vocations?
What prestige and what prejudices attach to different trades and professions and why?
Is the choice of the occupation determined by temperamental, by economic, or by sentimental considerations?
In what occupations do men, in what occupations do women, succeed better, and why?
How far is occupation, rather than association, responsible for the mental attitude and moral predilections? Do men in the same profession or trade, but representing different nationalities and different cultural groups, hold characteristic and identical opinions?