To the Editor:
Because my reply to Bennett Berger [June] had to be cut, I would like to correct a distortion caused by several omissions.
Dr. Berger concluded that automobile workers such as those he studied “can and do spend eight hours a day at apparently meaningless work . . . and apparently survive OK.” I asserted that this conclusion is an inadequate response to the industrial problem, and for support, quoted Harvey Swados’s testimony after working alongside automobile workers for a year: “the one unifying force among all these men, so different from one another in ethnic background, educational attainment, and personal ambition, was hatred of their work . . . among men on the assembly line there was a near unanimity of contempt for what they did and a shame at their inability to earn their livings in a better way.” I then asked whether we can accept Dr. Berger’s consoling reassurance that such men “survive OK” or that they have achieved what he calls “satisfaction and contentment.”
I argued further that if Dr. Berger can emerge from a comprehensive study of his automobile workers’ “new style of life” with the startling admission that “he does not really know” whether or not their jobs are inherently meaningless, then he has been asking the wrong questions. These jobs, I pointed out, are dirty, monotonous, noisy, physically exhausting, and—most important—devoid of almost any element that could contribute to the human sustenance or growth of the men who do them.
Ronald Gross
New York City
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