ALL THE LIVELONG DAY: The Meaning and...

ALL THE LIVELONG DAY: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work by Barbara Garson (Penguin: $11.95; 271 pp.). Garson interviewed workers at fish canneries and lumber mills and took jobs in banks and insurance companies for her examination of rote work. She emphasizes that virtually everyone she encountered wanted to work and generally worked hard, but surveillance and the increasingly narrow scope of each job often prevented them from doing so. In a newly revised edition of a study that initially appeared in 1975, Garson condemns the Orwellian electronic monitoring systems that are becoming common in offices. In a discussion of the human cost of the current emphasis on maximum, short-term profits, she comments, “There are no columns in standard double-entry bookkeeping to keep track of satisfaction and demoralization.”