A young worker at the C & NW RR 40th Street shops, Chicago, Ill, photograph by Jack Delano, 1942. Library of Congress.

A young worker at the C & NW RR 40th Street shops, Chicago, Illinois, 1942. Photograph by Jack Delano. Library of Congress.

Lines of Work

Volume IV, Number 2 | spring 2011

Purchase

Women become skilled shop technicians after careful training in the school at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant, Long Beach, CA, photograph by Alfred T. Palmer, 1942. Library of Congress.

Preamble

The Servant Problem

By Lewis H. Lapham

It is man’s nature to be doing something, or at least to fancy that he’s doing something, but to what purpose?

More

Tools of the Trade

By Peter Stothard

Slavery was the energy industry of the ancients—no part of the empire was untouched by its effects.

More

Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

View

1976 | Pagsanjan

Set Decoration

Behind the scenes of a filmmaker’s apocalypse.More

1888 | London

Decent Help

George Moore remembers the life of a servant.More

3761 BC | Eden

Labor Contract

God’s punishment for pursuing low-hanging fruit.More

Charts & Graphs

Musicals written for corporations.

Commercial Art

Musicals written for corporations.

View

color oil painting of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a red tunic with gray hair

Freelance writer and former academic ghostwriter Dave Tomar.

English author Robert Southey.

Black and white image of American writer Herman Melville.

Portrait of Chinese Daoist Zhuangzi.

American poet Robert Frost.

Image of Chinese poet Bai Juyi.

American writer Philip Connors.

The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.

—Nell Scovell, 1991

Color portrait of German theologian and reformer Martin Luther.

British philosopher, logician, and social critic Bertrand Russell.

Martin Luther & Bertrand Russell

Purchase

Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

More

Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

play
pause

00:00

00:00