WORK, CAREERS, AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION.

The meaning and proper place of labor and leisure, work and contemplation, have drawn the attention of scholars. Only since the industrial revolution, however, has the interplay between labor and leisure become a major problem, both social and intellectual. The article seeks to delineate some themes of social criticism which bear on the labor-leisure problem, to suggest ways in which diverse traditions of research may be blended in attacking it and to describe a current study being carried out at the University of Michigan, the object of which is to analyze the leisure correlates of work situations as a means of illuminating some central issues in sociology. One recognizes here two major hypotheses, which have been restated by contemporary observers. In an up-to-date version, Detroit, Michigan-based auto-worker, for eight hours gripped bodily to the main line, doing repetitive, low-skilled, machine-paced work which is wholly ingratiating, comes rushing out of the plant gate, hilling down the super highway at 80 miles an hour in a second-hand Cadillac Eldorado, stops off for a beer and starts a bar-room brawl, goes home and beats his wife, and in his spare time throws a rock at a Negro moving into the neighborhood. In short, his routine of leisure is an explosive compensation for the deadening rhythms of factory life.