Just based on the number of dog-eared pages in my copy Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft:
An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, I like this book. You could make the case, love this book. No doubt, I’m impressed and grateful he wrote it.
Written by a been-there/been-sworn-at-on-real-^%&*+%$ job sites electrician/motorcycle mechanic Crawford’s look at the value and meaning of a work life behind a wrench or framing nailer, in juxtaposition to a desk or keyboard as an “information worker,” is fascinating. It’s superbly researched and intriguing to read on boatloads of levels.
Another thing that makes this a top-tier pager for me is that Crawford is also off-the-charts smart and a philosopher which makes it kind of hyper-ironic that the last dudes on the planet who will read this book are my electrician subs or 90% of plumbers I have ever met. Nevertheless, I think this is an important and informative book for business leaders, parents, and of course, those of us in the trades who do chase this stuff around in our free time. And there’s a few imperious homeowners and housewives that could use a one-pager on it shoved up their…er…placed kindly on their granite counters…
Anyway, long story short, Crawford takes a look at the dwindling value society places on people who work with their hands because, as he writes in the New York Times Magazine, “The trades suffer from low prestige, and I believe this is based on a simple mistake. Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid.”
He’s right. I’ve been to that estimate and been surprised to find myself in an “As Contractors Match Wits” with the homeowner whose baseline assumption that because I have a tool pouch and a truck instead of a sports coupe and beach house that he or she isn’t just smarter than I am, but orders of magnitude up the brain scale. You can see it in their eyes sometimes how anxious they are to get a leg up. They should—and for real reasons Crawford points out—be embarrassed. What’s more, they’re just making the process of home improvement (already a challenge) harder on themselves, but that’s another story.
On the other hand, some homeowners—particularly those that have been burned—have a good reasons to be wary. Lots of tradespeople are knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers and embarrassing to the pros out there that care. Also another story, some of which you can scope out here.
Back to the book, Crawford takes a look at corporate structure and where the money is—versus where it isn’t any more. Top-tier executives used to make an average of 40x workers’ salaries. Now it is 400x. It doesn’t take a degree from Harvard Business School to do that math: more dollars in fewer hands means less of it to go around the rest of society (read: the middle class) to buy things, save money, invest—hence the frillion offers we all get for credit cards to borrow money to buy things instead of just being able to afford them. (As an interesting side note, Ben and Jerry’s used to have a corporate structure where no matter how much Ben and Jerry made, the lowest paid employee always made a reciprocal percentage of that number. I’m not suggesting a janitor should be paid an executive’s wage, I’m just saying there is a childhood sense of fairness at work here; no idea if it exists since they sold.)
Another reason for the dog-eared pages is that Crawford points out something my mother used to say in so many words. Despite the fact that she was highly educated, she was happiest at her weekend job bar tending and pointed out that not all of us are meant to happily live a corporate, cubicle-type lives. It takes real brain power to identify problems with houses, engines, and infrastructure. And, it is FUN to make things. Futhermore, it takes people of mettle—not the kind required for cube-work; I know I’ve lived behind the carpet wall partition and LOVED the health insurance (I know, another story)—to climb a light tower in the rain, tear a roof off a house in 120 degree temps or build a wind turbine.
There are many—Crawford is not one of them—that lay the blame on what Theresa and I do for a living: home improvement entertainment. Watch enough home improvement shows and it’s easy to see why some homeowners might be lulled into thinking Rome was built in a day.
I should also point out, that as much as I value the trades and know how hard it is to make a living and raise children in financially secure households as a tradeperson, it is the business owner and risker of money—also the ones with vision and high-minded organization; in other words, leaders—that should command the lion’s share of the wealth. In many cases this is the corporation and business owner. It would be naive to think otherwise and go all hippy-trippy-commune on this topic.
But the points Crawford raises are vital and probably why this book is a New York Times Best Seller. How far behind the financial 8-ball as a society do we want to put the people that make our toilets flush and keep water out of the roof? These are jobs that cannot be off-shored. Ever.
I guess it all leads to this. When junior takes the toilet apart, take a breath, then sit down with him or her and figure out what’s really going on. How systems work is no String Theory noodling to be sure, but it is important and it’s a rewarding way to make a living. Mike Rowe has built his life around it—and we watch it in gobs on Dirty Jobs—chronicling, as Mike says, the the people and jobs that make “civilized life civilized.”
Crafty.
