WORK FOR WORK'S SAKE.
WORK, which used to be regarded as a neCessity, is now looked on as a prize. To be out of work is the synonym, not of laziness, but of misery. To get work is the first object in life—to lose it is the greatest of the everyday fears. We are talking, of course, of the vast body of respectable people, to whom we all think that we belong, not of rogues and shirkers. This new view of Adam's curse cannot be without its effect upon character. The children who are grown up—the ambitious children of the cultivated, at any rate—will regard work as an end in itself, as something which has not only got to be done, but got to be got before it can be done, and of which there is not quite enough to go round. The idea that men cannot "pick and choose" will be, of necessity, rubbed into them very early, and parents will be afraid to train their children according to their bent. Bread has to be thought of before "bents." Education for the professional class, at least, will have to be as "all round" as possible, so that a boy or a girl may step quickly into any vacancy which occurs. The result will, of course, be a great many square people in round holes, a great many women doing men's work, and vice versa. More of us will hate our work than hated it in the past, and willingness for uncongenial toil will be regarded as a great virtue. Constantly one hears it said of some naturally industrious young man who can get nothing to do : "It's his own fault, he was offered such and such a job and refused it." Should a friend excuse him on the ground that he is particularly unsuited to the suggested job he will be met with the unanswerable assertion that "a man must take what he can get or go without." Some other young man, who has thrown talent and inclination to the winds and is doing diligently and badly what his traditions and his mentality prevent his doing well, is held up to admiration. "Look at young So-and-so, he simply jumped at anything which would bring him in a living," say the elder onlookers, with strong approval. "That is the right spirit ! That boy will get on." If they can do him a good turn they will do it. The other day the present writer heard an able man of business speaking in high praise of a well- educated young woman whom he had taken as a clerk. There was, he said, a great variety of work in his office, and no one knew what kind of work the girl liked best. She would "do anything" with equal zest, from a mechanical job to one requiring consideration. She was apparently fit for responsibility, but she did not ask for it. She spoke of no preferences, but worked for the work's sake.
There is no doubt that this spirit is gaining ground. Any spirit which is approved by the powerful few who have succeeded must gain ground, but one cannot help wondering what will be its result. Some people will, we think, reply that its growth will mean an immense increase in the virtue of industry among the educated in this country. Personally, we are inclined to doubt it; so far, at any rate, as men are concerned. The man who works very hard indeed from a sense of duty will want a great deal of time off. No one is going to "give his life" to work which does not appeal to him. He will not, he cannot, keep it always at the back of his mind and never lose sight of it, even when he is resting or amusing himself, as a man can who loves it. He will force himself to do it well, up to a point, and then allow himself, indeed, encourage himself, to forget it wholly. He will demand time in which to live the life that he likes, to which his work will become more and more a means. Every movement for shortening hours he will support as his only chance of giving free play to his inclinations, and he will probably be cheerfully willing to lower what is called his "standard of life" in order to have more freedom.
Where women are concerned we cannot think that the same rule applies. They have usually less " bent " than men. Their natural work is the sort that is" never done." They do it, generally speaking, for love, and the fact has given them a sort of love of work, or rather of occu- pation. They have much less desire to put it behind them and do something else than a man has. Here, we believe, among brain workers great difficulties might arise if the sexes ever come into serious rivalry. Women work slower than men, but if they are willing to work for longer hours the difference of pace might be more than compensated for. Hitherto, also, they have had no hobbies.
But anyhow, among the professional class feminine labour is never likely to be common enough to cause any very great complications. To come back to our first point. How will the new attitude towards work affect middle-class life in the next generation ? There is, we suppose, the artist in every man, just as there is the madman. It looks as though that artist were to have less scope in the workaday world than formerly, and as if we were to come back in a sense to a more primitive condition when work—even brain work—will be con- sidered more generally as a mere means of getting bread. The artist will, of course, still be there, and will play his part in leisure hours. Will the result be that he will be lightly regarded ? Will people regard as a mere recreation every outlet for their energies which does not represent money ? That, it seems to us, may very well be the case. On the other hand, it is quite possible that leisure, taking, as it appears likely to take, a larger part in life than ever before, will take a more serious one The educated may learn to put their minds and hearts into its use, and in a new cultivated society men may be judged by its use, by its production even. People may talk of their friends as scholars, writers, scientific men, philanthropists, horticulturists, or what not ; and it may become the fashion to speak little of the means by which the domestic pot is actually boiled. Such a fashion would, we think, prove rather an agreeable change, and what the professional class is losing in power profes- sional life might possibly gain in pleasantness.
Previous page
