"Others
have labored, and we have entered into their labors"; it is not fair
to accept so much without giving what we can in return.
For most men and women there is, of course; no alterative; they must
work or live a wretched, comfortless life, with the actual risk of
starvation. A few may prefer the precarious existence of the tramp,
or pauper; but they must pay the price in homelessness and hazard.
Except for abnormal social conditions, the vile housing of the poor,
the hopeless monotony and overlong hours of most forms of unskilled
labor, the lure of drink, and the deprivation of the natural joys of
life, there would be few of these voluntary idlers among the poor.
The aversion to work, when it is decently agreeable, in decent
surroundings, and not carried to the point of fatigue, is abnormal;
and it is by the improvement of the conditions and remuneration of
labor that we must seek to cure that unwillingness to work, in the
poor, which Tolstoy came to believe was their greatest curse.
[Footnote: See his What Shall We Do Then? (or What to Do?)]
Much more difficult to cure is the curse of idleness among the rich.
The absence of the need of working, and the possibilities of pleasure
seeking which money affords, are a constant temptation to them to
live a life of ease. The spectacle is not unfamiliar of rich young men
traveling about the world, living at their clubs, spending their
energies in gayeties and sports, with hardly a sense of the
responsibilities which their privileges entail.
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