It would be an
instructive day's work, for any one of us who is strong enough,
to walk through two or three of the principal streets of London
on a weekday, and take accurate note of everything in the shop
windows which is embarrassing or superfluous to the daily life
of a serious man. Nay, the most of these things no one, serious
or unserious, wants at all; only a foolish habit makes even the
lightest-minded of us suppose that he wants them; and to many
people, even of those who buy them, they are obvious
encumbrances to real work, thought, and pleasure.
At the time most people said that this waste of labour was all a matter
of demand and supply, and thought no more about it; some said that it
was good for trade. Very few saw, with Morris, that demand for such
things is something willed and something that ought not to be willed.
But then it was generally believed that we could afford this waste of
labour; and so it went on until, after a year or two of war, we found
that we could not afford it. Then even the most ignorant and thoughtless
learned, from facts, not from books, certain lessons of political
economy. They learned that, in war-time at least, a nation that wastes
its labour will be overcome by one that does not. At once the common
will was set against the waste of labour; and, what would have seemed
strangest of all forty years ago, the Government, with the consent of
the people, set to work to stop the waste of labour, and did to a great
extent succeed in stopping it.
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