Is the painfulness of work
unavoidable?
[43] ``Overwork is repulsive to human nature--not work. Overwork
for supplying the few with luxury--not work for the well-
being of all. Work, labor, is a physiological necessity, a necessity
of spending accumulated bodily energy, a necessity which
is health and life itself. If so many branches of useful work are
so reluctantly done now, it is merely because they mean overwork,
or they are improperly organized. But we know--old
Franklin knew it--that four hours of useful work every day
would be more than sufficient for supplying everybody with the
comfort of a moderately well-to-do middle-class house, if we all
gave ourselves to productive work, and if we did not waste our
productive powers as we do waste them now. As to the childish
question, repeated for fifty years: `Who would do disagreeable
work?' frankly I regret that none of our savants has ever been
brought to do it, be it for only one day in his life. If there is
still work which is really disagreeable in itself, it is only
because our scientific men have never cared to consider the
means of rendering it less so: they have always known that there
were plenty of starving men who would do it for a few pence
a day.
Pages:
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139