THIRD
WILLIAM MORRIS says: "_It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do: and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome, nor over-anxious._"
This theorem cannot be upheld in its entirety, though there is a deep truth beneath it. There are many things, such as the collecting of garbage, the washing of the dead poor, the cleaning of cesspools, the butchery of cattle for the market, and the execution of capital criminals, which can scarcely be called pleasant to do, and must yet be done. As long as the world is the world, and there is in it sin, decay, disease, and death, we cannot hope to make the work or the conditions of work absolutely ideal: we _can_ make ideal the spirit in which work is done!
A fine story is told that long ago, when the cholera once broke out in Philadelphia, the hospitals fell into a fearful state. One day, a plain, quiet little man stepped into the chief hospital, looked about a moment, and set to work. No task was too dirty or disagreeable for him; no detail was too disgusting. He did anything he saw to be done,--called in additional doctors, organized the nurses, and himself waited on patients night and day. He soon had the hospital in good shape again. When the crisis pa.s.sed, and every one began to demand, Who is this man?--they were told: It is Stephen Girard. The work was not pleasant, but the spirit was kind, and the heart delighted in its self-appointed toil.
Work in general, however, that has worth has several elements. First, It must be individual. It must be joyfully done: there must enter into work the vitality of a happy spirit. It must be spontaneous. This is why machine-work can never be thoroughly beautiful: it lacks the spontaneity of life. The hand never makes two things alike. With the mood, the weather, the occasion, there are little touches added which a machine cannot give. Life always varies and thinks of new effects.
When we try to realize what work is, when it is merely an amount of toil prodded out of man or woman by a hard taskmaster, we have only to look back to the bondage of Israel in Egypt, or to the time of Scylla, when there were thirteen million slaves in Italy alone: slaves whose set tasks were of over two hundred and fifty kinds; who worked on the road-building, on public works, and in rowing in the galleys of the slave-propelled ships. In Carthage agriculture was for a time largely carried on by slave-labor. How different is this slave-labor from the craft-work of mediaeval times, when, under the protection of the guilds, manual labor became exalted to an artistic rank, and the workers at the loom, the metal-workers, the wood-carvers, the tapestry-weavers, and the workers in pottery and gla.s.s produced objects whose beauty has never been either equalled or surpa.s.sed. Andrea del Sarto and Benvenuto Cellini were workers, and their work remains.
Again, good work is born of affection. Love teaches more art than all the schools. What we love, we instinctively beautify. The artist beautifies the material on which he works. He loves his task, and from his love there begins a gradual shaping of the ideal. The product gains a touch of beauty. The needlework of Egypt and Byzantium, the laces of Venice and of Spain, are historic. It is said of Queen Isabella, that she was one of the best needleworkers of her age; that "her _motifs_ were the great events of the time."
A peasant girl of Venice was once given a beautiful coral-branch and some rare leaves and sh.e.l.ls which her lover had gathered for her from the sea-depths. She was untaught in art, and making fish-nets was her wonted work. Day by day as she wrought her nets, she looked upon the lovely sea-treasures, their beauty pa.s.sed into her heart and mind, and she began to copy, spray by spray, the coral-foliage, the leaves of the sea-gra.s.ses, and the curves of the sea-sh.e.l.ls, until after a time, in the meshes of her fish-nets, she had imprisoned forms of exquisite beauty, and one saw there reproduced, in dainty and artistic grouping, what her very soul had loved and fed upon. Her fish-nets became works of art.
Work of a high order is always based on high ideals and on great thoughts. It implies a vast amount of toil. The Capellmeister of the Vatican choir to-day is that wonderful young genius, Perosi, who is stirring all Europe by the beauty of his musical work, and by the spirituality and fervor of his musical imagination. He has set himself to compose twelve oratorios, which shall body forth the whole life of the Saviour. He believes that the music-lover and the church-lover may be identical, and has set his hand to the uniting of all true music-lovers with the great offices and services and influences of the Church. Here is Work exalted to its spiritual office: to carry out, not only ideals of beauty and harmony, but to advance spiritual progress.
This is the final aim of all true work: it must be not only aesthetic, and honest, but spiritual. The prayer of the true workman is ever to make himself a workman approved unto G.o.d. "May the beauty of the Lord be upon us, and the work of our hands, establish Thou it!"
The worker should have change of work. Nature never intended that a man should do one thing all his life. This is in harmony neither with man"s infinite capacity, nor with her inexhaustible variety. Change is cultural, and a man"s work Should, from time to time, engross every working-power he has.
Working-surroundings should not only be sanitary, they should be beautiful. What influences one most at college, and makes most for one"s happiness, is not the fact of the work in recitation-rooms, out of books, laboratories, and under teachers. The glory of college life is, that wherever one goes, the eyes look out on beauty, and wherever one works, there are those whom we love who work beside us.
As one pa.s.ses down the long college corridors, the eyes fall upon palm and statue, upon frieze and fresco, and the carbon copies of immortal paintings. Everywhere there are the inspirations of sculpture and architecture, of music, literature, and art. Beauty is in and about the place in which one thinks and works. This is the undying charm of Oxford--the gathering traditions of centuries, the gleaming spires, the age-worn walls and b.u.t.tresses, the clinging vine, the tremulous light and shadow on the ancient halls, the sculpture of porch and clerestory, and the light that falls through richly tinted windows.
This beauty should not be monopolized by any one cla.s.s. About the places where we work, we should have, as far as possible, something of the beauty of the world. We should have wide, shaded streets and parks, even in great cities; towers and pinnacles; sky-lines of vigor, grace, and ma.s.sive strength. Cannot department stores be artistically fashioned and built? Cannot market-houses have arches and arabesques? May not even the Bourse have something about it suggestive of great art? Cannot our streets have curves and storied cross-ways? Cannot porters and draymen have somewhat to arouse and satisfy aesthetic instincts? Cannot our day-laborers be granted vision?
Why should we have the Gothic cathedral, with its exquisite traceries and carvings, pillars and reredos and screen, for men to pray in, one or two hours a week, and the hideous, grime-covered, foul-smelling, overheated factories, in which men and women spend their working-lives?
This is what Christianity must do: it must implant joy and beauty, as well as honesty and fidelity, in the way, place, and thought of work!
When religion, education, art, and brotherly affection have joined hands in a charmed circle, we shall have new ideas of working-places, as well as of praying-places, and of living-places! It is not enough that a factory should be situated, as the best factories now are, in the open country, with sunshine and fresh air. The blockhouse parallelograms and squares should be replaced by something that has intrinsic beauty and the haunting completeness of memory and a.s.sociation, so that the place where a man works shall no more be to him a nightmare, but the atmosphere and inspiration of his dreams!
And those we love shall work beside us! Here is another thought: Shall all a.s.sociation in work be arbitrary? Is there not a more human way than the chain-gang way? Could not friends work more together, so that one"s daily work should be, not a time of separation from all we love most, but a time of intellectual sympathy and helpfulness, of companionship and true-hearted loyalty? This, and many other good things, it is not too much to hope for. Truly, as Morris writes, "_The Day is Coming_."
"_Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deeds of his handy Nor yet come home in the even too faint and weary to stand._
"_Men in that time a-coming shall work and have no fear For the morrow"s lack of earning and the hunger-wolf anear._
"_And what wealth then shall be left us when none shall gather gold To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the sold?_
"_Nay, what save the lovely city, and the little house on the hill, And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy fields we till_;
"_And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead; And the wise men seeking out marvels, and the poet"s teeming head;_
"_And the painter"s hand of wonder; and the marvellous fiddle-bow; And the banded choirs of music:--all those that do and know._
"_Far all these shall be ours and all men"s, nor shall any lack a share Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the world grows fair_."
FOURTH
Good workers are trained in the home, the school, the shop, the wider world. Every home is an industrial establishment. In it go on the industrial processes of cooking, cleaning, sewing, washing; the care of silver, gla.s.s, linen, and household stores; the activities of buying food and clothing; the moral responsibilities of teaching and training servants and children. If any healthy member of the home is excused from at least some form of active work, he will inevitably be a shirker when he grows up. Cannot almost all the problems of human training be run down to this: How to teach a child to work? If he can work, he can be happy; but if he does not want to work, he shall never be happy. No work, no joy, is the universal dictum.
This is the great hardship of the children of great wealth: they are not taught to work. To avoid this difficulty, in two very wealthy families that I know, the boys were even obliged to darn their own stockings and mend their own clothes. One young hopeful once tore his clothes a-fishing, and mended his trousers with a scarlet flannel patch! Some mothers do not allow their little girls to go to school until their beds are made up and their rooms in order. Other equally wise parents have tools in the house, and allow the boys to do all the repair work, the daughters all the family mending, or to care for the linen; the boys to put in electric fixtures and bells, and keep the batteries in order.
Queen Margherita of Italy, Queen Elizabeth of Roumania, Queen Alexandra of England, and the Empress Augusta of Germany are all women who have been from their childhood acquainted with simple and practical household tasks. This principle is a right one and underlies much after-success.
Each child should, first of all, have a mastery of home-tasks. Then, whether on the prairie or in the palace, he is free and independent.
What makes the differences in the social privileges given to one cla.s.s of workers above another? In reality, we are all workers. No one ought to live, if in health, who does not work. But for some forms of work, men and women receive an income, and nothing more. For other work, men and women may or may not receive a large personal income, but their work is recognized, they are a part of the best social circles, and when they die, a city or a nation grieves.
The essential difference is this: that one is honor-work, and one is not. Wherever in the world work is done in a spirit of love and fidelity, it brings its own reward in recognition and in personal affection. Sooner or later, honor-work receives honor.
Another reason for exaltation of one form of work above another, is that some kinds of work are so very hard to do. They involve the intense and complicated action of many and of complex powers. It may be hard physical work to break stones for a road-way, but the task itself is a simple one--the lifting of the arm and dropping it again with sufficient force to split a rock apart. But the writing of a prose masterpiece, such as the _Areopagitica_, involves the highest human faculties in harmonious action. If we add to the requirements of prose, the rhythm, the exalted imagery, and perhaps the a.s.sonance and rhyme of verse, we still further increase the difficulty of the task, and the honor of its successful achievement. The king-work of a powerful monarch, the president-work of a republican leader, is serious work to do. Our honor is not all given to the king or president income, salary, or office; it is a tribute to hard and royal-minded work.
Household service is personal service. It cannot be made a thing of set hours, and of measurably set tasks, as office-work maybe. We may talk of "eight-hour shifts," but they are scarcely practicable. Not every baby would go to successive "shifts"! House-demands vary, not only with every household, but with every day.
When love-making is wholly scientific, then domestic service will be.
There is in it the same delicate personal adjustment, the changing requirements of weather, health, temper, and season, of emergency and stress, that are to be found in the most purely personal relation. When there is a period of unusual sickness through the community, not only the doctors have extra tasks, but all household servants as well.
What social recognition can be given to servants who lie, steal, who shirk every duty that can be shirked, and who are both incompetent and unfaithful? The here-and-there one faithful helper receives her meed of appreciation and affection. The whole aspect of household work will change when honor-work is given: when home-helpers come up to us, from the truthful and honor-loving cla.s.s.
The school-room is the place in which the principles of work are implanted: thoroughness, grasp, speed, decision, and definite purpose.
The shop is the apprentice-place of work, before one takes up individual responsibilities. The man who wishes to rise in the railroad service goes into the shops and roundhouse. The man who wishes to take charge of an important department in a department store is put to tying packages.
Teachers" work will not be rightly done until certain advantages are given to teachers that are now largely withheld. Teachers need more society, more hours of play, freer opportunity of marriage. Instead of being tied up to exercise-books and roll-books, in their home-hours, they should have a chance to spend their time on the golf-links, at afternoon teas, in visiting and in entertaining friends. Take away society from any man or woman, and you take away the possibility of a growing, happy, and helpful life. We need friends just as we need air.
Teachers need admiration and affection, just as much as the society girl does.
Universities should have, in their faculties, men and women who represent the best social as well as the best intellectual life of the world--who are not only, in the highest sense of the word, society men and women, but who are social leaders, inspiring truth, inculcating larger social ideals of the best sort.
The problem between capitalist and laborer, however, only affects a portion of the world; that of domestic service a still smaller proportion; that of teachers affects only a cla.s.s. There is another problem, which affects nearly all married women, and therefore a large section of the human race. It is the problem of mother-work. Here is where the economist should next turn his attention. First, What is Mother-work? Second, What are the best economic conditions under which this work can be done? When we have solved this question, we shall have solved a great human problem.
Mother-work includes the bearing and the rearing of children, the conduct of a home, and the placing of that home in the right social atmosphere and relations. It includes manual, intellectual, and spiritual labors. The one who lives and works, as G.o.d meant her to live and work, will never feel over-fatigue. Why do mothers often look so tired? It is because they too often do not have what every mother ought to have: education, rest, change, a Sabbath-day, individual income, intellectual interests, society.
Whether in the simplest home or in the stateliest, there are certain manual things to be done in regard to the care and bringing-up of children, and the conduct of a home. To make the conditions of a woman"s life easier, the very first thing is this: 1. _Women should be educated primarily for home-life._ By this I do not mean that a woman should be taught cooking, and not political economy; that she should be instructed in dressmaking and nursery-work, but not in chemistry and logic. I mean that the very fullest education that schools, colleges, universities, and foreign travel can give, should be given to the woman who is fortunate enough to have them at command, and that every woman, according to the degree of her possibilities of education and opportunity, should have the best. But always this education should be thought of as a part of her preparation for a woman"s life. When boys are in a business college, the princ.i.p.al of that college does not forget that among the boys there may be more than one who will never have a business life, but who will go out into other interests and pursuits.
Yet he turns the thoughts of _all_ boys in his school specially toward business problems. In schools and colleges for women, not all the girls will marry, not all will be mothers, but most of them will be. Is not, then, the normal education of a woman that which, while it does not cramp her life in one direction, nor mould her in a set way, yet keeps always in mind the fact that the normal woman is being educated for a normal woman"s life?
This would not necessarily change the curriculum of our colleges in any way; it would change the spirit and atmosphere of some of them at once.
Instead of the spirit being: "My mind is just as good as a man"s. What a man can study, I can learn! What a man can do, I can do!"--the spirit would be this: "I am going out into a woman"s life, and it is my business now to take to myself all the wisdom, counsel, experience, and inspiration of past ages, that I may be the very grandest woman that history has yet seen! I will be a land-mark in time: I will be a pivot in history around which the earth shall turn. Because of my life, women to the end of time shall be able to live a truer, freer, better life!"
With this thought in mind, all the academic subjects would still pa.s.s into her mind and life, but they would be much more naturally set and their value would be greatly enhanced. Then we would not have the too-ambitious woman stepping out of college, or the restless and discontented one. We would have the large-minded, earnest, n.o.ble, public-spirited one, who would go out into the world as a fine type of woman, to live a woman"s life and do a woman"s work. Married or unmarried, she would still have a woman"s interests, a woman"s influence, a woman"s charm.
This higher education may or may not include practical studies in domestic science, nursing, and household emergencies, but she should learn somewhere the elements of these studies, so that when she goes into a home of her own her duties and responsibilities will not be met in a half-hearted and untrained way.
2. Mothers should have rest-hours and rest-days. Is it not something extraordinary, from a purely economic point of view, that while it is widely recognized that every one should have one day in seven for rest, that while business men are expected to close up their offices on the Sabbath, and all working men and women are given this day in the stores, the factories, and mines--the cook and maids have their Sundays out, and their week-day afternoons--that nowhere on earth, so far as I know, has there ever been a systematic arrangement by which mothers, as a cla.s.s, have any specially arranged hours or days for rest! A baby"s care does not stop on the Sabbath, and the average mother is practically on duty, at least over-seeing, day and night, twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four, from one end of the year to the other, no matter how many maids and nurses she may have in her employ!
3. Personal income and its use. What we buy marks our own individuality, as well as what we do. The woman whose father or husband adjusts her expenses and expenditures cannot by any possibility be the kind of woman that the one is who chooses her own things, and spends her money absolutely to suit herself. When a man buys cigars or fishing-tackle, his wife may prefer to buy oratorios and golf-clubs.
4. Mothers should have some interest outside of home-tasks, to keep them in touch with world-interests and world-tasks. Not all mother"s duty is inside the four walls of her home. The race has demands upon her, as well as her own child. She ought to be guarded from that short-sighted and selfish devotion which makes her look upon her child as the centre of the universe, and which leads her to sacrifice every hour, every thought, every talent, to him alone.
5. Building up the place of a home in a community means much more than a rivalry with one"s neighbors, as to which one shall have the cleanest house, the prettiest or most expensive curtains and furniture, who shall entertain the most, and whose children shall present the best appearance in the world! Making a social place for a family involves a very wide acquaintance with really great social ideals; with the best instincts and customs; with world refinement and manners, as well as those of one"s own town or village--with the social possibilities of life in general, as well as the etiquette of Quinton"s Corners! To give the right stamp upon her home, a mother must have a social life, as well as domestic one. She must have time to enter somewhat into the activities of her own neighborhood, and must have society after marriage, as well as before.