WHAT IS WORK?

Evening Star, Issue 19790, 14 February 1928, Page 1

WHAT IS WORK?

FACTORY CORKER AND THE DILETTANTE COMPARED The working classes have grown very disrespectful, the Hume Secretary may have reflected, in these degenerate days (comments the ‘ Manchester Guardian ’.) But the point is a nice one. What is work? Sir Win. Joynson-Hicks will probably fail to convince a mill worker that even a hard day spent in the “best club in England”—a place where, as one who ..new it well remarked—“a man can neither work nor rest,” can be accurately defined as work. Indeed, the comparison is a difficult one. To work, to one's own time, in a position of authority and dignity, in comfortabls surroundings for a fourfigure salary, with the opportunity of seeing the immediate fruits of one’s industry and the knowledge that one is a very important person—how can this seem to be work to a- “ factory hand ”? The Home Secretary may, indeed, work hard and for long hours; but such is the injustice which arises from the difference of position that lie will never get the credit of it from men and women whose earnings (though for only eight hours’ labor in a heated factory) cannot in any case produce more than a twentieth of his income.

Industrialism liars brought no greater evil than this—that it has divided the da,vs of the vast majority of men and women into two parts—the working part and the living part. is for this