WHY MEN WORK.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4472, 27 September 1922, Page 2

WHY MEN WORK.

In proportion as a man is a true man he is a servant. The biggest word in the dictionary is duty. The divinest pf verbs is ought. 4 To grow up means to encounter responsibility. The world is full of Peter Pans—men and Women who shrink from the burdens’of maturity. But sooner or later tp every one of us comb the burden and the task. We flee it, we dodge and squirm, but it pursues us, inevitable and stern. The, inner ear of eash man’s soul hears the voice of Life: “Find your work, and dp it.” Only by obedience to this command can he find peace. If he disobeys, by and by comes fate, with a persuasive word or with a .“grievous crab-tree cudgel,” with tragedy and or with nausea and weariness, and thorns, drives him to his place. The world is governed and kept going by a few strong instincts; but among these not the least is that feeling that cannot be sponged frpm the hnmiah heart, the feeling that “I have a work to do, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!” . There never was a more superficial cheap and nasty delusion than that men work only for gain, and if you take away wages and hope of becoming wealthy human kind would lapse into laziness. The contrary is true. No really good work was eyer done for a reward. The best work of. the world, and the greater part of the work bf the world, is done for the same reason that children play; it is because men would be wretched without activity, because unless men produce, create, and play the mighty game of business they die of the worm. Work is the normal functioning of the adult. Mankind builds bridges, bores tunnels, constructs ocean liners, erects skyscrapers, paints pictures, writes books, and grinds flour because there is joy and lhealtih, A man with no job, with no part of life’s burden accepted and carried, is no man. He bears the same relation to humanity that flies and snakes bear. He is a curse and an incubus. —Dr, Crane,