Untitled

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5208, 25 November 1927, Page 2

Mrs Bridey (at 1 a.m.) : “Oh, Jack, wake up I I can just feel there’s a mouse in the room.” Husband (drowsily): “Well, just feel there’s a cat, t.oo, and go to sleep.” Do the present generation work as hard as their predecessors ? No doubt there has been a great deal of “Ca’ canny” in the past and there; still is in many trades, but -one rather fancies that in spite of such cross-currents as Popularism, the ravages of this particular form of sleepy sickness (tihe clear result of the ill-treatmlent of labour in the past) are on the decline, and that if labour could be assured of its fair share of the rewards of industry in the future by means of profit-sharing or other devices the malady would largely disappear. Again, from the other side, we hear a • great deal about long lunch hours and liberal week-ends among employers. There is undoubtedly a certain amount of truth in all this, but brain work is not to be measured by hours alone, and recreation (in the sense, hot of pleasure-seeking but of energy expended) is one of the main-? arts of life. It is true there is a greater love, of pleasure than before, but is it an unmixed evil if that pleasure-seeking is, in part, a form of reaction against the speeding-up tendencies of the age ? In any case, what one thinks has not been sufficiently noticed is the great improvement that has taken place in the quality of the pleasure sought.—Cloudesley Brerewm, in the Contemporary Review. I