VI
Yet neither the habit of regarding work as participation in a social task nor the element of comradeship which we may reasonably expect to grow out of such a way of conceiving work, nor yet the amelioration of the purely external conditions of modern industrial production, can possibly be accepted as furnishing a final solution of the problem of work. It is probable that under existing conditions, some such changes as these are all we can hope for over large areas of industrial life; perhaps, indeed, without a general recognition of the real social significance of large scale production, the best we can ever do will consist of further modification of industrial conditions along these lines. Yet all this does virtually nothing to make work a means of worthy self-expression.
The high degree of specialisation which has followed the introduction and improvement of industrial machinery, confines large multitudes of people to occupations which consist of repeating the same small routine operation all day and every day; and the mentally benumbing and demoralising consequences of this type of work is one of the commonplaces of social observation. Not the least of the social services of Trade Unionism is that it has furnished to men occupied in purely mechanical work an interest which has helped to keep their minds alive. It is rarely recognised how inevitably certain of our graver social evils are connected with the devitalising influences of modern industrial conditions. Undoubtedly one of the most powerful causes of the deadly grip of the drink traffic upon society is the opportunity it provides of reaction from the depressing and deadening round of the shop. The saloon strikes a kind of psychological balance with the factory. The well-meaning persons who suppose that open spaces, museums, art galleries, and the like will furnish effectual off-sets to the public house, overlook the fact that the peculiar depression to which the factory worker is subjected demands a relief more vivid and more violent than these more refined avenues of diversion offer. Temperance reformers have greatly neglected this aspect of their problem; and prohibition without any accompanying provision for the healthy equilibration of human energies is likely to have consequences that may astonish and perhaps confound its advocates.
But the remedy for this and the other penalties which society has to pay for its industrial system is not to be found in the abandonment of large-scale processes and reversion to an earlier fashion of production. Machinery certainly supplanted a more human, kindlier way of life; and not even the extensive factory legislation which has tempered the worst excesses of the new way, has compensated for the passing of the amenities of the older system. We have, however, to count upon the permanence and the still further extension of large-scale processes. Obviously it is not intrinsically an evil thing, potentially it is an asset of incalculable value to society. Even its monotonies have their uses; for a certain amount of routine work is good for every man. It is only evil when it is excessive. The disadvantages which belong to large-scale production are on the whole incidental, and owe their origin chiefly to laissez faire and the economic motive. Once this vicious connection is dissolved and production for need and use becomes the general rule, the very proficiency of our large-scale processes will liberate a great volume of human energy for the pursuit of the spiritual ends of life.
For the elimination of the profit-interest, and the regulation of production on the basis of calculated demand, will at once lead to a very considerable diminution in the number of working hours. It is questionable whether, with industrial processes properly organised, it would be necessary for any man to spend more than four hours a day in the actual production of necessities. This refers, of course, to the strictly mechanical departments of production. In agriculture, which depends upon seasons and weather conditions, it is obvious that a standardised day is impracticable. Moreover, agriculture is an avocation which has its own peculiar compensations. It is carried on in the open-air and has elements of variety and change to which the industrial worker is a stranger. Yet, even in agriculture the great extension of mechanical and labour-saving instruments should go far to mitigate the acknowledged disadvantages of the life. The evils attaching to the work of the farmer and his labourer are, however, largely extrinsic. It is the dullness and monotony of his spare hours that weigh most heavily upon him.[[19]] With the industrial, it is different. He does not lack opportunity of social life in so much as he lives normally in large populous centres; but the atonic condition to which he is reduced by the circumstances of his work, renders him incapable of creating and enjoying the best kind of fellowship. He is either too weary for any kind of fellowship and sits at home reading the newspaper, and then to bed; or he turns in his need of compensating excitement to the questionable atmosphere of the public-house. A small minority of tougher mental and nervous fibre will cultivate an allotment or seek diversion in books or sport; but the majority have neither inclination nor energy for any active pursuits. The remedy for this trouble lies in the drastic shortening of the working day for all men who are engaged in the mechanical process of production. With the increasing application of science to industry, under conditions of production for use, it is impossible to say how short the necessary working day may become. And if it became the rule, as it probably should, that no member of society should be exempt from a share in the work of maintaining its natural life and so take his part in mechanical production, there is no reason why the indispensable mechanical toil expected of the individual should not be reduced to a very low point indeed.
[19]. The present wholly inadequate remuneration of the agricultural labourer does not come under discussion here, as the argument assumes that the principle of the national minimum is accepted. This assumption is the more reasonable in view of the fact that in England a minimum wage for agricultural labourers has been fixed and is to operate for five years.
If in addition men are trained from childhood to take the view that this toil is a necessary social task, and therefore, intrinsically noble and honourable, the whole atmosphere in which it is discharged would be organically changed. To-day, the prevailing note of speed and competition reduces the place and sense of comradeship to very narrow limits. The general attitude of antagonism between capital and labour infects the air, and not only makes co-operation between the administrative and productive functions impossible, but introduces a subtle poison of disintegration into the mutual relations of the operatives. The only comradeship which appears to exist is that which is created by the need under present conditions of safeguarding class interests. When men of all classes have been brought up to regard a certain amount of mechanical toil as an honourable obligation to the society to which they belong, they will naturally accept their share in the common task and bring themselves to it in a spirit of comradeship.