VIII
The organisation of society upon lines of this kind would be a protracted and difficult task; and here one is concerned more with the definition of a tendency rather than the precise measures necessary to make it effective. Obviously there must be large exceptions to any rule of life in any vital and developing social order. But the reduction of mechanical toil to the lowest practicable point, and a generous development of the idea and practice of the vocational life seem to be essential. And the general principle which we desire for mechanical tasks of production should be applied in other regions, as for instance in the distributive trades and in those occupations which are concerned with the disposal of waste. The increasing emphasis on hygiene has led to the multiplication of a number of “waste-occupations,” the street-cleaner, the drain-man, the garbage-man and so forth. Within this region we have every right to expect so large an extension of scientific and mechanical methods of dealing with the waste products of life as to make some at least of these occupations wholly superfluous. This type of occupation has meantime, the very undesirable and injurious effect of relegating those who are engaged in it to a condition of much social inferiority; and this is the more unjust, insomuch as the health of the community depends so greatly upon its being faithfully performed. It was a happy inspiration to clothe the New York street-cleaners in white; and it should have a sacramental suggestion for their fellow citizens. For we are familiar with a word which describes a multitude “arrayed in white garments.” The innovation established a point of contact between urban cleanliness and holiness; and it is within this cycle of social judgment that the waste occupations should be placed. We should then take more kindly to the only equitable solution of the problem presented by this class of work, namely that it should be shared out and that all the members of the community should be liable to be called out in companies, as they are now for jury service, to do their part of this indispensable work. This brings the waste occupations into the same category as the productive trades; in point of fact, it is there they really belong. There can be no intrinsic difference of worth between the work of providing for the needs of society and the work of disposing of its waste. For without either of these, society cannot live.
The only class for which there should be no room in a healthy social order is the social parasite. It is to this class that the “idle rich” belong, the people who neither toil nor spin yet fare sumptuously every day at the expense of the labour of others. To this class also belongs the large “flunkey” class—butlers, footmen, door-openers, and other uniformed persons who are arrayed in fine apparel doing little things for us that we ought to do for ourselves. It is just neither to these persons nor to society that they should be allowed to continue in careers of such complete uselessness. So far as Europe is concerned this class has already largely disappeared, for the Army or industry has swallowed it up; and it is not likely ever to re-emerge on the pre-war scale. We must add also to this parasitic class those who are engaged in luxury trades—with the caveat that it is exceedingly difficult to draw a strict frontier line between necessity and luxury on the one hand, and on the other, between luxury and the thing that may minister to the legitimate comfort, the health, the beauty and the general enrichment of life. But there are some things so palpably on the wrong side of the line that there should be no difficulty in identifying them. It is a subject worth some reflection here that the war is teaching us to do without many things which we had come to regard as necessities. It is a sad commentary upon the civilisation we had produced, that it left us with a hunger which we endeavoured to appease by an elaboration of the fringes of life. We had gradually accumulated a range of comforts and conveniences, and not a few superfluities, which had come to be regarded as indispensable. But the war has taught us how few things are after all needful. We have all the materials of joyful life when we have food to eat, a home to live in, freedom and congenial work, comradeship and love. And unless these become more and more the sure possession of all, our social progress is no more than a laborious sham.
Chapter V.
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF FREEDOM.
“When we say that one animal is higher than another, we mean that it is more able to control its own destiny. Progress is just this: Increase in Freedom.”—Stewart McDowall.
“Ne vous laissez pas tromper par de vaines paroles. Plusieurs chercheront a vous persuader que vous êtes vraiment libres, parce qu’ils auront écrit sur une feuille de papier le mot de liberté et l’auront affiché à tous les carrefours.
La liberté n’est pas un placard qu’on lit au coin de la rue. Elle est une puissance vivante qu’on sent en soi et autour de soi, le génie protecteur du foyer domestique, la garantie des droits sociaux, et le premier de ces droits.
La liberté luira sur vous quand, a force de courage et de persévérance, vous vous serez affranchis de toutes ces servitudes.”
Lamennais.