"And the painter's hand of wonder; and the marvellous
fiddle-bow;
And the banded choirs of music:—all those that do and
know.
"Far all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any
lack a share
Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the
world grows fair."
FOURTH
Good workers are trained in the home, the school, the shop, the wider world. Every home is an industrial establishment. In it go on the industrial processes of cooking, cleaning, sewing, washing; the care of silver, glass, linen, and household stores; the activities of buying food and clothing; the moral responsibilities of teaching and training servants and children. If any healthy member of the home is excused from at least some form of active work, he will inevitably be a shirker when he grows up. Cannot almost all the problems of human training be run down to this: How to teach a child to work? If he can work, he can be happy; but if he does not want to work, he shall never be happy. No work, no joy, is the universal dictum.
This is the great hardship of the children of great wealth: they are not taught to work. To avoid this difficulty, in two very wealthy families that I know, the boys were even obliged to darn their own stockings and mend their own clothes. One young hopeful once tore his clothes a-fishing, and mended his trousers with a scarlet flannel patch! Some mothers do not allow their little girls to go to school until their beds are made up and their rooms in order. Other equally wise parents have tools in the house, and allow the boys to do all the repair work, the daughters all the family mending, or to care for the linen; the boys to put in electric fixtures and bells, and keep the batteries in order. Queen Margherita of Italy, Queen Elizabeth of Roumania, Queen Alexandra of England, and the Empress Augusta of Germany are all women who have been from their childhood acquainted with simple and practical household tasks. This principle is a right one and underlies much after-success. Each child should, first of all, have a mastery of home-tasks. Then, whether on the prairie or in the palace, he is free and independent.
What makes the differences in the social privileges given to one class of workers above another? In reality, we are all workers. No one ought to live, if in health, who does not work. But for some forms of work, men and women receive an income, and nothing more. For other work, men and women may or may not receive a large personal income, but their work is recognized, they are a part of the best social circles, and when they die, a city or a nation grieves.
The essential difference is this: that one is honor-work, and one is not. Wherever in the world work is done in a spirit of love and fidelity, it brings its own reward in recognition and in personal affection. Sooner or later, honor-work receives honor.
Another reason for exaltation of one form of work above another, is that some kinds of work are so very hard to do. They involve the intense and complicated action of many and of complex powers. It may be hard physical work to break stones for a road-way, but the task itself is a simple one—the lifting of the arm and dropping it again with sufficient force to split a rock apart. But the writing of a prose masterpiece, such as the Areopagitica, involves the highest human faculties in harmonious action. If we add to the requirements of prose, the rhythm, the exalted imagery, and perhaps the assonance and rhyme of verse, we still further increase the difficulty of the task, and the honor of its successful achievement. The king-work of a powerful monarch, the president-work of a republican leader, is serious work to do. Our honor is not all given to the king or president income, salary, or office; it is a tribute to hard and royal-minded work.
Household service is personal service. It cannot be made a thing of set hours, and of measurably set tasks, as office-work maybe. We may talk of "eight-hour shifts," but they are scarcely practicable. Not every baby would go to successive "shifts"! House-demands vary, not only with every household, but with every day.
When love-making is wholly scientific, then domestic service will be. There is in it the same delicate personal adjustment, the changing requirements of weather, health, temper, and season, of emergency and stress, that are to be found in the most purely personal relation. When there is a period of unusual sickness through the community, not only the doctors have extra tasks, but all household servants as well.