Human Work

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Later, in the second stage of coerced action, that of wage labour, we have the reward used instead of the penalty. We will not whip the man if he does not work, but we will not feed him unless he does.

Our governing concept being that action is produced only by these means, we must needs use one or the other. Since we believe that if the slave were not in fear of punishment he would not work, or that if the employee were not in hope of pay he would not work, we act upon our belief consistently enough. We have outgrown the period where we believed we had a right to enforce labour by inflicting punishment; but we have not outgrown the only less primitive belief that we have a right to enforce it by withholding the reward. We do not yet, to any extent, recognise the other forces under which human beings act.

Closely allied to the Pay concept and following it, a more concrete expression of the same general thought as applied to industrial activity, comes our universal economic fallacy, the Want Theory.

This is repeatedly defined and opposed in later chapters, and here need only be stated as that basic proposition in Political Economy in which it is assumed that man works to gratify wants, and that if his wants are otherwise gratified he will not work. This fundamental theory of economics rests, as will be readily seen, on the foregoing, on the Ego concept and the Pay concept. Part of it, more generally applied, is our general Self-interest theory, usually expressed in solemn tones: “Self-preservation is the first law of Nature.” Men say this as if it were so, and other people believe it simply because it is said to them so solemnly. Our brains, trained for all time to bow to authority, have a treacherous trick of believing whatever is advanced by those in authority or even by the scribes. The present scribe asks no such gulp, but that the reader use his own active thinking power on the propositions here advanced. Now, this self-preservation theory is contradicted on its own doorstep by the fact of the race-preservation instinct, the individual counting for nothing, absolutely nothing, in the unbroken stream of racial life of which he forms so small a part.

If we were solemnly taught “Race-preservation is the first law of Nature,” we should be nearer the truth. Even in the purely individual animals the good of the race is paramount to that of the member, and in the collective animals the social instinct is so highly developed that self-preservation is not even thought of. Break an ant-heap, and watch “the first law of Nature”! Immediate, instinctive, unquestioning, they rush to save the eggs and young, to guard the queen, to preserve the group—not the individual.

“Nature” develops whatever faculties are required in a given form of life, and if the life-form is collective the collective instincts appear in force. Now “Self-interest” as a motive does act upon the human being, but it does not compare in weight and value with the larger later motives of social interest. We assume that the visibly social processes we see going on about us are best governed by self-interest in the parties concerned; that efficient service is best commanded under this pressure. We are wrong.

Social processes were initiated primarily along lines of self-interest, in orderly development, from existing instincts to higher ones, but the further developed are these processes the less useful is the early motive, the more needed is the later motive of social interest. Self-interest, preserved too long in social growth, becomes a deterrent force. The more wide and complex the process, the greater the distance between producer and consumer, the more injurious is the action of that essentially limited force. This is why in small, early societies there is more honest and efficient service under this motive; and in large, modern societies, unless the social instincts of duty, honour, and the like are operative, we find such infinitely ramified dishonesty and inefficiency.

Another stumbling-block of progress is an extremely ancient belief of ours, not derived from the preceding five, but in flat contradiction to some of them, which the popular and poetic saying calls “the sweet uses of adversity.” We very generally believe that pain and difficulty are good for us, and the logical consequence of this belief—so far as practical life allows such an absurdity to have any consequence—is of course that we do nothing to remove pain and difficulty. The further logical consequence, that we should deliberately add pain and difficulty to our lives in order to improve them, is seldom allowed; it is too ridiculous even for our brains.

Now what is the fraction of truth in this peculiar piece of idiocy? At its very base lies the law of physics: “action and reaction are equal.” As hard as you push against a wall does the wall push against you. Following this comes the early observation of the effect of environment. Where the channel is narrowest the stream is deepest; where it is widest the stream is shallowest; and if you dam the stream the water rises to the height of the dam.

So in the action of the human forces we observe that, if you hinder and obstruct a man, he resists your pressure and rises against it—sometimes! Sometimes he does no such thing, but is crushed instead. However, we perceived numbers of cases where opposition called forth resisting energy where action and reaction were equal, and we made our easy generalisation as to the beneficent effects of difficulties.