Human Work

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

To feel within one’s self the tendency toward a certain line of production, to “learn the trade,” i. e., submit the brain to the accumulated stimulus of that line of production—to feel the racial skill begin to flow through one’s fingers—to do the thing well—better—best!—and then, still unsatisfied, to relieve the pressure by new invention of ways even better than the best—that is the natural sensation of the producer. Against this have operated at every step the weight and darkness of our leaden lies. The child is not so watched and trained as to develop the fine sense of special “calling” which shows the best path in life. Only the extreme case, the boy who would be a sailor, or a mechanic, or whatever he was meant to be, has the advantage of being where he belongs in the world’s work. But the average boy, with no special aptitude or pleasure in his trade, is put to work under the dominant idea, drilled in from infancy, that he is to work only because he has to—he has to in order to get the pay. The whole outlook of his position is lost. He has his head in a bag. All he sees is the week’s wage, and the work is merely to be gotten through in order to get the wage.

We have known all along that this was a wrong attitude, and have tried to inculcate upon the worker a sense of “the nobility of labour,” of “duty to his employer,” of the “common interest of capital and labour.”

It does not ennoble the labourer to enlarge his selfishness to the size of his employer’s. The employer is in exactly the same boat. He has no more sense of what his work is for than the “hand” has. He too is looking only at his wages,—salary, income, profits, rent,—looking only at what he is to get from society, instead of what he is to do for it. The common interest of employer and employee, which is merely an interest in their common income, does not lift the cloud from labour. No interest is large enough to satisfy the human mind, except the social interest; the thrilling glory of working with and for the whole world at the trade you love best, and can do best.

The workman should have such education as shall give him for a background the full knowledge of social evolution; and the special place of his own trade in that evolution. He should know just where it first appeared, how it grew, and why, the importance of its place to-day—and here there would, no doubt, be warm differences of opinion, debates and competition. The payment for his service should no more be the point of ambition with the workman, than with the pen-man, paint-man, or rifleman. The producer is entitled to feel the full power and pride of production; and, in spite of our errors, this power and pride is felt by the well-placed workman, whose life is better than his belief—as human life always is.

One of the most important features of this great social function is the reactive effect on the functionary. The maker is inexorably modified by the thing made. If the thing made develops along normal lines, the maker develops with it. If it does not—if it is checked or perverted in its growth, so is the worker. Working is humanity’s growing. In the act of working the individual is modified, and by the work accomplished humanity is modified. Also the accomplished work remains, like coral, the record of the height of those who did it.

In the case of those who do not work, who consume copiously, and produce nothing, they have no chance of normal development, add no step to human progress. See in conspicuous instance the Grecian marbles and literature. Those who gave the work were themselves developed by doing it; the society which received the work was developed by using it; and by the work as it remains to us, we know and judge Greece. But the possession of these works does not make us Greeks. To be able to do them was to be Greek. Many causes combined to make the Greek; and the Greek blossomed into that kind of work—he was, so to speak, merely Greeking in the doing of it. We have the result as we have fossil bones. From it we may learn what the Greek was, but not how to make him.

A person, or a race, is something, owing to antecedent conditions. Then they do something by virtue of being what they are, as an apple tree bears apples. (“By their fruits ye shall know them.”)

The thing done does have some reactive effect, however—else we should have no power to modify each other, and this is one of humanity’s chief advantages. The modifying effect of the work accomplished is indeed large, it is no wonder we so long to create the things whereby we can thus progressively serve each other. See, for instance, the endless effect upon society of such work as Plato’s, Angelo’s, Stevenson’s, Edison’s; all work counts in both ways; in the doing it affects the doer; when done it affects the user.

But it is more blessed to give than to receive. In animals the modification of species is effected only in the direct line of heredity. A change of condition modifies his action—the change in action modifies him—and the modification is transmitted in his single line. But there is no means of widening the effect—it has to be filtered down through direct heredity. With man, in his organic connection, there is a race modification through our transmission of energy in work, which multiplies his progress million-fold. Some local change of condition modifies the action of one person, the change in action modifies him, and the modification is transmitted in his single line. Thus far we are even with the animals. Then we pass them; man’s action is work; it is not mere putting something in his mouth; it is making something. And the thing made holds and transmits his energy, passing it on forever to all who use it, making the growth of one the growth of all.

One man, or some few men, make a steam engine. They personally are by so much developed as makers, and their children after them. That is so much gain. But if we had waited for our inventors to modify the race through physical heredity, we should be still in the Bronze Age. The engine, being made, becomes part of the social structure, and proceeds to modify the society it serves.