"But it is surely not natural to people to work—much less to like to work!" I protested.
"There's where the change comes in," Mr. Pike eagerly explained. "We used to think that people hated work—nothing of the sort! What people hated was too much work, which is death; work they were personally unfit for and therefore disliked, which is torture; work under improper conditions, which is disease; work held contemptible, looked down upon by other people, which is a grievous social distress; and work so ill-paid that no human beings could really live by it."
"Why Mr. Robertson, if you can throw any light on the now inconceivable folly of that time so utterly behind us, we shall be genuinely indebted to you. It was quite understood in your day that the whole world's life, comfort, prosperity and progress depended upon the work done, was it not?"
"Why, of course; that was an economic platitude," I answered.
"Then why were the workers punished for doing it?"
"Punished? What do you mean?"
"I mean just what I say. They were punished, just as we punish criminals—with confinement at hard labor. The great mass of the people were forced to labor for cruelly long hours at dull, distasteful occupations; is not that punishment?"
"Not at all," I said hotly. "They were free at any time to leave an occupation they did not like."
"Leave it for what alternative?"
"To take up another," said I, perceiving that this, after all, was not much of an escape.