WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 27, 2 February 1932, Page 6

WORK.

Correspondence about the exact amount of work per head that will be sufficient in the future to satisfy all the needs of humanity never lies dormant for long in the Britisli Press (says the "Christian Science Monitor"). In a letter to the "Times" which has recently renewed it there is implicit the one assumption which is common to all discussion of the subject—the assumption, namely, that work is unpleasant. In theory everybody appears to be agreed on this point. In theory only, however. For what do men do in their leisure time, when they arc free to amuse themselves with whatever delights them most? Why, principally, other men's work. They play football or cricket or golf, or any other of the innumerable forms of sport which provide a livelihood to vast numbers of professionals; as amateurs they put on stage plays, which actors and actresses are paid to do; or they go to the cinema or the theatre, which again" the critics are paid to do. Even manual labour is not found upon close examination to be really unpleasant. Henri dc Man, after thoroughly investigating the question at Frankfort Labour College, came to the conclusion that the majority of even the humblest workers actually enjoyed the process by which they earned a livelihood. The unpleasantness of work is indeed largely a superstition handed down from the time when the ancient Greeks and Pomans despised work partly because, in a slave-holding society, the capacity to live without labour was the' distinguishin'"badge of freedom. This antiquated way of look" ing at the matter undoubtedlv handicaps the productivity of the whole world. There should l»e substituted for it one more in accordance with the facts. Most men really find work not something to be avoided if possible, but a privilege