A FOUR-HOUR DAY

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIV, Issue 21, 17 March 1933, Page 7

A FOUR-HOUR DAY

INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE.

THE USE OF LEISURE

It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know hew to fill their days if they had only four hours work out of the twenty-four, writes the Hon. Bertrand Russell, in a British publication. In sc far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilisation; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity fcr light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the

cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of seme thing else, and never for its own sake. Seriousminded persons, for example, are continually condemning the habit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leads the young into crime. But all the work that goes to producing a cinema is respectable, because it is work, and because it brings a money prcfit. The notion that the desirable activities are those that bring a profit has made everything topsy-turvy. The butcher who provides ycu with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money, but when you enjoy the food they have provided you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. The individual, in our society, works for profit but the social purpose of his work lies in the consumption of what he prcduces. It is this divorce between the individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to think clearly in a world in which pro-fit-making is the incentive to industry. We think too much of production and too little of consumption. One result is that we attach too little importance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and that we do not judge production by the pleasure that it gives to the consumers.

THE USE OF LEISURE. When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply-that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and element- | ary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part jof any such social system that eduj cation should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. lam not thinking mainly of the sort cf things that would be considered 'high-brow.' Peasant dances have died out except in rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing films, watching football matches, listening to the radio,, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure they would again enjoy pleasures in which they take an active part.

LEISURE AND PROGRESS. In the past there was a small leisure class and a large working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but in spite of this drawback it contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilisation. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed ha 3 usually been inaugurated from above. Without the leisured class

mankind would never have emerged from barbarism. ORIGINAL RESEARCH DISCOURAGED. The method of a hereditary leisured class without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the members of the class had been taught to be industrious, and the class as a whole was not exceptionally intelligent. It might produce one Darwin, but against him had to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen who never thought cf anything more intelligent than fox hunting and punishing poachers. At present the universities are supposed to provide, in a more systematic way, what the leisured classes provided accidentally and as a by-product. This is a great improvement, but it has certain drawbacks. University life is so different from life in the world at large that men who live in an academic milieu tend to be unaware of the pre-occupations cf ordinary men and women; moreover their ways of expressing themselves are usually such as to rob their opinions of the influence that they ought to have upon the general public. Another disadvantage is that in universities studies are organised, and the man who thinks en some original line of research is likely to be discouraged. Academic institutions, therej fore, useful as they are, are not adequate guardians of the interests of civilisation in a world where everyone outside their walls are too busy for unutilitarian pursuits. ARTS AND SCIENCES GAIN.

In a world where no one is compelled to v/ork more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity. Men who, in their professional work, have become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists lacking in reality. Medical men will have time to learn about the progress of medicine. Teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine things which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.

SECURITY OR STRUGGLE ? Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness amd dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At | least one per cent, will probably de- | vote the time not spent in profession-

al work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will net depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But is is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicionr The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous

struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility' of ease and security for all. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic a? we were before there were machines: in this we have been foolish. but

there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.