Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 22, 1933. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF LEISURE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 19, 22 July 1933, Page 12

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 22, 1933. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF LEISURE

Mr. J. L. Hammond gave to the Hobhouse Memorial Lecture which he delivered at King's College, London, on May 24 the striking title, "The Growth of Common Enjoyment," and he appears to have opened it with a striking remark. "No change that has taken place in English life in the last century can," he said, "be more justly described as a revolution than the change indicated in the title of this lecture." In support of this statement he suggested that if anybody familiar with the conditions of today could be put down in an English town as it was in 1833, he would be struck most of all by the absence of what are now called "amenities."

He would look in vain in towns so large as Manchester, .said Mr. Hammond, for tho provision for co.niinon.' enjoyment which we find today in tho smallest. In 1833 Manchester had no public park, no public library, no public gallery or museum, no theatre worth mentioning, no public baths, no playing fields. Yet Manchester had a population of a quarter of a million.

In passing we may note that it was in 1833 that Cobbett pointed out that "the opponents of the 10-hour bill for children had discovered that the industrial greatness of England depended upon 30,000 little girls"! The singular coincidence is also worth noting that it is only during the present week of 1933 that a great country which in the munificence of public amenities and public charities may perhaps be said to lead the world has received the benefit of a child^ labour law under the emergency powers of President Roosevelt. Mr. Hammond points out that a hundred years ago the poor of England were better clothed and better fed than those of France or Germany or Italy, but that in respect of the public amenities they were worse off. His explanation is that "the tradition of city life as a life of common culture and common enjoyment" was inherited by Europe from the classical tradition, but that England stood outside this tradition and was governed by three influences hostile to its spirit. The English aristocracy made its home in the country and took no interest in city life. The Puritan influence was unfavourable to the amenities. What John Stuart Mill called "commercial money-getting business" was also, unfavourable.

There is, says Mr.-Hammond,.'a'-do--lightful sentence .in the middlo of the book written by Edward Chamberlayne on tho stafe of England at-the end of the 17th century: "As our roligion is the so is our commerao the most considerable, in the, whole world."

It is indeed a delightful sentence with its unintended but irresistible suggestion that, though the purity of England?s commercial methods might not bq above suspicion, their success was beyond question. In his ■'Men and Machines," Mr. Stuart Chase quotes from some unnamed authority, not improbably one of the classical treatises contributed to industrial history by Mr. Hammond himself and his wife, the statement that about a century ago a spinning machine was introduced with thanksgiving because "by its means a child of three or four years may do as much as a child of seven or eight on the old machine." It was certainly the might of England's commerce rather than the purity of her religion that was illustrated in the rejoicing over this triumph of infanticide, and it is clear that amenities which did not promise a handsome' dividend had but a poor chance in such an atmosphere. In his Hobhouse Memorial Lecture Mr. Hammond notes how the closely humanitarian legislation which at last set a limit to the cruelties of the industrial Moloch was related to the development of the public amenities.

If you take the history of the industrial towns, he says, you will find that their public parks,, their public libraries, and their provision for amenities begin after 1850. They were the consequences of the great victory that was won in 1847 when the Ten Hours Act was passed.

The Ten Hours Act was not quite so good as it sounds. In 1844 Lord Ashley, afterwards Lord Shaftesbury, had made a hard fight for a Bill to reduce the hours of labour for persons between the ages of 13 and 18 and for all women to ten, but the Government made it a question of no confidence, and he had to accept twelve hours. All that happened in 1847 was that Lord Ashley carried his point, and ten hours.was made the limit but only for those mentioned.

Relatively, however, the Ten Hours Act of 1847 represented a great advance. It meant that the spirit of humanity had begun to move and there was also the spirit of militant discontent represented by the Chartist movement. The ultimate effect is described by Mr. . Hammond as follows:—

• Gradually between 3830 find 1000, quickly between 1900 and. 191-1, and at

a dazzling pace since 191S wo have passed through* a revolution. AVc started in the industrial revolution to build up a civilisation in which everything depended on the possession of money. Today we are trying to build up a civilisation in which the want of money shall not cut people off from the pleasures and interests of a civilised society. Wo no longer regard leisure, music, picture galleries, theatres, good literature, and other amenities as specially reserved for the rich. Modern England is, as compared with that of a century ago, a leisured society.

But this^ great relative advance still leaves the people of England far behind the ancient Athenians, whom Mr. Hammond describes as "essentially a peopldof leisure: leisure due to the simplicity of their lives and the supply of slave labour." Imperial Rome also had a basis of slave labour and of Greek culture. But in the modern world the place of the slave as the provider of leisure is taken, as Mr. Hammond points out, by the machine. '

We are nowadays, of course, ho continues, attempting something much more ambitious and difficult than any of these early civilisations.' We are trying the experiment of universal education, universal leisure, universal suffrage.. We want to'create a society educated enough to use taste, selection, and judgment over the whole field,of life, and just as we start out, consciously or unconsciously, on this stupendous task we have put into our hands weapons as important and revolutionary as were the. printing-press and the steam engine.

It is we'll that the weapons put into our hands are revolutionary, for it is a revolutionary task to which Mr. Hammond invites us.

The twentieth century civilisation, he says, is going to turn on leisure as surely as nineteenth century civilisation turned on production. This revolution demands a revolution in outlook. Obviously, if we approach this problem with the nineteenth century sot of values we shall come to grief.

Having ceased in large measure to find education in his work man must find it in his leisure, and to ignore the fact and leave the organisation of leisure to commerce would be to court deterioration, if not disaster. Mr. Hammond must be congratulated upon a powerful and startling argument. ■