Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1933. THE GOSPEL OF LEISURE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 25, 29 July 1933, Page 10

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1933. THE GOSPEL OF LEISURE

The plea put forward by Mr. J. L. Hammond for a changed attitude towards, leisure in his Hobhouse Memorial Lecture on "The Growth of Common Enjoyment" which we were discussing a week ago was summarised in the following paragraph:

Our society is' largely a society that has ceased to find cdueation»in' its work. Mass production and the division of labour have brought about this, state of things. The man whose leisure! is wasted learns nothing, for science boasts that it has .reduced his occupa-, tion to a routine. It follows, then, that tho education of this new society depends on what happens to its leisure.

And he argued that the- steady growth of the proporlion of uneducational work imposed upon the nation an obligation to provide for a less' wasteful use of leisure. A similar conclusion to that of this publicist and social historian had been arrived at from the standpoint of the business man by Mr. John Benn; in an article on "The- Economics of Leisure" in the May number of the "Nineteenth Century." But while Mr. Hammond argued that, if the organisation of man's leisure was left to commerce, more attention would be paid to the emotions and demands of those who had not been taught to make a proper use of it than to those of "people with the traditions of leisure," Mr. Benn sees that an educated leisure is a. matter of concern to commerce itself.

Mr. Benn opens his article with a protest against the excessive talk about over-production and the slender recognition of "the more vital need for increased consumption." He points out that until quite lately most people were fully employed during most of their working hours in factories and offices, but that productive capacity has been so much increased by the machine that "surplus" commodities—the quotation marks are his—are actually being destroyed.

This unnatural and wasteful state «f affairs demands, first and fpremost, says Mr.I.Benn,'the removal of the many restrictions which now hamper exchange; it also calls for a betttr adjustment .between work aud leisure. The producer in his free hours becomes a consumer, and helps to restore tho balance.

The' recognition of this f aqtor by the leaders of industry is being stimulated, in Mr. Benn's opinion, by the increasing diversion of public school and university men from the professions which once supplied "the socalled leisured classes" with their normal careers. But, while this broadened outlook counts for much, the. chief change is that which has been made by improved methods of production in the actual conditions of business. The time has passed when a boy entering a . business at the age of 16 had little time to think of anything else and must postpone the thought of leisure as a luxury of nliddle age. ' ' ; In spite of the time spent upon it, Mr. Benn does not take an exalted view of the quality of the work done in the -average office or factory of two or three generations ago. *

In the days of stand-up collars, he writes, there were no typewriters or telephones, and the mere labour of writing out a dozen letters and screwing them" up in a copying press was necessarily a morning's work. Coffee with a gam.c of dominoes at eleven o'clock seems to have been a" regular custom in the City. In terms of energy and production, seven horns today are probably equal to fourteen hours in the Victorian office. Having doubled the speed and pressure, the average worker today requires more leisure than his predecessors ..and also gets more out of it.

In contending that with the doubling of the speed the pressure also has; been doubled, Mr. Benn is doubtless claiming too much, since the contribution which the machine has made to efficiency has not necessarily involved any increase of ; effort, but may even have diminished it. But the exaggeration does not vitiate the essence of the argument. lAs the result of political and social \as well as scientific causes, the modern worker enjoys far more leisure ; than his predecessor, and dismissing the fear that heightened efficiency will reduce employment with the happy ; aphorism that "there is no virtue in licking stamps if a machine will do it instead," Mr. Benn confidently forward to tho further extension of leisure wilh llie help of science. Though the measure may defy exact calculation, it seems,, indeed, quite impossible to dispute the general accuracy of Mr. Benn's opinion that tho . speeding-up' of work by scientific processes has not yet reached ils limit. It liiis been estimated, lio vr.yr., that fifty years liencc the work of tho world. will lie tlonc in about four hours daily. A good uiiiny linns liavo already adopticd the live-clay working week. In my I own oflii'.o this practice has ' prevailed, l'in<-(! thi' "War ■■•itli the most witisfaer*tory results. We work harder, while we arc at it, and have the chance to (

make- something more of life than merely earning a living and spending the odd half-day in digging tlio garden! The time will como when four days' business will bo sufficient, and many of the jobs now done by women will no longer be tolerated in the interests of health.

In support of this forecast Mr. Benn is able to quote the opinion of the late Lord Melchett, who in one of his last addresses urged an American audience to realise that

wo aro not slaves of the machine, but its masters; that the office is-not for us to work in, but to provide a living. When I say "a living' 1 I mean something more than going to an office. Machinery is there to provide us with' leisure and not to give , more work; transportation is there to give us more time, and not less.

Lord Melchett does not appear to have carried the matter any farther than the mere extension of leisure, but it is just at this point that for Mr. Benn, as for Mr. Hammond, the real problem begins. The title of Mr. Benn's article is, asl we have said, "The Economics of Leisure," and he points out the direct economic value of the producer whose consumption is increased during his leisure hours. He describes most of the newer industries as "concerned with leisure," and instances as the most obvious example the activity of the sports trades. The growth of the British motor industry he ascribes not so much to the tariff as to the vogue of the small cheap car. The wide aeosomic 'results of tennis and golf, of the wireless and the gramophone are also mentioned.

These newer trades, says' Mr. Benn,' are one, of. the few! bright spots in British commerce .today? doing mucli to counteract the depression in the "heavy industries. , .

But this man of business is ho more disposed than Mr. Hammond to'leave the employment of leisure to the mere play of economic interest and uninstructed individual preferences."

, I look forward to the day, he says, when work and leisure are regarded as matters of equal importance, when a man will not merely be content to be a mechanic but will aim at being a competent athlete, artist, or student as well. Self-respect and public opinion will demand a full life, and will give the same attention to cultural and social pursuits asstb industry and economies.

Mr. Hammond, to whom the cinema seems to "make education more necessary than ever," considers that the first need of the new age of leisure is "to restore the Fisher scheme and see' that'everybody has some kind of education up tp 18." Mr. Benn may be safely presumed to share this view. ' Such is the value that he places on the higher' education that he declares that even in industry "an all-round man is more fitted to lead than the specialist."

It will surely be a lad day for industry itself, he adds, when cultural studies are given second place. Technical ability is always wanted, but what appear to bo even more necessary are breadth of mind and a sense of nroportion. if And for these qualities Mr. Benn regards a university education as a far better preparation than 'an.early introduction to business. On the broader aspects of the new responsibility with which, the leaders of education are confronted by the spread of leisure, he shares the enthusiasm of Mr. Edward Filene, who in his "Successful Living in This Machine Age," urges them to concentrate on

the.great social task of teaching the masses,; not what to think, "but how to think, and thus to find, put how to behave like human beings in this machine age. This teaching, of course, should begin in the home; but it can begin in the home only when parents are sufficiently educated.to begin it. Ido not minimise- the task. Even to get it started \will require every contribution that every sincere educator~"can make, and ; all the help that every •>. ' . . business leader can give 'them. >But the task is glorious. Its accomplishment "will mean not merely the completion of the machine civilisation . . . but the preparation, of the masses to live in it.