Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 1932. THE GOSPEL OF WORK.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 18 January 1932, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 1932. THE GOSPEL OF WORK.

Many people have worked hard and long and yet have not received any recompense commensurate to their toil. They are not prepared to accept an abstract gospel of the nobility of work from a person like John Ruskin, who was wealthy enough to drive over Europe in a private carriage and pair. Civilisation is now beginning, both by legislative means ancf by labour organisation, to remedy an inadequacy which is generally admitted, and only a very mean or a very short-sighted spirit would grudge a heightening of the standard, especially for the poorest and most toilsome lives. People have also been discovering that there is work and work, and they have felt that the old-fashioned gospel of labour was too comprehensive and indiscriminating. It made small distinction between work that could be,a joy and work that was sheer drudgery. It Avould be delightful to work like Ruskin making beautiful books about beautiful things, or like Carlyle in the famous, sound-proof attic at

Chelsea, .reading the secrets of the storied past with double walls to protect one from the noisy present. It was small wonder if these men preached the gospel of work. /Would Ruskin have been so sure if he had spent his days

making tin-tacks? Would Carlyle have been so eloquent about it if lie had been a dustman? The curve of discontent does not always vary according to well-paid or ill-paid service. The only contented class in society consists of those who enjoy the labour by which they live. Those whose labour is distasteful to # them are bound to be discontented. This itself is a very important limitation or qualification of the old-

fashioned message about the blessedness of toil. There is one other reason at least for the change of standpoint. The last generation has seen an enormous development of leisure. Quite recently, and rightly, there has been an. increasing emphasis upon the leisure that is necessary to a healthy life, with an increasing expansion not only of the facilities for leisure,

but of the possible varieties in the way of using it. There is an easier escape from the city to the country. Recreations have multiplied. The cinema at a cheap cost takes the weary citizen into a different realm. The result has been to throw the enjoyment side of life into stronger relief, and to create a consecpient, though perhaps unintentional, depreciation of the idea of labour. Whatever be the causes, however, of this change of standpoint, alike in the interests of national prosperity and personal happiness, we must do our best to recover the essence of the Victorian gospel of work, which is older than the Victorian age and goes back to the inspired sanity of the Old and New Testaments, and indeed to the deepest instincts of the human race.