The Labor enquirer., 1884-11-22
Or Which Must be Made by Labor
That is Degrading to the
Aaker.
What an Artist THINKS Of the Effects
the Wretchad Rule Of Com
al rnercial War.
What Poor Tribute to the Martyrs, This
Refusn to Take the Torch From Their
Dying Hands. .' .,
GBY WILLIAM MoRRIs.l

SuTely luSTe dTS sOluo VI yOu WIG
long to be free; who have been educated
and refined, and had YOUR perceptions
of beauty and order quickened only that
they might be shocked and wounded at
every turn, by the brutalities of compet-
tive Commerce who have been SO
hunted and driven by it that, though
you are well-to-do, rich even may be,
you have now nothing to lose from social
reYolution love of Art that is to say of
the true pleasure of life, has brought
you to this, that you must throw in your
lot with that of the wage-slave of COM
petitive Commerce you and he mus
help each other and have one hope in
common, or you at any rate will live
and die hopeless and unhelped. You
who long to be sci free from the oppres-
sion of the money grdbbers, hope for
the day when you will be compelled to
be free.
Meanwhile if otherwise that oppres-
sion has left US scarce any work to do
worth doing, one thing at least is left US
to strive for. the l.aislngo the standard
of life where it is lowest, where it is low;
that will put spoke in the wheel of the
triumphant car of. competitive Com
merce.
Nor can 1 conceive of anything more
likely to raise the standard of life than
the convincing some thousands of those
who live by labor, of the necessity of
their supporting the second part of the
claim 1 have. made for labor, namely
That their work should be of itself
pleasant to do. If We could but con-
vince them that such q strange revolu,
ton in labor as this, would be of infinite
benefit not to them only, but to all men;
and that it is so right and natural that
for the reverse to be the case. that most
mems work should be grievous to them,
is a mere monstrosity of these after
days, which must in the long run bring
ruin and confusion on the Society that
allows it. If we could but convince
them, then indeed there would be chance
of the phrase cart of the People" being
something more than mere word.
At first sight, indeed, it would seem
impossible to make men born under the
present system of Commerce understand
that labor may be blessing to them,
not in the sense in which the phrase is
sometimes preached to them by those
whose labor is light and easily evaded +;
not as a necessary task laid by nature
on the poor for the benefit of the rich !;
not as an opiate to dull their sense of
right and wrong, to make them sit down
quietly under their burdens to the end
of time, blessing the squire and his re-
lations; all this they could understand
our saying to them easily enough, and
sometimes would listen to it fear with
at least a show of complacency-if they
thought there was anything to be made
out of US thereby. But the true doc
trine that labor should be a real tan
gible blessing in itself to the working
man, pleasure even as sleep and strong
drink are to him now this one might
think it hard indeed for him to under
stand, so different as it is to anything
which he has found labor to be. ~
Nevertheless though most mems work
is only borne as necessary evil, like
sickness, my experience as far as it goes
is, that whether it be from certain sa-
credness inA handiwork which does
cleave to it even under the worst cir
cumstances, or whether it be that the
poor man who is driven by necessity to
deal with things which are terribly real,
when he thinks at all on such matters,
thinks less conventionallY than the rich
.Thateyer it may be, my experience so
far is that the workingman finds it easier
foNnderstand the doctrine of the claim
iaoors to pleasure in the work itself
u 81 trivial erlssof my own,
: to find, for IN
cling toward John
,3tlass audiences
ct in him rather
storician, as more
think, for the
ome. But we who
by cynicism. be-