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£64 The Leader and Haiwrday[Analyst : . ...
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PAUALLELS OF MISMANAGEMENT. SOM E men ha...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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¦ Cueation And Iiecheation. Rjlfl'ere «R...
thesis—Recreation , if we only confine it to play or enjoyment , just as we have that of the word dissipation , which truly means ' idling or trifling-, or elegant leisure , whilst we now intend Komethiiig- very different by it . Therefore , before we begin our essay , we may as well define our words . It . is important that writers and thinkers should do so , especially when addressing- a large audience . Creation : we take it to mean all kinds of work , and io intend also a very exhaustive process . Recreation i-s on the other hand , a building up of that which the other had pulled down . Hard work , say our out of horse ifc meaning
collegians and cabmen , " takes IT man or ; the natural vis , or force , the creative power in fact . If creationi . e ., work—he a necessity , then reereaiion , or play , must be so also and without something of this sort existence is a curse , and the workman nothing less than a slave , a very drudge . Indeed the word slave is too mild a one to use , for slaves in the Western and serfs in the Eastern hemisphere have plenty of holidays . and enjoy them ' too ; whilst the free man here who binds himself for money drudges awav with more activity and exertion than he would if he were saleable like Uncle ' Torn , and had a taskmaster like Legree at his back . It is generally believed that the English , as a nation , are the hardest workers in the world . They work at everything , and they do it with a will . At school and college , out in the world , at the desk , the pulpit , the bar , the House of Commons , the shop counter , in the ship , the steam carriage , or down in the mine , the labour is arduous and ceaseless . Not a night passes but what some thousands are working the whole long- hours through in the pursuit of wealth , honour , fame , or other of those phantoms which the world will ever recklessly pursue . The headlong pace has had a sad effect upon our laborious classes . In the hardest working-cities and counties the race has very sadly deteriorated ; the length of man ' s days are shortened , his strength decreat-ed , his stature curtailed , his brain softened . Moreover , our madhouses are continually filling , day by diiy the increase of mental disorders astonishes and appals us . ' There is something very mournful in all this . "From town and cottage , moor and fen , Tolls the doom of Englishmen , Work , or the grave !— - —" The alternative is a sad one . 16 is for us , if possible , to render some littleaid to -lighten the burden of this ceaseless toil ; it is for us to ventilate the subject , and to add what little we can to the accumulating testimony against over-labour . As usual , the thinkers have been before us . In-the scheme of Providence , it seems always that the deep thinker never can be a very active worker , and •; consequently he feels the curse of labour very much more acutely than any one else . He kicks against it ns much as possible , and has devised plans for recreation by which the ovei ' -active man benefits , who would work himself to death else . Sir Thomas Mob * : in his' * Utopia" has a scheme whereby he gives up at least six hours ; out of the twelve for play ; " half the day allotted to work , " says he , " and half for honest recreation ; " but such a scheme is nothing , cry our present slavedrivers , but " Utopian . " Nevertheless , in , one place it has been found to work well . It is not often that we can quote the practice of the Mormons with gratification , but it would be unjust to truth to say ~» t-li ^ uW ;« A-f , ha » J ^ h . ah-l . hiLy _ lmve beenso industrious and such perpetual workers , that the land into which they marched twenty years ago , then a barren desert , is now a smiling garden . Yet they religiouslyfor so it is inculcated—work only half their time and play the other . In addition to cultivation of the land they have built a city , villages , and bridges ; made roads and canals , & c . ; they all work , work with a will , and then piny afterwards . The labour scheme , which seems to have been based upon the doctrines of Ciiaju / es Fouhhier , seems to us to be the only bit of sugar which is there to sweeten their bitter lie , and a very bitter lie it is , as many a poor fellow has found ; but yet when everybody works , when they have not ( as yet ) a do-nothing class which must be worked for , half-a-day ' s labour—not counting the Sabbath—ia found to be enough to make their land overflow with material comforts . Nature ' s table is with them ever loaded , for eshe is so kind a mother that a very small exertion on our part mnkes her overwhelm uawith favours . Now we have with us non-prod \ ietive classes , — we cannot call them do-nothing- pur ct simple , for many of them do absolutely a great deal , but , like the lilies of the field , they " sow not , neither do they spin . " And , to carry the illustration further , they arc so admirably dressed , that " not Solomon , in all his glory , was nrrayed like one of these . " Upon them , in a great measure , depends the comfort of the lower classes ; for them the workers , or an immense body of them , actually exist , and from them , therefore , the working-classes actually demand forethought , and that kindliness which will aid them in the present movement of early closing and a Saturday halfholiday . The demand , let us remember , is not for iv half-holiday every any , but for a leisure time only once a week . There is nothing ¦ unreasonable in the demand ; and when Lord Elcho and others convened n . meeting lately , wo hud rnnny of the most eminent men in trade and manufacture giving the beat evidence m favour of the movement . The proposition is as plain as n mathematical one in its demonstration . Shop-life ia to the numbers who roally work and carry on the business , ft life of mittery . * Its monotony is dreadful ; its-pay is very little ; in , many instances marriage ia impossible ; in others , when such a luxury is indulged in , the father becomes a perfect strnnger . to his children and his wife . The shopman who marries is obliged to live at a distance from his workplace for the sake of economy in rent ; ho is , therefore , kept from ' homo from morn till dewy eve ,- —no longer dewy for him . He , reaches home wearied , and tired , ond worried ; and lot us say that ,
if his employment be not intellectual , it is astonishing what demand it makes upon the brain . The continual pressure of petits soms exhausts just as much as great ones ; and they have also tins auded bitterness , that they are petty , and humiliating . The diplomate who fancies that he has exhausted the wife and talent of a great brain in persuading an Emperor or a minister , has not had , perhaps , a much harder work than the assistant of an Emporium \ n determining the choice of Lady ShigsmaG , or in soothing the complaints of Mrs . Gkcfkentjff . Lord Bacon mentions a minister who , when he approached the Queen with documents for her signature , always cn « -asced her in some other conversation , so that he led her thoughts away from the immediate unpleasantry , and obtained what he wanted . Many shopmen , have to exercise a diplomacy quite as
deep as this , ' thev ' have , besides , to put up with constant disappointment and constant ; opposition ; upon them devolves , after all , the prosperity of the " concern , " for they are in immediate contact with the custo " mers , and they can at any time repulse or attract ; it is not too much to say that their patience and general attention as a body is wonderful , and their endurance is such that only can be acquired by long-continued practice . Their lives , let us add , fall far below the average . Their meals are not so comfortable , so wholesome , or enjoyable as those of the common day-labourer ; their minds are so wearied by petty details , that ,-like a fallow field covered with small weeds , they cannot grow anything else . In addition to this , they are the general marks for ridicule and contempt ; and that very clpver but often-cruel artist of Punch , Mr . Leech , has continually
ridiculed the ' shopwalker-or counter-jumper , without once inquiring whether his satire was just or unjust-. It is to elevate this class and to free them for some little space from ail exhausting bondage that the Saturday half-holiday is sought to be established . Those employers who have tried it speak fairly and honestly in favour of its results . They may well do so . One cannot benefit a whole class without benefiting oneself , and perhaps the most gratifying proof of the bond which exists between the workers and the nobility is , that the latter have come forward in this ; and other instances , to aid the workers . The very lowest class , the artisans , have their holidays when they like . We all know what the
St . Monday is .- The bankers close at four o ' clock every day , Government officers cease from their labours : hut the shopmen must be ev-erready in their sliop ; they must absolutely court and accumu > late diseases " peculiarly their own in their long service , and this really not for any benefit or public good , but for the sole benefit of their employers . Swift , after writing a few hours , used . to . run . hill just for recreation ; . Scott would work before breakfast and saunter and think afterwards ; Bulwer did not work at his desk for more than three hours a day , but many thousands of our fellows are kepfc .-afr the desk and the counter for twelve and fourteen—nay , sixteen hours per day . " . Fourteen hours at the forge , " writes Elihu
BtTKRiTT , " and three at the Hebrew Bible ; " but the learned blacksmith had a noble purpose before him , and did not always work at that high-pressure rate . Our shopmen often do do so , and they want relicf ;—employers will be wise if they grant it . The city is already in advance of the west-end of the town , and the great , provincial towns in advance of London—perhaps because these lat tor understand better than we do here that the interest of their assistants is really their own . It will be well if our Bank and Fashion bear upon their exaiii
* t ^ d ? STrrcn ^ crm » lre-th « m-follow-the- ple- —But . we . -have already a commencement . Lord Elchq is " to the fore , " and a crowd of philanthropists after liirn . Seventy-five ladies of the highest rank , from the still beautiful Duchess of Sutherland downwards , have , like the Maccabees , " bound themselves by a strong- vow" not to shop on Saturdays after two o ' clock , and many others will follow the truly noble example . The pressure from without has begun , and if it succeeds we may look to improved trade , more briskness and cheerfulness ; better health both for master and man , and last , not least / for that rare bird an old shopman , who is now about as rarely met with as an old postboy . The disappearance of the latter has been accounted for , and of the former it may be said that they die early ; worn-out by overwork in this world , they seek for their rest and recreation in the next , where there are no ribbons to measure , no cross old ladies to please , and where a poor young man may hope for something more than ono half-holiday a week .
£64 The Leader And Haiwrday[Analyst : . ...
£ 64 The Leader and Haiwrday [ Analyst . . [ June 10 , I 860 .
Pauallels Of Mismanagement. Som E Men Ha...
PAUALLELS OF MISMANAGEMENT . SOM E men have been eternally haunted with the impression that nothing was altogether new to them . Goethe and Walter Scott were among the number . In many of tho positions of life in which they found themselves , there was a vague feeling that all tljis luid happened to them long ago , with the same incidents , the same actors . Pythagoras may have owed his doctrine to something of this feeling;—wo own to having" experienced ft sensation of a similar kind ourselves ; and how much is there in the events around us to encourage and confirm this impression I
What echoes of tho past are constantly falling on our ears ! Is this a copy of the " Mcrcurius Aulicus , " or of " The Adventurer , " of this day ' sJ ) aUyJS ewn \\ i \ t \ v &\ mVQbeenjnstperusingP Weruboureyoa .-does that figure , with a little bonnet resembling the knob , and the remainder the cone of the extinguisher , to which the Taller aptly compares it P—does this figure , wo say , pertain to our fair cousin , or to our great great grandmother P' Is it FiaaiNfl , of the tiign of the " Sugar Loaf , " in Eastcheap , or his distant ducal descendant in New Oxford Street , who has just boon indicted for tampering with his groceries P Everything * is being done over again : " All , to roflourish , fadoB ; As in a wheel , all sinke to rcneoend ; " —
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1860, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_16061860/page/8/
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