Absenteeism

“ Many, I doubt not, have been driven away by political wrongs, either directly inflicted on themselves, or inciting the peasantry to hostility against their landlords; and many more, probably, have hastened abroad to get out of sight of misery which they could not relieve. If I were to venture on judging my neighbour at all in these instances, it should not be the absentee, but the government; whose evil policy prompted to absenteeism. ”

“ The remedy for this kind of absenteeism is quite different from the preceding. Laws respecting incumbrances have no effect on those who are not in debt. Facilities of sale are of no use to those who want to retain for enjoyment, and not to sell. ”

“ The absenteeism of wealthy proprietors is in some degree morally and politically injurious; but their expenditure in England does not lower wages and profits in Ireland, nor do they escape taxation to any extent worth noticing.
The temporary absenteeism from political causes is morally and politically beneficial; the expenditure of such absentees does not lower wages and profits in Ireland, and they never escape taxation. ”

“ As we have seen that the principal cause of the absenteeisms of our wealthiest proprietors is primogeniture, it follows that the moral and political evils of their absence are, from the very circumstance that produces it, their great wealth, much less than would be the effects if their properties were divided, and all the members of the family were non-resident. ”

“ During the same period worktime losses from absenteeism amounted to about 12 million man-hours. Abuse of the provision for leave without pay and loafing on the job have also contributed significantly to losses of worktime. ”

“ As the attractions of town life increased it became more and more difficult to obtain the services of the best kind of country gentlemen for a post that was often arduous, that brought no emolument to the holder, and that was incompatible with absenteeism. ”

“ Does such conduct (and this is but one instance of many which we could adduce) evince a desire, on the part of the "pastors of the people," to encourage the residence of the gentry, or a wish to procure for the peasantry those blessings which they paint in such glowing terms as sure to ensue from their landlords living and spending their incomes amongst them? Much as the priests and agitators declaim against absenteeism, nothing would be more contrary to their wishes than that the absentees should return. They have no desire to share their influence with others ”

“ Remarking upon this unprecedented falling off, the principal of the school says that "there are few of those admitted who do not begin their work zealously, and I doubt not with strong determination to continue during the whole term." But this enthusiasm soon cooled off, and after a few weeks the students who had commenced study so earnestly deserted the schools. This high percentage of absenteeism, however, was principally confined to the younger scholars, adults availing themselves to a greater degree of the educational advantages offered. ”

“ Если вы завтра не придёте, это будет считаться прогулом. If you're not here tomorrow, it'll be considered an absence without good reason.
□ прогулы absenteeism. У нас на заводе энергично борются с прогулами. We're fighting absenteeism very hard at our factory. ”

“ We have next to consider the effects of the non-residence of wealthy absentees. In estimating the moral and political effects of the non-residence of this class of proprietors, there is an important distinction to be borne in mind. Where a very large property is, by the operation of primogeniture, concentrated in the hands of a single individual, his establishment is generally conducted on a scale of extravagance, and with an absence of prudence and economy, that has an injurious effect on the classes beneath him, leading the middle classes especially into vanity and extravagance. ”

“ In office-hours—which I suppose reduce most men to the mental condition of a coffee-mill or a mangle—time sped along much as usual: it was in the pauses of life, the desolate hours when books and newspapers palled on the sated appetite, and when, thrown back upon one's own dreary musings, one strove—all in vain—to people the vacant air with the dear faces of absent friends, that the real bitterness of solitude made itself felt. ”

“ When I was alone, free from the visions and scenes to which I devoted my life, all kinds of worries assailed me—worry about my position, which I was risking, worry about the steps I ought to be taking and yet was not taking, worry over myself that I was so intent upon casting off all my obligations and postponing them, and repudiating my wage-earning lot, by which I was destined to be held fast in the slow wheelwork of office routine. ”

“ Yes; perhaps you yourself have smarted under "the insolence of office, and the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes"; perhaps you have borne the tortures of long suspense as one of the unemployed; perhaps on some weary tramp after work you have learned what it is to be a [Pg 21] stranger in your own land; perhaps you have seen some old veteran worker, long known to you, now broken in health and stricken in years, compelled to seek the shameful shelter of a workhouse ”

“ Who shall blame the tired laborer, if after a week with sixty hours of unremitting toil, he takes refuge from the dreariness and lassitude of physical exhaustion, the hopelessness of ambition-quenched life, and perhaps the discomforts and disquiet of the place he calls home, in a long draught of that which does, for the time, create in him an image of exhilaration, strength, self-respect, and manhood? ”

“ The dissipated manners, which now so generally prevail, perpetual absence from home, and attendance on assemblies or at public places, is, in all these respects, pernicious to the whole household, and to the men-servants absolutely ruinous. ”

“ Worn by incessant fatigue, broken in fortune, debarred by public opinion, prejudice, or tradition, from future employment, the wisest and best who have filled that office have retired to private life, to remember rather the failure of their hopes than the success of their efforts. ”

“ Granting that his relations and labors may be acceptable, he falls upon the inevitable necessity of devoting his time and labor, during the vigor and strength of his days, for a meager compensation, and then pass into old age, and its attendant infirmities, as a dependancy, if not a pauper. ”

“ In large measure with us, and still more with you, there is not that abandonment to the moment which is requisite for full enjoyment; and this abandonment is prevented by the ever-present sense of multitudinous responsibilities. So that, beyond the serious physical mischief caused by over-work, there is the further mischief that it destroys what value there would otherwise be in the leisure part of life. ”

“ We are glad that our time is expended, for we go home! Six months of absence is quite enough, and the thought of returning makes the blood course quicker in one’s veins. And yet never was time more profitably spent than in these rambles through strange countries, for the experience put us in condition to appreciate our own. ”

“ If any change takes place during my absence, that absence will not be long, he will never be able to conceal himself from me, so that I shall perceive the danger before any harm comes of it, and I shall be in time to provide a remedy. ”

“ I am free of an hundred petty public duties imposed on me as a man of consideration—of the expense of a great hospitality—and, what is better, of the great waste of time connected with it. I have known, in my day, all kinds of society, and can pretty well estimate how much or how little one loses by retiring from all but that which is very intimate. ”

“ A house with no action entailed, quiet, and liberty to think and abstain as one wills—yes, I think abstention, the leaving everything alone and watching the others still going past, is what I would choose to-day, if things ceased driving me. This may be only the reaction from four years’ opportunism, and is not worth trying to resolve into terms of geography and employment. ”

“ In those humbler walks of my profession, from whose wearisomeness I was exempted by my sudden favour with the public, I have seen, though not known, the most painful drudgery,—the most constant fatigue,—the most sad contrast between real cares and feigned merriments,—the most anxious, penurious, and laborious existence imaginable. ”

“ Instead of the bath-chair, the spade; instead of the regulated walk, rough journeys in the forest, and the pure, rare air of the open mountains for the miasma of the sick-room—these are the changes offered him, with what promise of pleasure and of self-respect, with what a revolution in all his hopes and terrors, none but an invalid can know. Resignation, the cowardice that apes a kind of courage and that lives in the very air of health resorts, is cast aside at a breath of such a prospect. ”

“ But now, fatigue, and this desperate search for work which he could not get, refusals and rebuffs, nights spent in the open-air, lying on the grass, long fasting, the contempt which he knew people with a settled abode felt for a vagabond, and that question which he was continually asked: "Why do you not remain at home?" ”

“ Persisted in these drawbacks turn into merits; for doesn't absence, prolonged enough, lead in the end to freedom? I suppose, however, for most people complete freedom is too lonely a thing, therefore the absence should only be just long enough to make room for one to see clear again. ”

“ So be diligent to look after our affairs, and pray to God to keep you in health and free from fault: my prolonged absence will make my return all the more joyful. It is great pain to me to be absent from you so long, who art all my life and happiness. ”

“ Absence of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distress'd. ”

“ Amidst the thousand incidents of military life, so filled in its leisure and so empty in its employments, has anyone the time to give a thought to the absent one who must return no more? His place is taken; a new face is seated there where we used to see him, and his is no longer familiar to us. ”

“ Not all the states of men in the world; neither court nor country, towns nor cities, shops nor fields, treasuries, libraries, solitude, society, studies, nor pulpits, can afford any such thing as this rest. If you could inquire of the dead of all generations, or of the living through all dominions, they would all tell you, "Here is no rest." ”

“ The hand-worker, the clerk and the small tradesman, generally insecure in the tenure of their occupations and homes, are anxious and restless, while many classes suffer special and grievous wrongs, such as exhaustion and premature old age, due to the nervous strain of certain kinds of work, death and mutilation from machinery, life in squalid tenements, and the debasement of children by bad surroundings and premature work. ”

“ I sit at the receipt of custom (involuntarily enough) from morning till night—no time, no place, affords me a respite from my innumerable petitioners, and whether I be asleep or awake, reading, eating, or walking; in the kitchen, my bed-room, or the parlour, they flock in with urgent entreaties, and pitiful stories, and my conscience forbids my ever postponing their business for any other matter; for, with shame and grief of heart I say it, by their unpaid labour I live—their nakedness clothes me, and their heavy toil maintains me in luxurious idleness. ”

“ Time rolls on, the month's rent falls due, her father pines and sinks in confinement, and her needle is found inadequate to the task undertaken. Necessity demands, and one by one she parts with her few cherished mementos of the past, that she may save an aged father from starvation. ”

“ But if a young man, and a man of the world, who has no such avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that right of absence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned into an involuntary absence, by his perpetual exclusion out of company. However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform, in some degree, to their weakness, instead of{324} manifesting your contempt for them. ”

“ You must dare something to gain leisure, also, – or else grow old amid the worries of procuratorships [2] abroad and subsequently of civil duties at home, living in turmoil and in ever fresh floods of responsibilities, which no man has ever succeeded in avoiding by unobtrusiveness or by seclusion of life. ”

“ If it protects the employer in reducing to a minimum the chances of his being left without a servant, it also makes his life a burden during the long period that intervenes between the notice and the time when it takes effect. ”

“ Such persons being out of service, and not having visible means of their own, to maintain themselves without their labour, and refusing to serve as a hired servant, by the yeer, may be bound over to the next Sessions or Assises, and to be of good behaviour in the mean time, or may be sent to the house of correction. ”

“ We have had a day of rest. Two hours on post and the next four at liberty to loaf in the shade, is not hard work. We are in a lonely place, no houses near us, but we have had what we needed, a real rest-up. ”

“ I have enjoyed retirement as much as any man in England; but then I have been always surrounded with my family and friends; I have never, before now, known what it was to have seven or eight hours of a day exclusively to myself. I am locked up in solitary confinement in my dungeon every night, at six o'clock, without my having the power to go to any one, and without any one having the power to come to me, excepting the turnkey, which, thank God! ”

“ The thick book with all the addresses of applicants for work who have had to be refused, is a mute evidence of the saddest part of this whole situation—the lack of work for those who beg to be kept off the soup-lines. ”