Busybody

“ The day-laborer, when his work is done, receives the wages of his labor, and goes to his home content and with a cheerful spirit, whistling on his way, his mind free from all perplexing plans and cares, and enjoys his evening in pleasant intercourse with his family and neighbors, and, when he retires to rest, has the blessing of sound sleep, the reward of his healthful toil: while his wealthy employer, whose lot he may perhaps be unwisely inclined to envy, has, perchance, his mind agitated and his rest disturbed by busy schemes and worrying doubts and anxieties. ”

“ We were going ahead with a four-cylinder motor and the building of a pair of big racing cars. I had plenty of time, for I never left my business. I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night. It is nice to plan to do one's work in office hours, to take up the work in the morning, to drop it in the evening--and not have a care until the next morning. ”

“ Who, among the hard workers of our eastern cities, needs two months' vacation, and can only get away from the desk or office for two weeks?
Who feels the confined work tell on his lungs, or his eyes, or shudders at that tremulousness of the shoulders and arms which precedes the breaking-down from over-work? ”

“ So up, and to the Office till noon, and then home to a little dinner, and thither again till night, mighty busy, to my great content, doing a great deal of business, and so home to supper, and to bed; I finding this day that I may be able to do a great deal of business by dictating, if I do not read myself, or write, without spoiling my eyes, I being very well in my eyes after a great day's work. ”

“ If I was grown to be a man, and you
And all the others that are workin' here
Was always under me, and I could clear
The place to-morrow if I wanted to,
I'd buy an easy chair all nice and new
And get a bird to sing above your head,
And let you set and rest all day, instead
Of hammerin' them keys the way you do.
I'd bounce that long-legged clerk and then I'd raise
Your wages and move up my desk beside
Where you'd be settin,' restin' there, and I'd
Not care about the weather—all the days
Would make me glad, and in the evenings then
I'd wish't was time to start to work again. ”

“ And here let us say, it is desirable, when you invite friends to dinner or tea, that you choose such days as are the least filled with work which cannot be well set aside,—such as washing, ironing, etc.,—so that you may take time for entertaining your guests, without the burden of feeling that you are compelled to leave for to-morrow the work that should [Pg 315] have been done to-day, and, by so doing, to lay up for yourself too heavy burdens and unsettle the regular course of labor for the rest of the week. ”

“ Those that stir up themselves to their business may expect to have conveniences: " Open thy eyes, awake and shake off sleep, see how far in the day it is, how thy work wants thee, and how busy others are about thee! ”

“ You live on coffee and doughnuts;
The Boss lives in a palace you make;
You work ten hours a day and live in huts;
The Boss lives in a palace you make;
You face starvation, hunger, privation,
But the Boss is always well fed ”

“ If you do things by the job, you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. ”

“ Knowing the great demand for labor, they imagine if they promise to do your work at a given time, come and do a little, then go to some one else, leaving your work half finished, then back to you again for a while,—the second party annoyed by the same vexatious delay,—that your necessity compels you to endure silently if not patiently. ”

“ I like to see young men or young women who, if employed in any capacity, no matter how small or unimportant that capacity may be, if the hour is eight o'clock at which they must come to work, I like to see them at work ten or fifteen minutes before that hour. ”

“ If you can be so successful when you are obliged to work nights and Sundays—and most of the time with your wits befogged by office routine—what could you not do if you spent ALL your time in your Fiction Factory? ”

“ The office worker, whose finished and unfinished papers are heaped in confusion before him, expends not only useless motions in getting at and disposing of what he wishes to handle, but also mental energy, in constantly adjusting and readjusting himself to the work. There has been a popular idea that it “looked busy” to have plenty of work around, that to see work to be done would impress both managers and workers with the need for applying themselves to the work more constantly and with considerably more speed. ”

“ The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. ”

“ Do you think we like the office, the shop, the factory? We ought to be writing poetry, painting pictures, the whole world admiring us. You seem to imagine your man goes off every morning to a sort of City picnic, has eight hours’ fun—which he calls work—and then comes home to annoy you with chatter about dinner. ”

“ Let those who think work a pleasure try a week’s mental or manual labour, and then, feeling what a negative bliss there is in mere rest, get to know what it is to yearn, like a schoolboy, for a day’s leisure, ease, and amusement. ”

“ What do you call work?—spending eight hours a day in an office to help make somebody’s business a success, and incidentally to earn the money for your bread and butter? But that’s a third of the time you’re given on earth. ”

“ What business would I have running a grocery store, or a bank, or a real-estate office, when all my instincts rebel against it? What normal being wants to be chained to a desk between four walls eight or ten hours a day fifty weeks in the year? I'll bet a nickel there was many a time when you were clacking a typewriter for a living that you'd have given anything to get out in the green fields for a while. ”

“ Accustom all the servants under your direction to rise early, and let them breakfast at an early hour. If orders be given betimes in the morning, there will be more time to execute them,—servants will perform their work with more ease,—and less hands will be required. If the economy of time were duly considered, and a regular plan of daily employment laid down, much business may be effected without hurry or fatigue. ”

“ Make haste and get to the point where you can feel that everything connected with the shop in which you work, or in the office, or in the stable, is under your care, and that you alone are responsible for it. ”

“ All hands together we'll make our demand;
When you and I, Bill, lay down our tools, Bill,
Fold up your arms, Bill, and walk off the job.
Why does a short work day and a long pay always go together? ”

“ The wish of my fatherly friend has long been accomplished: in the workhouse I have learned to work. Work has become a necessity for me; I count that day as lost on the evening of which I cannot look back upon a vigorously prosecuted or a completed work. ”

“ I don't call myself more ill-used than the rest, and yet it is as true as I've got this whip in my hand that for the last two months I've worked from a hundred and four to a hundred and ten hours a week - that's fourteen to fifteen hours a day - and out of that time not so long off my box as many a working man is allowed as his dinner-time. ”

“ Can you fancy yourself in a couple of rooms on the fourth floor with a lot of crying children and a wife with a pair of servant's hands like mine'—holding them out for his inspection—'and being obliged to work by the hour, like a cab-driver, to earn your living? ”

“ A walk after business hours should be the invariable practice of those whose work forbids exercise."
"Thank you for your interest," says I, very haughty, "but it's well to look at home before we search abroad. The man who spends all his time riding in autos at the expense of the Press would be better employed exercising his own limbs than directing those of others. ”

“ Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a week-day saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful—are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle over—No busy faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them ever passing by—the very face of business a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxation from it. ”

“ But LABOUR, SLEEP, THOUGHT, LABOUR AGAIN, seems to me to be the right order with those who, earning their bread by the sweat of the brow, would yet remember that man shall not live by bread alone. Were it possible that our mechanics could attend the institutions called by their name in the morning instead of the evening, perhaps we should not find them so ready to degenerate into places of mere amusement. ”

“ Here we are just in a sort of a breathing spell, and you begin to look all peeked and home from work, with maybe losing your place, for employers is hard without any consideration, and food so high and all. ”

“ Business hours are frequently long, but they are limited, and after the day's work is over, the remainder of the twenty-four hours is at the disposal of the employees, who can still enjoy the happiness and freedom associated with the life of their own social circle. ”

“ The collective workers should take care that their day-room is kept cool and airy, and the fire and lights properly managed. Each should ensure a daily walk,—either by being sent out on business, or by the work being so arranged as to admit of an hour’s exercise, morning or evening. ”

“ There was once a Saturday afternoon when from a single City Room twenty-two men were discharged, and the work went on, Monday morning, just the same. Men who have seemed indispensable disappear—and leave no more of a hole than your finger leaves in a bucket of water. ”

“ If they have been accustomed to work at particular periods of the day, and the order of things is suddenly reversed, the working hours changed into hours of rest, and vice versa, they may not do as well for a short time, but they will soon accustom themselves to the change, and eat and rest as well as before. ”

“ They just used to skedaddle off to work—I've seen hundreds of 'em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand ”

“ But while you do work you might do it faithfully, not spend time for which you are paid in idleness, and crowd in rags with the buttons all on, which will be sure to spoil the machinery when they come to be ground. ”

“ I am told that we never die. To explain further I am not able, but I do want to get out of this office. I feel strong enough to do any kind of hard work.”
“Well, sir, I am glad that we have found a way to make you work, and you may go back to hard labor.” ”

“ I would indeed I were a little child,
⁠Resting my tired limbs on the sunny sands
In far Miletus, where the airs blow mild,
⁠And countless looms throb under busy hands.
The busy hand must calm the busy thought,
⁠And labor cool the passions of the hour ”

“ Turn out in the mornin', eat and listen to gossip, go out and take a walk, smoke, talk with folks I met—more gossip—come back and eat again, go over and watch the carpenters on the latest summer cottage, smoke some more, eat some more, and then go down to the Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store, or to the post-office, and set around with the gang till bedtime. ”

“ All that I knew was that I could watch men going to their offices, while I slept luxuriously; could go out at any hour of the day and sit up to any hour of the night, secure that each morning would bring no toil. ”

“ Thus, as in other professions, there are « 171 » times of extra pressure, when every hour in a long day has its full complement of busy work, and times of comparative rest, when the labour is a good deal lighter. ”

“ The labourer is worthy of his hire. But three or four times a year, and always unexpectedly, swoop down upon them like the Last Judgment; examine every corner and recess; make a noise like thunder, and strike right and left at the fitting moment—this clears the house for many weeks! ”

“ A week's work or a month's work, now and again, ploughing in the winter, or picking grapes in the fall, and there's always odd jobs with the farmers through the summer. I don't need much, so I don't have to work much. Most of my time I spend fooling around the place. I could do hack work for the magazines and newspapers ”

“ Lawyers, doctors and teachers give all their time and thought to their work; nurses, companions and secretaries do not have much time to go out; women who stand behind counters, tend looms or sit at switchboards are often too tired even for pleasure when the day's work is done. ”

“ I am glad of the opportunity of saying what I think on the matter, and of explaining somewhat in detail just how I should expect, in fact, how I have time after time induced union men to do a large day's work, quite as large as other men do. ”

“ Even that other and greater world, which is neither fashionable nor polite,—being too busy gaining the wherewithal to exist,—even in fetid lanes and teeming streets, in dingy offices and dingier places still, the same excitement prevailed; busy men forgot their business awhile ”