Men's work

“ Whether in science, philosophy, morals, or business, the fields for long-ranged cumulative efforts are wider, more numerous, and far more needy than in the days when it was the fashion for men contentedly to concentrate themselves to one vocation, life-work, or mission, or when cathedrals or other yet vaster public works were transmitted, unfinished but ever advancing, from one generation of men to another. ”

“ Everywhere, and under almost all circumstances, however externally adverse—in moorland shielings, in cottage hamlets, in the close alleys of great towns—the true man may grow. He who tills a space of earth scarce bigger than is needed for his grave, may work as faithfully, and to as good purpose, as the heir to thousands. The commonest workshop may thus be a school of industry, science, and good morals, on the one hand; or of idleness, folly, and depravity, on the other. It all depends on the individual men, and the use they make of the opportunities for good which offer themselves. ”

“ If work had no other quality, the fact that it settles a man's place among men would invest it with the highest dignity; for a man's place can be determined only by a complete unfolding and measurement of all the powers that are in him, and this process of development must have all the elements of the highest moral process. ”

“ Work has been, therefore, not only the supreme spiritual opportunity, but the highest spiritual privilege and one of the deepest sources of joy. It has been an expression not only of human energy but of the creativeness of the human spirit. By their works men have not only built homes for themselves in this vast universe, but they have co-operated with the divine creativeness in the control of force, the modification of conditions, the fertilisation of the earth, the fashioning of new forms. ”

“ As he watches the daily task of men who are recovering the long-buried history of the past, he will not know how to divide his admiration between the almost incredible labour entailed by their researches and the marvellous culture which their work has laid bare. ”

“ In all this there was no excitement, no predilection for one class of work above another ... but an humble, profound, and most religious consciousness that work is the appointed calling of man on earth, the end for which his various faculties were given, the element in which his nature is ordained to develop itself. ”

“ They come back to their work with clearer and stronger conceptions of human character and of truth in the abstract and the concrete, with which all men, no matter what their profession or business may be, must deal. They have a new tenderness, a larger tolerance, a broader vision of life and humanity, and therefore of their business, which is merely a phase of life and affairs. ”

“ There are men among us of the right kind, with the taste, the courage, the zeal, and the skill both literary and artistic, to do the work as it should be done. But they have not the means to go on their own account. They must be sent duly commissioned and provided, prepared and resolved to abide in the field, till they have traversed it in all its length and breadth and investigated and decyphered [Pg viii] so far as it can now be done, every trace that remains of its ancient occupants and rulers—and the country, and the world, will reap the advantage of their labors. ”

“ The noble worker pours himself into his work with sublime indifference to its rewards, and by the very completeness of his self-surrender and self-forgetfulness touches degrees of excellence and attains a splendour of vision which are denied those whose ventures are less daring and complete. And the largeness of conception, the breadth of treatment, the beauty of skill which a man gains when he casts all his spiritual fortune into his work often secure the richest measure of those returns which men value so highly because they are the tangible evidences of success. ”

“ Good honest work, after an ideal plan, to the full measure of his powers, with wise selection of appropriate means, gives each individual his place and rank in the vast workshop wherein the eternal thoughts of God, revealed to men as their several ideals, are wrought out into the actuality of the social, economic, political, æsthetic and spiritual order of the world. ”

“ Whatever we make of ourselves, then,—whether farmers, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, or priests,—let us above all things first have a care that we are men; and if we are to be men, our special business work must form only a part of our life-work. ”

“ That splendour of the spirit which shines in the great art of the world shines also in all lesser work that is genuine and sincere; for the higher genius of man, which is the heritage of all who make themselves ready to receive it, is present in all places where honest men work, and moulds all materials which honest men handle. ”

“ It is a purely artificial degradation of wages, a system at once of fining the workers for being women, and of putting women’s work and claims for an adequate standard of living at a discount. To thoroughly appreciate what the Unions of the cotton trade have done it is well to bear in mind this manner of dealing with women’s labour, which is habitual in every trade where men and women are jointly employed. Instances might be multiplied in the woollen trade. Thus in a large Halifax carpet mill the women’s wages average 13s. ”

“ This work will assist in explaining, for naturally a virtuous and superior order ought to produce virtuous and superior men. The kind and quality of methods and successful ruling men, which this particular civilization forces to the front, are set forth in this exposition. ”

“ These men, who have now become famous among us, had no mechanics’ institute, no libraries, no classes, no examinations to cheer them on their way. In the greatest poverty, difficulties, and discouragements, their energies were found sufficient for their work, and they have written their names in a distinguished page of the history of their country.”—The Right Hon. ”

“ If we attempt to ignore these laws we are at once landed in a sea of difficulties. Take this very question of “Women’s Work.” At the outset we are brought face to face with facts that show us that all employments are not equally suitable to men and women. ”

“ It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious. ”

“ Sometimes the objections raised to women’s work were exceedingly flimsy, and it is small credit to a section of working men that they have shown themselves ready to raise the cry of impropriety, and even immorality, against women upon grounds which cannot bear the test of examination. ”

“ For life consists not only in the doing of present duties, but in the unfolding of the relations of men to the entire spiritual order of which they are part, and in the enrichment of human experience by insight, interpretation, and the play of the creative faculties. The artist finds his use in the enrichment of life, and his place in the order of service is certainly not less assured and noble than that of the man of action. ”

“ "I have always been taught at home, sir, that every man is divinely called to his work, if that work is for the good of all men. His faithfulness or unfaithfulness to the call is revealed in the motives that prompt him to choose his field." ”

“ Ye shall bear a wish to the sunburnt band,
To the stalwart men who are stoutly fighting
With the heat and drought and the dust-storm smiting,
Yet whose life somehow has a strange inviting,
When once to the work they have put their hand. ”

“ The congress considers the tendency of modern industry to make children and young persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although, under the dominat on of capital, it has become an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of nine years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempt from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too. ”

“ Even though a woman’s work may be as good and as rapid as a man’s, we have seen that her scale of payment is frequently far inferior to his. She may be working on the same kind of machine, speeded at the same pace, turning out the same commodity, and yet a heavy penalty is laid on her simply because she is a woman. The experience gained in the cotton trade, however, seems to shew that in an industry where machinery is largely employed, and where the trade organization includes both men and women, the economic disadvantages under which women labour tend to disappear. ”

“ The degree in which a man individualises his work and gives it the quality of his own mind and spirit is, therefore, the measure of his success in giving his nature free and full expression. For work, in this large sense, is the expression of the man; and as the range and significance of all kinds of expression depend upon the scope and meaning of the ideas, forces, skills, and qualities expressed, so the dignity and permanence of work depend upon the power and insight of the worker. ”

“ In order to amend the conditions of their life assistants must have leisure to combine, for nothing breaks the spirit like unceasing toil. At present, as was pathetically remarked by a shop assistant, “counter and bed is the common lot of most of us,” and energies enfeebled by a long day’s work are unequal to grappling with the problem of reform. Both sexes work under the same conditions; women keep the same long hours as men; nor would they regard with approval special legislation in their favour, fearing lest the indirect result of such legislation should be to restrict their employment. ”

“ In work of the finer order, dealing with the more impressionable material, there are discoverable not only the character and quality of the worker, but the conditions under which he lives; the stage of civilisation, the vigour or languor of vital energy, the richness or poverty of social life, the character of the soil and of the landscape, the pallor or the bloom of vegetation, the shining or the veiling of the skies. ”

“ His spirit state was revealed to me as among those arisen workers and reformers, whose work for humanity he loved and shared on earth, and learning of the wise ones,—a vast and wonderful sphere of individualities, who are still laboring for the good of humanity. ”

“ If I could only persuade you of this, that the chief duty of the civilised world to-day is to set about making labour happy for all, to do its utmost to minimise the amount of unhappy labour—nay, if I could only persuade some two or three of you here present—I should have made a good night’s work of it. ”

“ Nevertheless, looking at men who have actually lived in the world, and whom history describes, and who by their writings or their deeds have left an impression of themselves not to be mistaken,—we shall find enough of goodness, wisdom, and power, to give us some idea of Him who implauted those qualities: in these human works, we shall see strikingly manifested the character of the Great Workman. ”

“ The Congress proposes eight hours work as the legal limit of the working day. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States of America, the vote of the congress will raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world. Nightwork to be but exceptionally permitted, in trades or branches of trades specified by law. The tendency must be to suppress all nightwork. ”

“ We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its ground work. ”

“ Who would honor obtain, With the sweat and the pain, The praise that man gives to the master must buy.— But the blessing withal must descend from on high! And well an earnest word beseems The work the earnest hand prepares; Its load more light the labor deems, When sweet discourse the labor shares. So let us ponder—nor in vain— What strength can work when labor wills; For who would not the fool disdain Who ne'er designs what he fulfils? And well it stamps our human race, And hence the gift to understand, That man within the heart should trace Whate'er he fashions with the hand. ”

“ And with work, you will conquer also the “courage of life”; for you will be convinced that all beings are subjected to this great law, and that the blows of your hammers are the notes of a universal chant. “All work, each one is at his post; he who governs the state; the savant, who extends the limits of human explorations; the sculptor, who makes the statue spring from his chisel; the poet, who sings between his tears and his sighs; the priest, who punishes and pardons—all, down to you, poor workman, in your smoky workshop. ”

“ Let anybody observe the conversation in good society for an hour or two, and hear the tone in which servant-girls, seamstresses, mechanics, and all who work for their living, are sometimes mentioned, and he will see, that, while every one of the speakers professes to regard useful labor as respectable, she is yet deeply imbued with the leaven of aristocratic ideas. ”

“ It is interesting for us to contemplate the history of the people of God in the days in which we live. To my mind this subject is full of matter; it is fruitful with suggestions, and with happy thoughts. I love to look back upon the history of our people; I love to contemplate the path that we have trod; I love to reflect upon the many difficulties and the many trials that we have overcome in the past, through the power of our God. I see on every hand a disposition manifested by the enemies of the Kingdom of God to lay snares for the feet of his servants ”