Work (job)

“ Study your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your employer points. The art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a larger salary.
When out of work, take the first respectable job that offers, heeding not the disproportion between your faculties and your task. If you put your manhood into your labor, you will soon be given something better to do. ”

“ The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. ”

“ On a day a party of visitors would come to the little shop and the owner would pick up a hand-forged hammer and say, 'See what John made!' But, in our modern industry, no one man ever completes a task. Each task is subdivided into twenty, forty, a hundred or more portions, and a workingman is given just one to work on, day by day, year after year, for a working generation. ”

“ With our worker, just as sure as the sun rises and sets, if he continues to work and is no fool, he will rise to earn a competency, to improve himself, to own his own labor, to own his own home, to hire the labor of other men who are beginners as he once was himself. ”

“ The wiser man, the labourer, begins at his corner of the wood, and makes out a task for himself for each day. Let not our imaginations be employed on one side only. Think, that large as may appear the work to be done—so too the result of any endeavour, however small in itself, may be of infinite extent in the future. ”

“ Then, for certain hours he works between the dawning and the dark,
And delivers one day's work for one day's pay.
This industrial arrangement has advantages for both,
If employer and employed are honest men. ”

“ With so many other laborers in the field, and considering their task, we scarcely dare think of the miserably small pay they must receive for their labor. We wonder how they can live. And yet they have a certain wholesome, thrifty appearance—their clothes, although coarse, are not ragged; they look well and strong, and they work with an energy which would imply a certain satisfaction in their task well done. ”

“ Here and now we are getting ready for the great workshop yonder; learning the trick of the tools, and how to use our fingers and our powers, and, when the schooling is done, we shall be set to nobler work, and receive ample wages for the years here. Because that great 'to-morrow will be as this day' of earthly life, 'and much more abundant,' therefore it is no trifle to work amongst the trifles ”

“ The ideal for every employee, therefore, is that he should be employed in that position which he is best fitted to fill, doing work which by natural aptitudes, training, and experience he is best qualified to do, and working under conditions of material environment—tools, rates of pay, hours of labor, and periods of rest, superintendence and management, future prospects, and education—which will develop and make useful to himself and his employer his best and finest latent abilities and capacities. ”

“ The term labor is used, thirdly, in a more restricted, very popular and current, but very ill-defined way, to designate a limited sub-group among those who live by contributing productive efforts to the work of society. ”

“ Every one can have food in my house who chooses to work for it; nobody without. I can help you on your way, too; and as for your poor horse you talk about, he shall be provided for. My name is Industry, and Industry always takes care of her beasts. ”

“ I have frequently asked employers of labour in England whether they were satisfied with the work done for them by their day labourers, and while they readily allowed for exceptions, yet they spoke strongly of such men as “doing as little as possible for their pay.” Every branch of work that it is possible to give out as piece-work is nowadays so arranged. ”

“ I am speaking, of course, of that class of people of our race who depend mainly upon a day's work—working by the day, as we call it—for their living. These men with whom I talked gave several illustrations of this tendency. In the first place, I think they mentioned, without exception, this fact—that if the coloured people are employed in a factory, they work well and steadily for a few days, say until Saturday night comes, and they are paid their week's wages. ”

“ The general difference in character and habits of those engaged in various occupations—their comparative morality and intelligence, the effects of a decline in wages, the effects of trades-unions, are all, more or less, involved in this subject of employments; also the opinions of the working classes on machinery and its results. Employments that have for their object the health, comfort, and protection of mankind—those that produce the necessaries and the luxuries of life—those for amusement and capable of being dispensed with—are all treated of to some extent. ”

“ Work in the factory or in the office, work which brings us into contact with the outside world, calls for the exercise of qualities and attainments which we had no need of before, for the abandonment of habits and ideas which can only hamper our progress in our changed surroundings. ”

“ To the employers of operatives, and to all of wealth and influence amongst us, this example ought to manifest that a strict and diligent performance of daily duties, in work prolonged even more than in our own factories, is no impediment to the exercise of those faculties, and the gratification of those tastes, which, whatever was once thought, can no longer be held to be limited by station. ”

“ The craftsman, the artist, the scientist, the professional man, and to some extent the business man make new experience the basis of organized activity, of work, and produce thereby social values. The division of labor which removes the problematical from the various operations of the work makes the task totally unstimulating. ”

“ That though all that can must labour, yet there is great diversity of labours; and all men are not to do the same work. Magistrates, and pastors, and lawyers, and physicians, must labour diligently; but they are not all bound to plough, and thrash, and use the more servile labours of their inferiors. 2. That every man must labour in the works of his own calling, "and do his own business," 1 Thess. ”

“ Activities such as these differ with a whole sky from the wage- [148] work of the modern industrial worker. The task in one case is done for its own sake. It is life itself. The other is done only for the sake of the wage it brings. ”

“ A Manufacturer reckons upon the Labour of his Servants, for the Execution of any Work, as much as upon the Tools he employs, and would be equally surpriz'd, in the one Case, were his Expectations disappointed, as in the other. ”

“ Hire suited to the work, sharpness equal to the desires. வேலைக்கோ சம்பளம், ஆளுக்கோ சம்பளம்? Is the hire for the labour, or the labourer? வேலை செய்தாற் கூலி, வேஷம் போட்டாற் காசு If the work be completed, hire; if the character has been sustained, a fee. வேலை செய்யாத பிள்ளையைக் கையில் வை, வேலை செய்த பிள்ளையைக் காலில் வை. Carry in arms the child that does no work, and the child which works, place on your legs. வேலை மினக்கெட்ட அம்பட்டன் பெண்டாட்டி தலையைச் சிரைத்தானாம். ”

“ Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay? Who is do no work, and for what pay? And there are curious moral and religious questions connected with these. ”

“ Work is the participation of man in production through the voluntary exercise of his intellectual and manual faculties, according to his particular vocation, in keeping with the decorum and comfort of his life, and for the better development of the national economy.
⁠2. By virtue of its essentially personal and human nature, labour cannot be reduced to a material concept of merchandise, nor be the object of any transaction incompatible with the personal dignity of the worker. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If duty calls you to work, work as he worked—not merely for your own advantage, but for the benefit of others. While labouring at any profitable employment, never forget the poor and destitute, whose wants may be alleviated by your diligence. ”

“ The Secret of Work.—Men will employ you if you mean business. When you find men working, work with them. Lend a hand. Every employer{16} would rather employ a busy man than an idle man. When he sees you working, he will watch you. If he likes you, he will make you an offer. A glazier, being refused work at a place where a church was being erected, put down his kit of tools, picked up the broken pieces of glass which the workmen had thrown away, and, laboring just as if he had been hired to work, fashioned the finest church window in the world, and became rich and famous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And to the women who are to be employed within she gives חק chok, the task - the kind of work they are to do, the materials out of which they are to form it, and the quantity she expects from each. Thus all the servants are settled: their food, work, and tasks appointed. Every thing is done orderly. ”

“ The hours of labour among the small masters are scarcely brought within any system at all; for all the work is piecework, not paid for by the day or hour; and each man works as long as he likes, or as long as his business impels him. ”

“ I have gone over all of the things that children do out of doors and have tried to select the best occupations. I have studied the worst things they do and have suggested their opposites—constructive work that earns money, develops character, or preserves public property. ”

“ The first business on hand is for us to get information of those out of work and employers requiring workers, so that we can place them upon our registers, and make known the wants both of employers and employes. ”

“ You will see now, my dear son, why I have been so earnest to have you establish in early life a habit of industry, and to cultivate a taste for daily, honest labor. No matter what employment you have, if it is honorable employment. ”

“ When you speak to the average person about labor—industrial work, especially—he seems to [Pg 122] get the idea at once that you are opposed to his head being educated—that you simply wish to put him to work. ”

“ Shall we take material work—work of hand, as a class distinction among men? We hear often the term laboring classes—men, namely, who live by work of hand; but are not those who work with their brains, workers also? There are a thousand kinds of work, and it is not absolutely necessary one should work with his hands to be a worker. ”

“ If it is a shop he wants, try to give him the use of some corner for the specific purpose so that the occupation may be dignified according to its juvenile worth. Second, endeavor to emphasize the economic and social significance of the work done and urge right along some definite aim. ”

“ All commercial occupations may be roughly divided into two classes: those which have to do with administrative, merchandising, or productive work, and those which carry on the clerical routine which the others necessitate. ”

“ So he never was able to "take his ease, eat, drink, and be merry." And if he had spent as much labor in useful work (say building, or ploughing, or sandal-making) , what a good workman he might have become! ”

“ I know that labor is the Atlas on whose shoulders rests the great superstructure of civilization and the great dome of science adorned with all there is of art. Labor is the great oak, labor is the great column, and labor, with its deft and cunning hands, has created the countless things of art and beauty. ”

“ My dear Scriver, you can’t really mean what you say. You know that I hold that all classes of labor should have exactly the same compensation. The miner, the blacksmith, the preacher, the postal clerk, the author, the publisher, the printer—yes, the man who sweeps out the office, or who polishes boots, should each share alike, if this world were what it should be—yes, and what it will be. ”

“ In the great majority of cases the work is so miscellaneous in its nature as to call for the employment of workmen varying greatly in their natural ability and attainments, all the way, for instance, from the ordinary laborer, through the trained laborer, helper, rough machinist, fitter, machine hand, to the highly skilled special or all-round mechanic. ”

“ You see, my girl, that the homely 'little job' is likely to be a large and pleasant one, and you have earned your part in it. Do the duty that comes first, and one never knows what beautiful experience it may blossom into. Use your earnings as you like, and God bless you, my dear. ”

“ The business of any community requires certain kinds of work to be performed and the relative amount of work required and consequently the relative number of workers vary but slightly over a long period of time. ”

“ It ought to be the employer's ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman's ambition to make this possible. ”