Working condition

“ True, it is only individuals who starve, but what security has the working-man that it may not be his turn to-morrow? Who assures him employment, who vouches for it that, if for any reason or no reason his lord and master discharges him to-morrow, he can struggle along with those dependent upon him, until he may find some one else “to give him bread?” Who guarantees that willingness to work shall suffice to obtain work, that uprightness, p. 26industry, thrift, and the rest of the virtues recommended by the bourgeoisie, are really his road to happiness? No one. ”

“ Shorter hours of work, by allowing higher standards of comfort and purer family life, promise to enhance the industrial efficiency of the wage-working class — improved health, longer life, more content and greater intelligence and inventiveness. ”

“ This, for a time, produces considerable suffering amongst the working classes; and it is of great importance for their happiness that they should be aware of these effects, and be enabled to foresee them at an early period, in order to diminish, as much as possible, the injury resulting from them. ”

“ From these observations it will be clear, that to people working in factories all the year round, subject to these pernicious influences, it will be less dangerous to health to remain at work ten hours per day, than twelve or thirteen. ”

“ Laborers, and other working people, more especially those whose occupations require them to be much in the open air, may be considered as following a regulated system of moderation; and hence the higher degree of health which prevails among them and their families. ”

“ The fact that through the improvement of machinery so many men are thrown out of employment, or at best, working but half the time brings them to reflection. They have leisure, and they consider how their conditions can be changed. ”

“ More definitely, it is activity that is designed to be useful to ourselves or to others. It is thus a regulated activity by which our welfare, or that of others, may be furthered.
We are apt to think, or at least to feel, that the necessity of working regularly is a hardship. Because we get tired with our work and look forward with eagerness to the time of rest, we form the opinion that the pleasantest life would be one which should be all rest.
Industry might well be urged as a duty. ”

“ Reduced to its elements, it means that each worker would, in the end, work for what he could get out of it, or if he found that he got the same advantage without working so hard, then he would not work so energetically. ”

“ They recognize the rights of the laborer to health, and place him in a position while working, so that his body may not deteriorate any more than is natural for it to do as age advances. The living machine must not be harmed more than the dead machinery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, I must keep on working, even though my back is breaking and my eyes will scarcely stay open, for wife and little ones must have bread, and I must work now if it kills me, for soon there will be no work to do. ”

“ Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them what Leach translates into plain English with the words: “If you don’t like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you p. ”

“ Indeed I cannot possibly conceive of an individual in health, whatever may be the age, sex, condition, or employment, who does not need them, in a greater or less degree.
Now if by the term amusement, I merely meant employment, nobody would probably differ from me—at least in theory. Every one is ready to admit the importance of being constantly employed. A mind unemployed is a VACANT mind. And a vacant or idle mind is "the devil's work-shop;" ”

“ The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the extent and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The variation of the working day fluctuates, therefore, within physical and social bounds. ”

“ With the progressive division of labor, work has become more and more mechanical. A definite share of overfatigue and its sequels, especially neurasthenia, must be ascribed to this monotony—to the absence of spontaneity or joy in work. ”

“ On account of this entire absence of presuppositions with which we have to approach our subject, it will be necessary at starting to have a clear understanding of what we mean by a working man, or by the working class. ”

“ They remember the interests of the workmen when driven to consider the necessity of closing or reducing hours. They go on, and take risk and trouble on themselves in working through bad times, rather than close their works. The whole class of those-who-have are quick in their sympathy for any form of distress or suffering. ”

“ Not the outward fair colour and proportion merely, not the perfect fitness and adaptation, not the most utilitarian employment of every grain of dust, so that nothing is lost,—not even the grandest scale of working, is enough ”

“ Under Functionalization the number of years of productivity of all, workers and foremen alike, are increased. The specialty to which the man is assigned is his natural specialty, thus his possible and profitable working years are prolonged, because he is at that work for which he is naturally fitted. ”

“ For the worker who is well established in her employment and has a good income, home dressmaking and millinery become questions of health, time and energy. This worker should make the best use of her strength. ”

“ This is an advantage which the working classes, strictly so called, certainly possess over the leisure classes,—that they are in early life under the necessity of applying themselves laboriously to some mechanical pursuit or other,—thus acquiring manual dexterity and the use of their physical powers. ”

“ The miserable wretches who toil sixteen or eighteen hours a day—father, mother, and even the little children—making matchboxes, or shirts or blouses, have ‘Plenty of Work,’ but I for one don’t envy them. Perhaps you think that if there was no machinery, and we all had to work thirteen or fourteen hours a day in order to obtain a bare living, we should not be in a condition [826] of poverty? ”

“ The workmen in both these classes spend the prime of their health and strength in working for others, and after suffering with perhaps wives and families incredible hardships from cold and hunger, which cannot be kept away by insufficient wages, have nothing to look forward to in their declining years but the tender mercies of their parish workhouse, or the precarious charity of their former masters. ”

“ The workers themselves are grouped according to their peculiar mental or physical characteristics and guided in their tasks by "scientific" bosses, who prescribe by a fixed rule even the motions of their limbs and bodies. ”

“ This is only true in the sense that there are certain large classes of machine-work which require in the worker such attention, care, endurance, and skill as are within the power of most persons possessed of ordinary capacities of mind and body. ”

“ Was all that labor more wearing to health and strength than the cruel bondage in which we live, while laboring to secure, from servants, the care and efficient work absolutely necessary to the present style of living? ”

“ Labour is not only a necessity and a duty, but a blessing: only the idler feels it to be a curse. The duty of work is written on the thews and muscles of the limbs, the mechanism of the hand, the nerves and lobes of the brain—the sum of whose healthy action is satisfaction and enjoyment. In the school of labour is taught the best practical wisdom; nor is a life of manual employment, as we shall hereafter find, incompatible with high mental culture. ”

“ Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement: from the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevitable condition of their respective situations, are precluded. ”

“ It gives more working years and more working days in each year, with more zeal and vitality in each working day; health makes work pleasant, and pleasant work becomes efficiency when the environment stimulates men's powers to the full.... ”

“ Under usual conditions, eighteen per cent of our working population has a definite physical defect or chronic disease. Of our war handicapped, it is believed that some eighty per cent can be placed, by careful selection of jobs, in work where they can be happy and just as productive in that particular job as they would be without the handicap. Another twelve or thirteen per cent will need rehabilitation before such placement can be made. ”

“ Of all occupations, that of the farmer or gardener conduces most to health and long life. His independent manner of living, the pure country air he breathes, the abundant sunshine he enjoys, the plain, wholesome food he eats, his restful, quiet sleep, and his freedom from the demands of fashionable life, all combine to give him health. But this occupation, in itself, probably brings into play a larger number of muscles than any other single employment. ”

“ In like manner, we must doubtless look out for the worker; and he must doubtless look out for himself. His conditions of life and work must be made such that he will perform his task as well as possible. But those conditions will be adjusted quite differently if we regard the comfort of the worker as the prime object from what they will be if we regard the excellence of the output as the prime object and the worker’s comfort as a means to that end. ”

“ Labor is rest—from the sorrows that greet us;
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us.
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us.
Rest from world-sirens that lead us to ill.
Work,—and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;
Work,—thou shalt ride o’er care’s coming billow ”

“ Even the last years of life, when the need to work hard for an income that would sufficiently maintain his household, made brain work, under conditions of physical weakness, often peculiarly trying, were largely full of the same marvellous pluck and illumined by the same sunny temperament. ”

“ Health and Labor.—As to the number of hours that should be devoted to labor no rule can be laid down. It all depends on the age, physical and mental vigor of the individual, and likewise, to a considerable degree, on the character of the work. ”

“ It is a matter of common experience that a change of occupation will often afford relief where complete repose would otherwise be necessary, and that a person can work many more hours without fatigue at a succession of occupations, than if confined during the whole time to one. Different occupations employ different muscles, or different energies of the mind, some of which rest and are refreshed while others work. Bodily labour itself rests from mental, and conversely. ”

“ Factory faces have a look of their own,—not only their common dinginess, and a general air of being in a hurry to find the wash-bowl, but an appearance of restlessness,—often of envious restlessness, not habitual in most departments of "healthy labor." ”

“ I asked in individual letters for the particular psychological qualities which from the standpoint of the management seemed essential for the various kinds of labor in their establishments. I always inquired to what extent consideration was given to such psychological points of view at the appointment of applicants, and asked for material concerning the question how far individuals who proved to be unfit for one kind of labor showed fitness at other kinds of work. ”

“ The sudden change of occupation and associations affects us all.
“The health of the company is good, and all are making the best of everything. We have but two or three sick, and they are recovering, except one, and he is very low. ”

“ But can the condition of labor be improved? Yes, if labor is entirely in earnest about it. Labor’s principal need is brains. I don’t mean they must increase their own brains; but in their conflicts with employers the laboring men should be led, or their interests should be managed, by men who know both sides of the question. Are there such men in the ranks of the laborers? ”

“ 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. ”

“ We consider our employment healthy. It proves so. Take, for instance, a certain number, at random, of different ages, employed in cotton mills, and compare with the same number, taken in the same way, from farm neighborhoods, and you will find more sickness and death among farmers' daughters. ”

“ We have substituted mind for physical force, and the question is, which is the more economical? Or, in other words, is it of any consequence to the employer whether the laborer is ignorant or intelligent? ”

“ Let the poor be cared for in their health, their amusements, their education, and their labour. Still the great work for an employer of labour remains for ever to be renewed; that which consists in the daily intercourse of life, in that perpetual exercise of care and kindness concerning those small things which, small as they may be, are nevertheless the chief part of men’s lives. Perhaps the greatest possible amelioration of the human lot is to be found in the improvement of our notions of the duties of master to man. ”