Earth-Hunger and Other Essays/Does Labor Brutalize?

by William Graham Sumner

Does Labor Brutalize?

Those who live a hundred years from now will doubtless see strange results from a period in which men discuss their own position on earth not by facts but by ideals. To start from an ideal of what one thinks, judging by his own tastes, that a man of moral "elevation" ought to be, in order to find out what must be true in regard to man's position on earth and what laws we ought to pass, is a mode of proceeding which may easily be popular, but is silly beyond any folly which human philosophy has ever perpetrated. It is evident from the simplest observation that men are always under compulsion to do the best they can under the circumstances so as to attain as nearly as possible to the ends they choose. The whole philosophy of existence, and the entire wisdom of policy, either in individual or common action, is bounded by the terms of this proposition; therefore the field of study and effort is in the understanding and modification of the circumstances and in the intelligent choice of the ends. The field of speculation which embraces imaginary conditions is a field of folly.

A man who works twelve hours a day may do it because he likes it, or because he hopes by it to accomplish something which he thinks will bring to him an adequate reward; but most probably he does it because he does not know how else to meet the demands which are made on him, as he admits, legitimately, or with an authority which he cannot repel. I once heard the question put to one of the most learned scholars of this century, whether he liked to work all the time. He answered: "What difference does it make whether I like it or not? I can never finish what I have to do anyway." No serf ever worked as persistently, enthusiastically, and restlessly as that man did. It is time to stop this insulting talk about labor as if nobody labored but a hod-carrier or a bricklayer; the hardest worked classes in the community are those who are their own bosses. Therefore I distinctly include the latter in what I have to say about labor.

It is one of the pet phrases of modern times that labor is dignified or has dignity. It is a good, safe phrase, because it sounds well, and the people for whose consumption it is provided cannot tell whether it makes any difference whether labor has dignity or not, or what would happen if it was not dignified. In truth, dignity is just what labor does not possess; for it always forces a man into strained posture, ungraceful motions, dirt, perspiration, disorder of dress and manner. It is leisure which has dignity. Moreover, if any man, no matter who he might be, was without dinner, he would undoubtedly pocket his dignity and go to work to get one.

Just how the current phrase took this form I do not know; but, although it is somewhat ludicrous when strictly analyzed, it has a history behind it which makes it anything but ludicrous. It is only in the most recent times, and then only in limited circles, that the notion has been rejected that labor is degrading. The intention of the phrase that labor is noble, or is dignified, was to contradict that traditional opinion or sentiment. In the classical states the sentiment was universal and undisputed, that manual labor in itself, and any labor when prosecuted for pay, was degrading; personal services which involved touching the person of another were also regarded as especially demeaning to him who performed them. If bread and butter were obtained in return for social functions performed, it must be disguised in some form of honorarium; it would dishonor a man to take wages. The only honorable forms of effort were fighting, ruling, and ecclesiastical functions. This is the militant theory of the comparative worth of social functions; it proceeds logically and properly from the standpoint of fighting men as the predominant and most important class in the community.

We have to thank the commanding influence of classicalism in our modern education for the strength which this tradition still has in the modern world. It has less weight in the United States than anywhere else in the world; but it must be borne in mind that the United States constitute the first human society of any importance in which other notions have ever prevailed or have ever been generally professed. An American will be sure to be astonished, on the continent of Europe, by the scruples and mannerisms with which professional men surround the acceptance of the remuneration which they are quite as eager to get as any Yankee; it looks as if they were ashamed of their livelihood, or felt themselves lowered by taking what they have fairly earned. It is not worth while to seek such evidence of the renmants of the same sentiment as one could find among ourselves.

The feudal period produced a new and still more intense development of the same sentiment in a somewhat changed form. All the industrial forms of livelihood were regarded as servile in comparison with the functions of the fighting classes and their ecclesiastical allies. The learned class were on the line between, unless they sought ecclesiastical rank, or, later, as legists, made themselves independently necessary.

It is only very slowly that the notions of an industrial and commercial civilization have fought their way during the last five hundred years against the militant notions. The latter have had and still largely retain the aroma of aristocracy; therefore, they are affected by many who do not understand them. The dictum that labor is noble, or dignified, has been a watchword of industrialism in its struggle to assert itself against militancy; but the industrial classes, as fast as they have attained wealth, have deserted industrialism to seek alliance with aristocracy, or to adopt the modes of life which the militant tradition marks as more honorable.

The revolt against the notion that some forms of useful service to society are in themselves more worthy than others, is as yet, therefore, by no means complete. The so-called labor movement is full of evidence that the old notions still prevail in the manual labor classes; that those classes do not themselves heartily believe in the dignity of labor; that they are not proud of their own social functions; that they have been imbued by their leaders, not with honorable self-respect and a spirit of determination to vindicate their own worth in the social body, but only with enough vague aspiration to produce an irritated sense of inferiority. The socialistic movement bears strongest evidence to the strength of the old traditions; the assertions of fact from which it starts, in respect to the position, relations, rights, and wrongs of classes, are all obtained by applying the feudal traditions to the existing situation. The socialists by no means urge that the hod-carrier and the statesman in existing society shall be regarded as performing functions each in his way useful to society and both equally honorable if performed with equal fidelity. That is the bourgeois and capitalistic doctrine. The socialists assume that the two are not now equally worthy in popular esteem or social weight, or, consequently, in industrial fact, and they assert that the existing order must be changed so as to make them equal, not in worth, but in the personal enjoyment which can be won from the social functions and in the ideals of humanity which can be attained through them.

I have before me an article produced by this discussion, but belonging, not to the socialist or semi-socialist but to the sentimental school, in which it is affirmed that manual or operative labor is brutalizing. This is in direct contradiction with the doctrine that labor is ennobling, which is what the sentimentalists have been telling us for a century. The contrast which the writer has in mind is between manual or factory labor and labor with a larger intellectual element in it; he seeks to establish his contention by describing the long factory hours, the close confinement, the irksome constraint, etc. What, then, shall we infer? Is the sweet doctrine that labor is dignified and ennobling all wrong? Were the ancients right? Is labor for pay always degrading, and does it become worse and worse as we go down the grades from those occupations which have the most brain-work and least manual work to those which have the most manual work and least brain-work? The issue is dear and it is not difficult; it would do great good to solve it completely, for it would clear up our ideas on many topics which are at present in confusion.

I maintain that labor has no moral quality at all. Every function in social work which is useful to society is just as meritorious in every way as any other; each being suitable and an object of choice to the person who performs it. The moral quality depends on the way in which it is performed. The social estimate and the personal worth which should be ascribed to social functions depends on the way in which the man we have in mind does his duty. It is not capable of generalization, and there is no reason for generalizing it.

The educational value of different social functions is equal, and the degree of human perfection which can be got out of them is equal. It develops a man in all moral excellence, and in all that vague "elevation" which plays such a prominent part in social speculation just as much to be a good and faithful hod-carrier as to be a good and faithful statesman.

Labor does not brutalize—the distinction between manual and other labor in this respect is invalid. The people who are accustomed to factory work are not conscious of the hardships which a literary man may easily imagine that they must feel in it, any more than other men are conscious of hardship in the confinement of the editorial sanctum or the laboratory. It is only in literature or in the semi-loafer class that we find people actually reflecting and moralizing and complaining about whether the way in which they get their living is irksome. It is overwork which is brutalizing, and it is immaterial whether it is manual or intellectual work; but, as I said at the beginning, it is rarely that a man who is really overworked is in a position to say freely whether he will submit to it and be brutalized or not. Probably that is the reason why so few of that class pay any attention to the discussion, or ever make any complaint.