would necessarily perish without it. If this is an evil, and is unavoidable, our aim must be to have as little of it as is possible. This aim will be realized by making the hours of industrial labour as short as is compatible with the production of necessaries, and leaving the remaining hours of the day entirely untrammelled. Four hours' boredom a day is a thing which most people could endure; and this is probably about what would be required.
In many other respects, the restraints upon instinct which now exist could be greatly diminished. Production at present has two correlative defects: that it is competitive, and that it is thought important to produce as much as possible. A great deal less work is required now to produce a given amount of goods than was required before the industrial revolution, and yet people live at higher pressure than they did then. This is chiefly due to competition. An immense amount of labour is wasted in getting orders and securing markets. At times when there is a great deal of unemployment, those who are not unemployed are overworked, because otherwise employers could not make a profit. The competitive management of industry for profit is the source of the trouble. For the same reason there is a desire to maximize production, because, with industrial methods, the production of immense quantities of a commodity is more capable of yielding a profit than the production of moderate quantities.[1] The whole urgency of the modern business world is towards speeding up, greater efficiency, more intense international competition, when it ought to be towards more ease, less hurry, and combination to produce goods for use rather than profit. Competition, since the industrial revolution, is an anachronism, leading inevitably to all the evils of the modern world.
The sense of strain, which is characteristic of all grades in an industrial community from the highest to the lowest, is due to instinctive maladjustment. Every kind of failure to satisfy deep instinctive needs produces strain, but the manifestations are somewhat different according to the instinct which is thwarted. The chief needs thwarted by industrialism, as at present conducted, are: the need of spontaneous and variable activities, the need of occasional quiet and solitude, and the need of contact with the earth. This applies to the working classes, but in the middle
- ↑ Cf. R. Austin Freeman, Social Decay and Regeneration (Constable 1921) especially pages 10§-127.
