so far that at present, in English law, the penalty for deserting a vindictive wife, if you are a wage-earner, is imprisonment for life.[1] In spite of this tendency, wage-earners, as yet, in good times, suffer less instinctive repression than professionals, because they are less dominated by respectability and snobbery. Nevertheless, the failure to satisfy instinctive needs is serious, particularly as regards spontaneity., The effect shows itself in love of excitement, thoughtless sentimentalism, and (in the more intelligent) hatred of richer people or of foreign nations.
It is evident that the first steps towards a cure for these evils are being taken by the trade unions, in those parts of their policy which are most criticized, such as restriction of output, refusal to believe that the only necessity is more production, shortening of hours, and so on. It is only by these methods that industrialism can be humanized and can realize the possibilities of good which are latent in it. It could be used to lighten physical labour, and to set men free for more agreeable activities. Hitherto, the competitive system has prevented its being so used. It should have made life more leisurely, but it has made it more hustling. Increase of leisure, diminution of hustle, are the ends to be sought, not mere quantitative increase of production. The trade unions have clearly perceived this, and have persisted in spite of lectures from every kind of middle- or upper-class pundit. This is one reason why there is more hope from self-government in industry than from State Socialism. The Bolsheviks, when they had established State Socialism, ranged themselves on the side of the worst capitalists on all the matters we have been considering. It is obvious that this must always be the case when conditions of work are determined bureaucratically by officials, instead of by the workers themselves.
Friendly Feeling. It is impossible to find any single phrase to describe adequately the whole of what I wish to include under this head. I can, I think, best explain by avoiding hackneyed words
- ↑ This fact is not generally known. The mechanism is as follows: The Court makes an order for maintenance, the wife makes a scandal where the man is employed, he is dismissed, cannot pay the maintenance, and is imprisoned for contempt of Court. He is legally liable for maintenance even while in prison; therefore on the very day he comes out his wife can have him put back for not paying maintenance during the period of his first imprisonment. And so0 it goes on until he dies or she is glutted with vengeance. This is not a fancy picture, as any one who knows prisoners can testify.
