Home Problems from a New StandpointHunt, Caroline Louisa
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Home Problems from a New Standpoint
Hunt, Caroline Louisa
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Without attempting to analyze all the changes which resulted in the
worker’s present hapless condition, it may be said that the loss of his
joy in labor was directly due to loss of sympathy between him and the
consumer of his wares. This loss of sympathy was in turn due to a
separation which was partly physical and partly spiritual. The physical
separation took place when the producer went to live in a factory town
or in a city district devoted to manufacturing interests, and when the
consumer sought refuge in a suburb or in a city district boasting of its
freedom from factories. Ignorance on the part of each of the daily life
and needs of the other was the inevitable consequence of this form of
separation. The separation in spirit took place when the world divided
itself sharply into two groups--brain workers, on the one hand, who
joined themselves with the leisure classes to form a consuming public;
and manual laborers, on the other, who assumed all the handwork of
production. With the difference in the character of work and the loss of
common interests and aims which followed this division, there came an
estrangement more profound than that which mere distance has power to
effect.
If the producer is again to have delight in his work, sympathy between
him and the consumer must be restored. This will never take place so
long as the latter contents himself with good-natured, patronizing
expression of interest. The two must again know the fellow-feeling which
can come only from sharing a common life, common associations, and
common aspirations.
At present, when the workers are huddling themselves together around the
factories, and the buyers and users are withdrawing themselves to
country homes, while part of the consuming public is actively hostile to
the welfare of the producer, while another part is indifferent, and
while still another part, though neither hostile nor indifferent, is
handicapped by poverty and the pressure of daily needs, and almost
compelled to buy commodities in the cheapest market, without reference
to the conditions of their production, it seems idle to talk about
restoring sympathy. And yet, in spite of the apparent hopelessness of
the present situation, there is an occasional promising sign which
points to a better state of things in the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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