Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
As to the Wages of Work there might innumerable things be said;
there will and must yet innumerable things be said and spoken, in
St. Stephen's and out of St. Stephen's; and gradually not a few
things be ascertained and written, on Law-parchment, concerning
this very matter:--'Fair day's-wages for a fair day's-work' is
the most unrefusable demand! Money-wages 'to the extent of
keeping your worker alive that he may work more;' these, unless
you mean to dismiss him straightway out of this world, are
indispensable alike to the noblest Worker and to the least noble!
One thing only I will say here, in special reference to the
former class, the noble and noblest; but throwing light on all
the other classes and their arrangements of this difficult
matter: The 'wages' of every noble Work do yet lie in Heaven or
else Nowhere. Not in Bank-of-England bills, in Owen's Labour-
bank, or any the most improved establishment of banking and
money-changing, needest thou, heroic soul, present thy account of
earnings. Human banks and labour-banks know thee not; or know
thee after generations and centuries have passed away, and thou
art clean gone from 'rewarding,'--all manner of bank-drafts,
shoptills, and Downing-street Exchequers lying very invisible, so
far from thee! Nay, at bottom, dost thou need any reward? Was
it thy aim and life-purpose to be filled with good things for thy
heroism; to have a life of pomp and ease, and be what men call
'happy,' in this world, or in any other world? I answer for thee
deliberately, No. The whole spiritual secret of the new epoch
lies in this, that thou canst answer for thyself, with thy whole
clearness of head and heart, deliberately, No.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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