Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
Many things for the Working Aristocracy, in their exteme need, to
consider. A national Existence supposed to depend on 'selling
cheaper' than any other People. Let inventive men try to invent
a little how cotton at its present cheapness could be somewhat
justlier divided. Many 'imposibilities' will have to become
possible. Supply-and-demand: For what noble work was there ever
yet any audible 'demand' in that poor sense?
Chap. X. _Plugson of Undershot_
Man's Philosophies usually the 'supplement of his practice:'
Symptoms of social death. Cash-Payment: The Plugson Ledger, and
the Tablets of heaven's Chancery, discrepant exceedingly. All
human things do require to have an Ideal in them. How murderous
fighting became a 'glorious Chivalry.' Noble devout-hearted
Chevaliers. Ignoble Bucaniers and Chactaw Indians: Howel
Davies, Napoleon flung out, at last, to St. Helena; the latter
end of him sternly compensating for the beginning. The
indomitable Plugson, as yet a Bacanier and Chactaw. William
Conqueror and his Norman followers. Organisation of Labour:
Courage, there are yet many brave men in England!
Chap. XI. _Labour_
A perennial nobleness and even sacredness in Work. Significance
of the Potter's Wheel. Blessed is he who has found his Work;
let him ask no other blessedness. A brave Sir Christopher, and
his Paul's Cathedral: Every noble work at first 'impossible.'
Columbus royalest Sea-king of all: a depth of Silence, deeper
than the Sea; a silence unsoundable; known to God only.
Chap. XII. _Reward_
Work is worship: Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in
Heaven. One monster there is in the world, the idle man. 'Fair
day's-wages for a fair day's-work,' the most unrefusable demand.
The 'wages' of every noble Work in Heaven, or else Nowhere: The
brave man has to _give_ his Life away. He that works bodies
forth the form of Things Unseen. Strange mystic affinity of
Wisdom and Insanity: All Work, in its degree, a making of
Madness sane. Labour not a devil, even when encased in
Mammonism: The unredeemed ugliness, a slothful People. The
vulgarist Plugson of a Master-Worker, not a man to strangle by
Corn-Laws and Shotbelts.
Chap. XIII. _Democracy_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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