But when all possible allowances are made for these idiosyncrasies it remains true that it is much easier to find a boy who wants to be a gardener or an engine driver, and a girl who wants to be a film actress or a telephone operator, than a boy who wants to be a sewerman, or a girl who wants to be a ragpicker. A great deal can be done to make unpopular occupations more agreeable; and some of them can be got rid of altogether, and would have been got rid of long ago if there had been no class of very poor and rough people to put them upon. Smoke and soot can be done away with; sculleries can be made much pleasanter than most solicitors’ offices; the unpleasantness of a sewerman’s work is already mostly imaginary; coal mining may be put an end to by using the tides to produce electric power; and there are many other ways in which work which is now repulsive can be made no irksomer than the general run of necessary labor. But until this happens all the people who have no particular fancy one way or the other will want to do the pleasanter sorts of work. Fortunately there is a way of equalizing the attraction of different occupations. And this brings us to that very important part of our lives that we call our leisure. Sailors call it their liberty. There is one thing that we all desire; and that is freedom. By this we mean freedom from any obligation to do anything except just what we like, without a thought of tomorrow’s dinner or any other of the necessities that make slaves of us. We are free only as long as we can say “My time is my own”. When workers working ten hours a day agitate for an eight-hour day, what they really want is not eight hours work instead of ten, but sixteen hours off duty instead of fourteen. And out of this sixteen hours must come eight hours sleep and a few hours for eating and drinking, dressing and undressing, washing and resting; so that even with an eight hours working day the real leisure of the workers: that is, the time they have after they are properly rested and fed and cleaned up and ready for any adventures or amusements or hobbies they care for, is no more than a few hours; and these few are reduced in value by the shortness of daylight in winter, and cut down by the time it takes to get into the country or wherever is the best place to enjoy oneself. Married women, whose working place is the man’s home, want to get away from home for recreation, just as men want to get away from the places where they work; in fact a good deal of our domestic quarrelling arises because the man wants to spend his leisure at home whilst the woman wants to spend hers abroad. Women love hotels: men hate them.