It is urged against equality that unless a person can earn more than another by working harder she will not work harder or longer. The reply is that it is neither fair nor desirable that she should work harder or longer. In factory and machine industry extra exertion is not possible: collective work goes on at the engine’s speed and stops when the engine stops. The incentive of extra pay does not appeal to the slacker, whose object is to avoid work at any cost. The cure for that is direct compulsion. What is needed is an incentive to the community as a whole to choose a high standard of living rather than a lazy and degraded one, all standards being possible. Inequality of income is not merely useless for this purpose, but defeats it. The problem of the Dirty Work. On examination we discover that as it is done mostly by the worst paid people it is not provided for at present by the incentive of extra pay. We discover also that some of the very dirtiest work is done by professional persons of gentle nurture without exceptional incomes. The objection to dirty work is really an objection to work that carries a stigma of social inferiority. The really effective incentive to work is our needs, which are equal, and include leisure. 72 24 THE TYRANNY OF NATURE The race must perish through famine if it stops working. Nobody calls this natural obligation to work slavery, the essence of which is being compelled to carry another ablebodied person’s burden of work as well as one’s own. Pleasurable toil and toilsome pleasure. General ignorance of the art of enjoying life. The imposture of our commercially provided amusements. Working for fun is more recreative than wasting time and money. Monotonous work makes even a painful change welcome: hence our hideous excursion train holidays. Labor is doing what we must; leisure is doing what we like; rest, or doing nothing, is a necessity imposed by work, and is not leisure. Work can be so absorbing that it can become a craze like the craze for drink. Herbert Spencer’s warning. 80 25 THE POPULATION QUESTION