The Little Review, March 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 1)Various
General
The Little Review, March 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 1)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
Now, about work. What do you call work?—spending eight hours a day in an
office to help make somebody’s business a success, and incidentally to
earn the money for your bread and butter? But that’s a third of the time
you’re given on earth. Another third has to be spent in sleep, and the
last third in eating your dinner, “spending the evening,” getting
undressed, getting dressed, eating your breakfast, and catching your
train. I call that slavery. Work is something over which you can toil
twenty-four hours a day if you feel like it, because if you don’t your
life will have no meaning. It’s like art. What has the government to do
with your work? About as much as it had to do with Marconi’s brain when
he was conceiving his wireless.
What do you call recreation?—lounging in hotel lobbies, gossiping over
tea tables, going to the movies? All right. But what has the government
got to do with it? Or do you call it walking, riding, reading, lying in
the sun? The government doesn’t give you good legs or a motor car or
books or a stretch of beach to lie on. But it can keep some of the best
books away from you and close up the bathing beaches on the hottest
October day. Maybe you call recreation what it really means:
_re-creation_. That means the time and the leisure to invite your soul.
You’ve got government: have you got either time or leisure?
And as for love.... You love some one who loves you, and the world is
good. Or you love some one who doesn’t love you and the world is hell.
Or you love and love and can find no one to love. Or you love and cannot
give, or love and cannot take, or maybe you cannot love at all. And
where is the government all this time?
The government can bring you a letter from some one you love. But why
must even that be done with graft?
Some one assaults a woman in a dark alley, you say, and where would we
be without the government? What has that to do with love, first? Now
clear up your minds: have you ever imagined why these things happen?
Because some people are vicious, you say. But every one is vicious—every
one who has life in him. You are: only you can take it out on your wife
or on whatever prostitutes you can afford, or in eating large dinners,
or in joy rides, in vulgar parties, in the movies, in luxury, in fads,
in art, even in religion. It just depends upon your type. The point is
that you have your outlets and the other wretch hasn’t. And second,
since these things are always happening and you have plenty of chances
to see how the government deals with them, the only sensible question
left for you to ask is: _Why aren’t they dealt with?_ You’ve got
government and you’ve got crime on the increase. May it be that you will
ever see this: that the thing needs _treat-ment_, not _govern-ment_?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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