I do not anticipate from this change all the advantages which some Socialist writers expect. Their schemes of high universal prosperity seem to me to have an absurdly slender basis of actual work. Mr. William Morris conjectured that if all of us were to work for four hours a day there would be enough produced for all of us to live in luxury; whereas Mr. Sidney Webb calculates that it would need six hours' work a day, on the part of all, to produce the necessaries of life. It is true that a very large body of middlemen, commercial travellers, footmen and other servants, and duplicate workers in rival industries would be set free for sound productive or distributive or professional work; but the easing of the hours of our actual workers, the removal of the young from the market, and other collateral improvements, must be taken into account. If we take one hour a day from the actual workers in our heavier industries, we absorb at once more than a million new men without increasing production. In any case, it is lamentable to dangle before the eyes of men the ideal of working only four hours a day. We want more of Browning's gospel of work with cheerfulness. No doubt the idea is that, if the hours of labour are reduced, the leisure will be employed in reading Bergson and mastering Brahms. This optimistic theory seems to be at variance with our experience. Improvement of financial position more usually means the substitution of Bass or Dewar for cheap ale, and of stalls for the gallery at the variety theatre. A later chapter will, however, discuss our interests in this connection.