Labor and Production

T HE desire to achieve something is one of the most deep-rooted of human instincts. How keenly every normal man, whether he be a millionaire or governor, or one of the masses of men whom one passes on the street, or meets at some public gathering-how keenly every normal man rises in spirit at the thought that he has personally accomplished something, or that he has himself had some substantial part in doing that which he or others consider to be clever, or well done. To bring to pass that which he has set out to do, to overcome in triumph some privateor better yet a public-obstacle, the ordinary man will often undergo serious deprivation; and, it may be, struggle on for years without wholly giving a thing up. But if finally he is successful, the whole struggle will be looked back on as a great event and a great pleasure. It is, therefore, only by a strange perversity of things that a large proportion of the people who worktoday find themselves compelled to neglect one of their most natural human instincts, and spend their lives in doing that in which they have little or no interest. It would indeed be the greatest gain that could possibly come to labor for it to find some way in which it might have a part in that great effort for the production of goods, for which industry exists and in which labor's body is already engaged. For labor would then, in fact, be free; industry would be its

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