ional enjoyment of life.
There is no need to quote here to the contrary the long and sustained
toil of the pioneer, the eager labor of the student, unmindful of the
silent hours, or the fierce acquisitive activity of the money-maker that
knows no pause. Activities such as these differ with a whole sky from
the wage-work of the modern industrial worker. The task in one case is
done for its own sake. It is life itself. The other is done only for the
sake of the wage it brings. It is, or should be, a mere preliminary to
living.

Let it be granted, of course, that a certain amount of work is an
absolute necessity for human character. There is no more pathetic
spectacle on our human stage than the figure of poor puppy in his beach
suit and his tuxedo jacket seeking in vain to amuse himself for ever. A
leisure class no sooner arises than the melancholy monotony of amusement
forces it into mimic work and make-believe activities. It dare not face
the empty day.

But when all is said about the horror of idleness the broad fact remains
that the hours of work are too long. If we could in imagination
disregard for a moment all question of how the hours of work are to be
shortened and how production is to be maintained and ask only what would
be the ideal number of the daily hours of compulsory work, for
character's sake, few of us would put them at more than four or five.
Many of us, as applied to ourselves, at least, would take a chance on
character at two.

The shortening of the general hours of work, then, should be among the
primary aims of social reform. There need be no fear that with shortened
hours of labor the sum total of production would fall short of human
needs. This, as has been shown from beginning to end of this essay, is
out of the question. Human _desires_ would eat up the result of ten
times the work we now accomplish. Human _needs_ would be satisfied with
a fraction of it. But the real difficulty in the shortening of hours
lies elsewhere. Here, as in the parallel case of the minimum wage, the
danger is that the attempt to alter things too rapidly may dislocate the
industrial machine. We ought to attempt such a shortening as will strain
the machine to a breaking point, but never break it. This can be done,
as with the minimum wage, partly by positive legislation and partly
collective action. Not much can be done at once. But the process can be
continuous. The short hours achieved with acclamation to-day will l