we might get
handsomely done by the Good Will of emancipated mankind. For all who
really make, who really do, the imperative of gain is the
inconvenience, the enemy. Every artist, every scientific investigator,
every organizer, every good workman, knows that. Every good architect
knows that this is so and can tell of time after time when he has
sacrificed manifest profit and taken a loss to get a thing done as he
wanted it done, right and well; every good doctor, too, has turned
from profit and high fees to the moving and interesting case, to the
demands of knowledge and the public health; every teacher worth his or
her salt can witness to the perpetual struggle between business
advantage and right teaching; every writer has faced the alternative
of his aesthetic duty and the search for beauty on one hand and the
"saleable" on the other. All this is as true of ordinary making as of
special creative work. Every plumber capable of his business hates to
have to paint his leadwork; every carpenter knows the disgust of
turning out unfinished "cheap" work, however well it pays him; every
tolerable cook can feel shame for an unsatisfying dish, and none the
less shame because by making it materials are saved and economies
achieved.

And yet, with all these facts clear as day before any observant
person, _we are content to live on in an economic system that raises
every man who subordinates these wholesome prides and desires to
watchful, incessant getting, over the heads of every other type of
character_; that in effect gives all the power and influence in our
State to successful getters; that subordinates art, direction, wisdom
and labour to these inferior narrow men, these men who clutch and
keep.

Our social system, based on Private Ownership, encourages and
glorifies this spirit of gain, and cripples and thwarts the spirit of
service. You need but have your eyes once opened to its influence, and
thereafter you will never cease to see how the needs and imperatives
of property taint the honour and dignity of human life. Just where
life should flower most freely into splendour, this chill, malign
obsession most nips and cripples. The law that makes getting and
keeping an imperative necessity poisons and destroys the freedom of
men and women in love, in art and in every concern in which spiritual
or physical beauty should be the inspiring and determining factor.
Behind all the handsome professions of romantic natures the gaun