o be in love with one's work is an important condition of happiness. Men and women stake all the charm of life upon two decisions, career and marriage. To delight in a job, to love and be loved, are the two trump-cards in the great game of life in which the playing must be so canny.

How many parents condemn their children forever to the ranks of the unskilled laborer by setting them to work that requires no training simply because the children may begin to earn a little money at once! With the aid of cunning posters, such as, "Pay from the start," traffickers in children entice these little workers into misery, and put them at once to sweeping, and to running errands that they are pleased to run because of the excitement of small tips. The old and sound tradition of apprenticeship did not allow a salary to be given to a child. He was merely a pupil to receive training in his craft. The abuse lay in exploiting rather than instructing him, in using him only for chores and ends of work, in making him a beast of burden. But a house soon won a bad name if it did not give its apprentices a thorough training. Many workmen took pride in remembering their first years of instruction, and spoke with gratitude of those who had taught them.

The present-day system of labor, which compels a man to spend his life performing the same machine-like

series of acts, a system that brings him a pay-check from the outset, tends to increase the number of unskilled child laborers. Such a condition spells misfortune not only for the individual, but for the nation. It makes for a type of man who is not going to stick to one job. In the long run discontented labor will ruin a nation.

We are, however, drawing close to a time when idleness will become a disgrace. An able-bodied man who does no work of any sort will be classified, according to the new scheme of social values, as a thief and a crook. It is one of the amazing facts of the present that a young and husky man may, by the mere possession of money, be able to indulge in idleness. The custom of buying the right to escape military service has disappeared. It is legally impossible in French law not to join a regiment unless one is known to be sick or crippled.

French law forces men into military service, but does not force them to work.

Public opinion, nevertheless, is changing. The idle rich are no longer honored as they used to be. We are beginning to have a contempt for the assured ease brought about by the mere possession of money. What should money mean but a power devoted to the interest of work, a commodity such as cotton, coal, steel? That no able-bodied man may, however rich, escape work, and that in the

choice of a career the primary consideration be given to the natural aptitudes of the individual child, are the two outstanding conditions which make for the strength of any nation. In a word, the strength of a nation is to be defined in terms of its working capacity.

A country with many thrifty families of independent means would head straight toward decay and ruin. To manufacture, to cultivate, to sell, are unquestionable necessities. A national taste for work will never be created by a mere interest in profits, any more than the desire for immediate earnings can transform the child into a skilled laborer proud of his task. Work must have a soul. Inevitably one must return to the old ideal of doing the job for the job's sake.

It is as important to reëstablish the dignity of labor as it is to enforce hygiene in factories. To pretend that this is no longer possible in an era of machinery is to declare that all human labor is imbecile and that conditions making for happiness are a thing of the past rather than a hope of the future. The soul of labor must not die while mechanical means are developing at a great pace. The unrest of our time can be traced to the increase in mechanical specialization and the decrease in the spiritual quality brought to one's labor. Disgust for the dirty work of life degrades civilization even though civilization believes that it is striving for greater efficiency. Faith in work must be recreated. The great war has shown the power latent in the exertions of mankind-a power which, wrongly directed, can bring about the extermination of mankind. France's devastated regions are a product of war factories.

Let us suppose this power concentrated on the well-being of humanity. Let us suppose that its momentum is the same, and that the World-War industry has become world-peace industry. Now, if men sought their salvation with the same frenzy with which they then sought their downfall, war would be eradicated. Instead of millions of corpses, we would have, thanks to an existence made bearable, children bursting with life; instead of ruins of masonry heaped up by human rage, crumbling walls which are breeding-grounds of tuberculosis, and all the diseases lurking in wretched holes, we would have homes amply supplied with air and light amidst gardens basking in sunshine.

France, having been the scene of the greatest effort of war, is now compelled to become the scene of the greatest effort of work. She will prove equal to this and stand out as a great example if she will take active legal steps against the disgrace of idleness.

Etiquette makes it an offense to refuse an invitation to a dance even if you are known to be in the habit of rising early to work. To put on your best clothes for a reception and to give up your seat to a lady are acts of elementary courtesy. Quainter still are the rules of politeness among the working-classes. To refuse a drink from a pal is nothing short of an insult. To be vexed by some one's refusal to "have a drop" is a survival of the sacred character of classic libations. "Let us have a drink together" are words which remind us of the gods. On this particular point the middleclass spirit and the labor-class spirit are not at variance. For both, refusal

is a discourtesy, a sign of haughtiness. But when it comes to work, etiquette assumes a new force. The workman says, "Make way for the working-man," and he himself follows the slogan. Here the politeness that offers its seat to a lady goes by the board. The right to be seated no longer belongs to the young woman, but to the man with a burden.

This attitude toward work drives a wedge between the two social standards. A well educated man considers it quite beneath his dignity to defraud another of even a dollar, but as a corporation shareholder his conscience is, of course, more elastic. The workman who picks his comrade's pocket is ostracized, and the worst punishment is visited upon him by his former associates, who now refuse to shake his hand and take a drink with him. To call the police because you have been the victim of a pickpocket is very bad form. For such a call, murder is the only excuse.

To take goods from the workroom is not wrong if the amount taken consists only of the scraps which the workman really earns by his personal skill in handling the supply given to him to cut a pattern. Every honest workman considers that claiming the scraps is in no wise stealing. The dressmaker who deliberately cuts into the piece and takes yards of cloth is a thief. If she appropriates, however, only those pieces which are left over because of her skill in cutting and planning, she is within her rights. These remnants are in reality the product of the employee's skilful handling, and only a niggardly employer would dare claim them. In match factories, to put a box in one's pocket is quite proper, but to go off

with a dozen, intending to sell them, is a different matter.

Etiquette, obsessed with details, has become obsolete. Kissing ladies' hands, bows, and cringes are out of date, but good taste, that sense of proprieties which give the right of way to the man with a burden, must govern a society endeavoring to restore itself through the strength and law of its crafts. Compulsory labor, imminent throughout all civilized countries, will strongly modify the quality of prejudices.

The load-bearer, sweating and bowed, will no more be looked upon as an uncouth reprobate; nay, he will become the man of honor. Sports have already created the habit of glorifying physical effort, even the most unpleasant, such, for example, as a brutal boxing-match.

Is it absurd to think that the gesture of striking an anvil may one day achieve the popularity of the gesture of the prize-fighter or the cricketer? Is the honor of a sport established only by the practical uselessness of its gesture? To knock a ball with a stick three hundred yards across a meadow and then to take a different stick and pop it down a little hole, acts which they call golf, is not as urgent for the health of a community as street-cleaning. Sport and work oppose two varieties of human gestures, one producing the indispensable commodities of life, carrying its burden, holding its tools; the other engendering playthat is to say, activity which has within itself its own ends, being recreation for the man who indulges in it and amusement for the looker-on.

Let us bestow the same social regard on a craft as on a sport, and at last a new code of honor will be in

stituted-a code awaited for over two thousand years. St. Paul's words, too, will then have their fulfilment: "If any will not work, neither let him eat."

Handling a tennis-racket, a fencingfoil, a pair of boxing-gloves, attracts more social consideration than throwing a weaver's shuttle, pressing a graving-tool, or swinging a hammer. The outlines of these gestures, however, are not very different, but the quality of appreciation bestowed on each is wide apart indeed, the less useful being the more honored.

There are few championships in the world for the handling of a tool. Universal competition is organized in the skilled use of death-dealing weapons, for pugilism, for wrestling, for the sword; in short, for all forms of combativeness.

§3

In order to claim that there is something holy in work, need we prove that work can take the place of religion, or, rather, that the qualities that drive men to consecrate themselves unreservedly to their profession are qualities of holiness?

If a man loves his profession unto death, is he not a saint and a martyr? Saints of work are found in all crafts, from the lowest to the most respected. Was not Vatel one of these-Vatel who committed suicide because he ran short of fish for the guests of the Grand Condé? "The great Vatel, majordomo of M. Fouquet, formerly of the princely household, this man whose level-headedness enabled him to embrace all the cares of state; this man with whom I was personally acquainted, on being apprised that this morning at eight o'clock the fish

had not arrived, was unable to stand the blow which he thought would overwhelm him, and thereupon stabbed himself."

This man's job was to attend to the preparation of food, lowly task indeed. To provide for appetites, gluttony, and greediness is not a noble profession. Culinary art, refined as it may be, never weighs much in our esteem. Crafts that are the most useful are not those that are bowed to. The cook is not much above the street-sweeper in public estimation. Now, this business of catering to the palate has also its hero, a man who died for it. What zeal must one bring to one's job to choose death rather than imperfection! The suicide of Vatel proves the quality of his life. "My head is dizzy," he cries. "For twelve nights I have not slept!"

It is something to deny oneself rest, to be incapable of indifference. This attitude is exaggerated, but what would remain of heroism and holiness without those things that are uncommon to common sense? The glory of those who sacrifice themselves is the purest, and here at last we have a man who deserved it supremely, a man whose job was merely looking after victuals. Killing one's self for one's job is not equivalent, perhaps, to dying for the fatherland; it is, nevertheless, something to die for that which one loves. Sancho Panza, of course, would have got out of it in another way, and would have goodhumoredly advised the guests to suck their thumbs while they waited. This sort of common sense knows nothing of holiness. Vatel, madly in love with his profession, gave his life for it. His was a mad and great action. His was a holy action.

The king and his courtiers said that his death was due to "his having such a sense of honor in his own way." The King of France had not the point of view of the workman. It was impossible for him to gage the true asset of professional loyalty to the state and to see that the glory of France was better assured by men who did their jobs well than by a nobility which gloried in having no job at all.

Those for whom Vatel killed himself, fearing that he could not serve them decently, saw in their own contempt for work a condition of their honor. They would make themselves less honorable by using their hands or attending to a business. Money earned in industry and commerce was plebeian. Nobility maintained its selfrespect only by enriching itself through idleness or war. "Kill, but do not create," was their motto. Vatel's way of having a sense of honor was amazing to the wits, stunned at the idea that a man could love his profession to the death.

There is a holiness in work, as there is in religion. Its essential quality lies in self-sacrifice. Monks may accomplish this through contemplation and good deeds. The holiness of work is primarily beyond contemplation. It demands sweat. Who toiled with more piety than Bernard Palissy, who in the history of French labor is a patron saint of ceramics, gifted with a perseverance that would not admit defeat and was therefore superior to Vatel, whose chagrin was fatal. Vatel was unable to stand a few hours of humiliation. Bernard Palissy, who had at least as many good reasons for committing suicide, never gave in to ceaseless hardships. In order to succeed in making ceramic enamel he

burned his furniture and his peace of mind. Deemed crazy by his neighbors, in constant bickerings with his wife, he stuck patiently to one set purpose, and at last succeeded in beholding the face of God awaiting him in the flame that glazed his pottery. He had the faith of a saint and the endurance of a martyr.

"Heat, frost, winds, rains and overflowing gutters spoiled the greatest part of my work before it had time to bake. I spent many years with nothing to cover my kilns; I was every night at the mercy of showers and blasts, and except, perhaps, for hooting screech-owls on one side and howling dogs on the other, never found help or comfort. Once in a while storms and tempests arose which blew out my fire, so that forthwith I would be constrained to drop everything, which meant the utter loss of my efforts. More often than not, I went soaking wet, because of the pouring heavens; on my way home at midnight or at dawn I looked like a man dragged through the gutters of the town, reeling as if drunk, full of sorrows, crushed by failure. Worst of all, retiring thus soiled and drenched, I found in my chamber a new persecution which, to-day, makes me marvel that I did not collapse under the weight of excruciating sadness."

Catholic hagiography has no figure so great as that of St. Vincent de Paul, who was not pleased only to pray for his fellow-men, but who toiled with his hands for their salvation. The halo of the sanctity of work is to be found also around the figure of Bernard Palissy. This potter's fortitude ranks with the greatest qualities that lend the sign of nobility to human nature. His was not an aggressive energy, torturing his neighbor for profit