Work in strict moderation is health. It is necessary
to Hfe, but it is not life. We should not make life sub-
servient to work, but work subservient to life. The
most important, the most valuable product of any in-
dustry is the type of man and woman that it turns
out. Work is far from being the biggest and most im-
portant thing in the world. Indeed, it is only vital,
important, and valuable in so far as it is the means of
growth, either for the individual or for the com-
munity. Yet we are unconsciously coming to regard



THE HYGIENE OF WORK 219

work as more important than life; and the moment
that any proposal is made to regulate or restrain it in
the interests of the worker, the cry is raised, as of one
aghast at sacrilege, that we are "interfering with
BUSINESS!"

The real purpose of work is to build up the State
and develop men, and not to build up industries or
rear monuments for kings and conquerors. It is
neither the amount nor the intensity of the work that
counts, but the ends to which it is devoted. We can
easily see, at this distance of historical perspective,
how much better it would have been for Egypt if the
colossal labor wasted in building the pyramids had
been expended in building a dam across the Nile. But
hundreds of thousands of us to-day are building monu-
ments of industry pyramids; of wealth to ourselves, or
to others, as useless as the pyramids, as cumbrous as
Cleopatra's Needle, while neglecting the labors which
would give bread to this generation and new life to
generations yet to come. For the sake of living, we
let industry crush out and destroy the things that
make life really worth living, — health, happiness,
and honor.
