not get the comfort out of life we
easily could; and work far too hard for what we do get. Moreover, there
is no peace, no settled security. No man is sure of his living, no
matter how hard he works, a thousand things may occur to deprive him of
his job, or his income. In our time there is great excitement along this
line of study; and more than one proposition is advanced whereby we
may improve, most notably instanced in the world-covering advance of
Socialism.

In our present study the principal fact to be exhibited is the influence
of a male culture upon Social Economics and Industry.

Industry, as a department of Social Economics, is little understood.
Heretofore we have viewed this field from several wholly erroneous
positions. From the Hebrew (and wholly androcentric) religious teaching,
we have regarded labor as a curse.

Nothing could be more absurdly false. Labor is not merely a means of
supporting human life--it _is_ human life. Imagine a race of beings
living without labor! They must be the rudest savages.

Human work consists in specialized industry and the exchange of its
products; and without it is no civilization. As industry develops,
civilization develops; peace expands; wealth increases; science and art
help on the splendid total. Productive industry, and its concomitant of
distributive industry cover the major field of human life.

If our industry was normal, what should we see?

A world full of healthy, happy people; each busily engaged in what he
or she most enjoys doing. Normal Specialization, like all our
voluntary processes, is accompanied by keen pleasure; and any check or
interruption to it gives pain and injury. Whosoever works at what he
loves is well and happy. Whoso works at what he does not love is ill and
miserable. It is very bad economics to force unwilling industry. That is
the weakness of slave labor; and of wage labor also where there is not
full industrial education and freedom of choice.

Under normal conditions we should see well developed, well trained
specialists happily engaged in the work they most enjoyed; for
reasonable hours (any work, or play either, becomes injurious if done
too long); and as a consequence the whole output of the world would be
vastly improved, not only in quantity but in quality.

Plain are the melancholy facts of what we do see. Following that pitiful
conception of labor as a curse, comes the very old and androcentric
habit of despising it as b