c life
without the spur of palaeolithic hunger. But my own work brought me into
contact with an unprivileged class, whose degree of freedom was the
special product of modern industrial civilisation, and on whose use of
their freedom the future of civilisation may depend. A clever young
mechanic, at the age when the Wanderjahre of the medieval craftsman used
to begin, would come home after tending a 'speeded up' machine from 8
A.M., with an hour's interval, till 5 P.M. At 6 P.M. he had finished his
tea in the crowded living-room of his mother's house, and was 'free' to
do what he liked. That evening, perhaps, his whole being tingled with
half-conscious desires for love, and adventure, and knowledge, and
achievement. On another day he might have gone to a billiard match at
his club, or have hung round the corner for a girl who smiled at him as
he left the factory, or might have sat on his bed and ground at a
chapter of Marx or Hobson. But this evening he saw his life as a whole.
The way of living that had been implied in the religious lessons at
school seemed strangely irrelevant; but still he felt humble, and kind,
and anxious for guidance. Should he aim at marriage, and if so should he
have children at once or at all? If he did not marry, could he avoid
self-contempt and disease? Should he face the life of a socialist
organiser, with its strain and uncertainty, and the continual
possibility of disillusionment? Should he fill up every evening with
technical classes, and postpone his ideals until he had become rich? And
if he became rich what should he do with his money? Meanwhile, there was
the urgent impulse to walk and think; but where should he walk to, and
with whom?
The young schoolmistress, in her bed-sitting-room a few streets off, was
in no better case. She and a friend sat late last night, agreeing that
the life they were living was no real life at all; but what was the
alternative? Had the 'home duties' to which her High Church sister
devoted herself with devastating self-sacrifice any more meaning? Ought
she, with her eyes open, and without much hope of spontaneous love, to
enter into the childless 'modern' marriage which alone seemed possible
for her? Ought she to spend herself in a reckless campaign for the
suffrage? Meanwhile, she had had her tea, her eyes were too tired to
read, and what on earth should she do till bedtime?
Such moments of clear self-questioning were of course rare, but the
nerve-frett
|