to wealth as the only means of pleasure. It is not that
men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot endure
their own; for they feel that the kind of labour to which they are
condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men. . . .
We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilised
invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is
not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men--divided
into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments and crumbs of
life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man
is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the
point of a pin, or the head of a nail. . . . And the great cry that
rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast,
is all, in very deed, for this--that we manufacture everything there
except men. . . . And all the evil to which that cry is urging our
myriads can be met only . . . by a right understanding, on the part of
all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and
making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or
beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the
workman." [44]

Morris' contributions to the literature of Socialism include, besides his
romance, "News from Nowhere," two volumes of verse, "Poems by the Way"
(1891)and "The Dream of John Ball"; together with "Socialism: Its Growth
and Outcome" (1893), an historical sketch of the subject written in
collaboration with Mr. E. Belfort Bax. Mackail also describes a
satirical interlude, entitled "The Tables Turned, or Nupkins Awakened,"
which was acted thrice at Farringden Road in the autumn of 1887--a
Socialistic farce in the form of a mediaeval miracle play--a conjunction
quite typical of the playwright's political principles and literary
preferences. Morris' ideal society, unlike Ruskin's, included no feudal
elements; there was no room in it for kings, or nobles, or great cities,
or a centralised government. It was primitive Teutonic rather than
mediaeval; resembling the communal type described in "The House of the
Wolfings." There were to be no more classes--no rich or poor. To
ordinary Socialists the reform means a fairer distribution of the joint
product of capital and labour; higher wages for the workingman, shorter
hours, better food and more of it, better clothes, better ho