243 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



kind desired. The invention of labor-saving devices, so-called, the 

 cotton gin, the factory loom, the sewing machine et al. has turned out 

 sociologically to be very different from that, for the time saved from 

 the old methods has been fully occupied in doing more work, raising 

 more cotton, weaving more cloth, making more clothes. Men have not 

 more leisure because they want something else more than they want 

 leisure. Tastier food and personal adornment are the things that 

 bring the chief stress upon life. 



Leisure and idleness are not identical. Leisure is the relief from 

 the stress for maintaining life. There is no leisure for one whose 

 whole time is required to supply food, clothing and shelter for him- 

 self and others. When these demands can be met in less than the 

 whole time, the remainder may be called his leisure time and this 

 may be spent in idleness, that is, doing nothing, or it may be spent in 

 doing something else in accordance with one's tastes, aptitudes and 

 opportunities. One may read or study or write or travel, or one may 

 add to one's income by working overtime or at other occupations. 

 Such an one has leisure which he employs in ways that give him a 

 measure of satisfaction. "What is called a higher standard of living is 

 almost always the immediate result of leisure — more palatable food, 

 better clothes and houses. If one spends all his income to provide 

 himself with better things than are really needful to keep him healthy, 

 he can not say he has no leisure, for there is no limit to what may be 

 called better things which one may possess and be no healthier or hap- 

 pier. Do not the so-called poor outlive the rich? Whence the cen- 

 tenarians of all countries, Indians, Mexicans, Negroes ? Does not na- 

 ture take as loving care of tramps as she does of the so-called good 

 citizens, who faithfully work and save and build? 



To be beyond compulsion to do anything is desirable, of course, for 

 whoever is compelled is so far a slave. During the nineteenth century 

 we were all urged by advice, example and mottoes that thrift was the 

 chief thing. One who did not respond to the pressure was stigmatized 

 as lazy. The hustler was the admired type from pupil to preacher. 

 High speed has been demanded in living as well as on railroads, and 

 he who could not or would not keep up has often had a hard time to 

 live at all. The assumption in all this was that life should be strenu- 

 ous. Our energetic President has publicly urged this. But there are 

 many reasons for holding that it is all wasteful, loading life with 

 miseries and not at all in accordance with Nature's plan. Nature is 

 never in a hurry. She takes ten thousand years to make Niagara 

 Falls and a hundred thousand years to make man, and she spares 

 neither her own work nor man's, as if neither is worth the keeping. 

 In Babylon of old were there not Morgans and Eockefellers, many 

 storied buildings and great armies ? Nature has transformed men and 

 armies into gas and shrubbery, the buildings into tumuli, and made a 



