120 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [mAR. 14, 



the lady who has the care of a family and the servant who re- 

 peats day after day the same routine of work, inevitably 

 experience a certain kind of fatigue for which there is no relief 

 but a longer period of repose than can be found during the day 

 ■or week, and a complete change from the surroundings that 

 accompany their duties. It is this which makes the country so 

 welcome a retreat to the hard workers of the cities ; the country 

 landscapes, the different modes of passing the hours of the day, 

 the novelties encountered in daily walks, the temporary relief 

 irom responsible exertion, are quite as efficient agencies as the 

 fresh air, which is too often credited with all the benefits. Such 

 rest and refreshment, when it can be procured, is as much a duty 

 of life as are the fatigues and anxieties incident to useful labor. 



But there are large numbers who are denied these periods of 

 enjoyment and necessary recreation. This fact brings us face to 

 face with one of the great social problems of to-day — the condi- 

 tion of the laboring masses : not the day-laborers, as they are 

 called, only, but the thousands who often work with their brains 

 while the laborer works, and still work on when he sleeps ; the 

 men and women everywhere who toil under the direction of oth- 

 ers and hold their places by a tenure too often and too generally 

 upon rigid rules which tolerate no day of rest except the Sab- 

 bath, and sometimes not even that. While we hold it to be 

 presumptuous on the part of a few societies composed of men 

 laborers, to consider manual labor the only kind of work which 

 is entitled to recognition, and to exclude toiling thousands in 

 every community from the ranks of labor because they only work 

 with their brains and nerves, yet there are grievances for all 

 which should be remedied. 



One of these evils, incident to the concentration of capital in 

 business at the present day, is that employees are over-worked. 

 There would be less complaint in regard to pay, if men and 

 women could have a reasonable time for rest and refreshment — 

 for the recreation which alone makes work anything more than a 

 dreary, continued draught upon the vital enei'gies without hope 

 of relief and without enjoyment. 



• Insurance companies, merchants, railroad corporations, and 

 other organizations, are too apt to look upon men and women as 



