INTEREST IN WORK 127 



work very hard at almost anything, provided he 

 knows all the time that the result of the work 

 is going to be his own, and can be missed only 

 by some fault of his own. On a common farm 

 ploughing, except perhaps in a competition for 

 prizes, is tolerably monotonous ; yet the simple 

 farmer, on his little holding, will plough cheer- 

 fully from dawn till dark, never shirking an 

 atom of difficulty, and gathering up all the time 

 thoughts for his evening at home, thoughts con- 

 nected with the daily task and what he hopes 

 will come of it. This goes on in thousands of 

 homesteads, right through the Canadian autumn, 

 and again in the Canadian spring. It is essen- 

 tially a human tendency, and therefore it is 

 permanent. Give a nail-cutter or a riveter just 

 that thought, that he is bound to become an 

 owner, not at his cottage where he sleeps and 

 eats, but there where he works ; give him that 

 thought, that he is not doomed to live and die 

 in absolute sameness, and he has something to 

 draw him on, and the very work he is doing 

 becomes one of the strings that so draw him. 



It is to the advantage of men thus working 

 that they should work hard and well, because 

 in doing so they are hastening the advent of 

 the time when automatically their condition will 

 change ; they are helping to make the property 

 that is coming to them all the greater; for they 

 are conspiring, as it were, to give their particular 

 factory or mill some advantage over other mills, 

 owing to the excellence and quickness of their 

 own work. 



