14 LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



as entitled to some share of the good things in 

 the world, and even women and children are 

 coming forward. In the distant future each 

 man will consider that the day is made for him, 

 and that he who fails to enjoy himself that is, 

 to use the gifts of nature rationally is a fool. 

 Civilization should mean emancipation from 

 drudgery, and unquestionably man will some 

 day cease to labor in the present meaning of 

 the word. When machinery attains to such 

 perfection that the ground is ploughed, the 

 seed is sown, the crops are tended, watered, 

 gathered without the work of man ; when 

 power, light, heat are so cheap as to be as free 

 as air to every one, actual labor to provide 

 food, raiment, and shelter need be but slight. 

 At present we put a fictitious value upon labor 

 as a moral exercise apart from results. One 

 hundred years ago our Puritan ancestors doomed 

 here and hereafter the man who held to any 

 but the most dreary and dreadful beliefs ; sun- 

 light, moral as well as physical, to them partook 

 more or less of the nature of sin. To-day we 

 are in danger of erring similarly with regard to 

 work. One fetish is taking the place of an- 

 other. I deny that the man who prefers his 



