Habit also counts very largely in the
regular return of the man to his job, and the fluctuations of
employment, the failure of the employing class to provide any
alternative to idleness during slack time, break that habit of industry.
And then, last but not least, there is self-respect. Men and women are
capable of wonders of self-discipline and effort if they feel that
theirs is a meritorious service, if they imagine the thing they are
doing is the thing they ought to do. A miner will cut coal in a
different spirit and with a fading zest if he knows his day's output is
to be burnt to waste secretly by a lunatic. Man is a social animal; few
men are naturally social rebels, and most will toil very cheerfully in
subordination if they feel that the collective end is a fine thing and a
great thing.
Now, this force of self-respect is much more acutely present in the mind
of the modern worker than it was in the thought of his fathers. He is
intellectually more active than his predecessors, his imagination is
relatively stimulated, he asks wide questions. The worker of a former
generation took himself for granted; it is a new phase when the toilers
begin to ask, not one man here or there, but in masses, in battalions,
in trades: "Why, then, are _we_ toilers, and for what is it that we
toil?"
What answer do we give them?
I ask the reader to put himself in the place of a good workman, a young,
capable miner, let us say, in search of an answer to that question.
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