WORK AND PLAY
(Deals with the question of exercise, both for the idle and the
overworked.)
In discussing the important question of exercise, there is one
fundamental fact to begin with: that our present civilization divides
men sharply into two classes, those who do not get enough exercise, and
those who get too much. Obviously it would be folly to make the same
recommendations to the two classes.
I begin with those who get too much exercise. They include a great
number, probably the majority of those who do the manual work of the
world. They include the farmers and the farm-hands, who work from dawn
to sunset, and sometimes by lantern light. They include also the
farmers' wives, the kitchen slaves of whom the old couplet tells:
"Man's work ends from sun to sun,
But woman's work is never done."
I am aware that men have worked that way for countless ages, and yet the
race is still surviving; but I am aware also that men wither up with
rheumatism, and contract chronic diseases of the kidneys and the blood
vessels, consequent upon the creation of greater quantities of fatigue
poisons than the body can regularly eliminate.
I have very little interest in the past, and none whatever in finding
fault with it. My purpose is to criticize the present for the benefit of
the future, and therefore I say that modern machinery and the whole
development of modern large-scale production make it absolutely
unnecessary that women should slave all their waking hours in kitchens,
or that men should slave all day. I say it is monstrous folly that men
should work for twelve-hour stretches in steel mills, and for ten and
eleven hours in factories and mines. Organized labor has adopted the
slogan, "Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for
play"; but my slogan is "Four hours for work, four hours for study,
eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for play."
I know, and am prepared to demonstrate to any thinking man, that modern
civilization can produce, not merely all the necessities, but all the
comforts of life for every man, woman and child in the community, by the
expenditure of four hours a day work of the adult, able-bodied men and
women. So to all the wage slaves of the factories and mines, the fields
and the kitchens, I say that too much exercise is what is the matter
with you, and what you need is to get off in a quiet nook in the woods
and read a good novel, not merely for a few hours, but for a few months,
until you get over the effects of capitalist civilization. I know that
not many of you can get away as yet, but I urge you to insist upon
getting away, to fight for the chance to get away; and I will here
suggest a few of the novels for you to read when finally you do get
away. I choose the easy ones, which the dullest and most tired of you
will love; I say, make up your mind to read these thirty-two books
before you die, and do not let the world cheat you out of your chance!
Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Charles D.
Stewart: The Fugitive Blacksmith. W. Clark Russell: The Wreck of the
Grosvenor. R. L. Stevenson: Treasure Island, Kidnapped. Jack London: The
Sea Wolf, The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden. Joseph Conrad: Youth. H. G.
Wells: The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, The Sea Lady, The
History of Mr. Polly, The Food of the Gods, The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Upton Sinclair: The Jungle, King Coal, Jimmie Higgins, 100 Per Cent.
Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie. George Moore: Esther Waters. Frank
Norris: The Octopus. Brand Whitlock: The Turn of the Balance. De Foe:
Robinson Crusoe. Fielding: Tom Jones, Jonathan Wild the Great.
Thackeray: The Adventures of Barry Lyndon. Marmaduke Pickthall: The
Adventures of Hadji Baba. Blasco Ibanez: The Fruit of the Vine. Frank
Harris: Montes the Matador. Frederik van Eeden: The Quest. Tolstoi:
Resurrection.
And now for the people who do not get enough exercise. In the armies of
King Cyrus it was the law that every man was required to sweat once
every twenty-four hours, and that is still the law for every business
man and office-worker and writer of books. There is no substitute for
it, and there is no health without it. I have heard Dr. Kellogg say that
the modern woman sends out her health with her washing, and I have
heard the leisure class ladies at the Sanitarium discuss this cryptic
utterance and wonder what he meant by it. I know that there is use
telling leisure class ladies what exercise at the wash-tub would do for
their abdomens and backs. I will only tell them that unless they can
find some kind of vigorous activity which keeps them in a free
perspiration for an hour or two each day, they will never be really
well, and will never bear children without agony and abortion.
For myself, I have found that the minimum is three or four times a week.
Unless I get that much hard exercise I am soon in trouble. So my advice
to the business man is to take off his coat and collar and turn out and
help his truck-man; my advice to the white collar slave is to get a
part-time job, and dig ditches the rest of the time. To the man who has
cares which pursue him, and likewise to the ardent student and
brain-worker, I say that they should find, not merely exercise, but
play. The distinction between the two things is important. There can be
play that is not exercise, for example cards and chess; and, of course,
there can be exercise that is not play. What you must have is something
that is both play and exercise; something that not merely causes your
heart to beat fast, and your lungs to pump fast, and your sweat glands
to throw out poisons from your body, but something that fully occupies
your mind and gives your higher brain centers a chance to relax.
Our civilization has very largely destroyed the possibility of play and
the spirit of play. We civilized people no longer know what play is, and
regard the desire to play as something abnormal--a form of vice. We
allow children to play after school hours, and on Saturdays; but for
grown-up, serious-minded men and women to want to play would be almost
as disreputable as for them to want to get drunk. What could foe more
pitiful than the spectacle of tens of thousands of men crowding into our
baseball parks and amusement fields to watch other men play for them!
Imagine, if you can, a crowd of people gathering in a restaurant or
theater to watch other people _eat_ for them! Imagine yourself a man
from Mars, coming down to a world with so many people in want, and
finding whole classes of men forbidden to do any work, under penalty of
disgrace, and compelled, in order to exercise their muscles, to pull on
rubber straps and lift weights and wave dumb-bells and Indian clubs in
the air--methods of expending their muscular energy which are
respectable because they accomplish nothing!
When I was a boy, I was fond of all kinds of games. I was a good tennis
player, and in the country an incessant hunter and fisherman. When on
the city streets we boys could not find any other game to play, we would
get up on the roofs of the houses and throw clothes-pins and snow-balls
at the "Dagoes" working in the nearby excavations; so we had the fine
game of being chased by the "Dagoes," with the chance, real or
imaginary, of having a knife stuck into us. But then, as I grew older,
and became aware of the pain and misery of the world, I lost my interest
in games, and for ten years or so I never played; I did nothing but
study and write. So my health gave way, and I had the problem of
restoring it, and I spent some twenty years wrestling with this problem,
before I thoroughly convinced myself on the point that there can be no
such thing as sound and permanent health without a certain amount of
play.
I don't think there is any kind of hard physical work I failed to try,
in the course of my experiments. I rode horseback, and took long walks,
and climbed mountains, and swam, and dug gardens, and chopped down whole
groves of trees and cut them up and carried them to the fireplace. I
have done this latter work for a whole winter in the country, several
hours every day, and it has done my health no good to speak of; I have
been ready for a breakdown at the end of it. The reason is that all the
time I was doing these things with my body, I was going right on working
my brain. While I was swimming or climbing a mountain or galloping on
horseback, I was absorbed in the next chapter of the book I was writing,
so that I literally did not know where I was. I would make up my mind
that I would not think about my work, and would make desperate efforts
not to do so; but it was like walking along the edge of a slippery
ditch--sooner or later I was bound to fall in, and go floundering along,
unable to get out again!
And the same thing applies to all gymnastic work. I have experimented
with a dozen different systems of exercises, and with all kinds of water
treatments; I have used dumb-bells and Indian clubs and Swedish
gymnastics, MacFadden's exercises in bed, and the Yogi breathing
exercises, and more kinds of queer things than I can remember now; but
for me there is only one solution of the problem, which is to have an
antagonist. It may be a deer I am trying to shoot, or some trout I am
trying to lure out of their holes; it may be some boys I am trying to
beat at football or hockey, or it may be the game I know best and find
most convenient, which is tennis. If it is tennis, then it has to be
someone who can make me work as hard as I know how; for if it is someone
I can beat easily, why, before I have been playing ten minutes, I am
busily working out the next chapter of a book, or answering letters I
have just got in the mail.
Recently I came upon a book, "The Psychology of Relaxation," by Dr.
Patrick, in which the theory of this is set forth. Civilized man is
working his higher brain centers more than his body can stand; his brain
is running away with him, absorbing a constantly increasing share of his
energies. True relaxation is only possible where the higher brain
centers are lulled, and the back lobes of the brain brought into
activity. One of the means of doing this is alcohol, and that is why
through the ages all races of men have craved to get drunk. There is a
method which is harmless, and does not break down the system, and that
is play. When we become really interested in play, we are as children,
or as primitive man; we do all the things that our race used to do many
ages ago; we hunt and fight, we pit our wits against the wits of our
enemies, and struggle with desperation to get the better of them. If our
play is physical play, if we are absorbed in a game or bodily contest,
then we are exerting and developing all those portions of us which
civilization tends to atrophy and deaden.
There are people who will dispute with you about Socialism, and ask, how
we are going to provide incentives if we do away with wage slavery. When
you tell them that activity is natural to human beings, and that if
there were no work, men and women would have to make some, they shake
their heads mournfully and tell you about the problem of "human nature."
But consider games and sports: men do not have to work their bodies, yet
they go out and deliberately hunt for trouble! They invent themselves
subtle and complicated games, and are not content until they find people
who can beat them at it, or at any rate can make them work to the limit
of their strength, until they are in a dripping perspiration and
thoroughly exhausted! I may be too optimistic about "human nature," but
I believe that this is the attitude every normal human being takes
toward the powers, both mental and physical, which he possesses; he
wants to use them, and for all they are worth. If you don't believe it,
just take any group of youngsters, give them a baseball and bat, turn
them loose in a vacant lot, and watch them "choose up sides" and fall to
work, screaming and shouting in wild excitement! There are some races of
the earth which do not yet know baseball, but the Filipinos and the
Japanese have learned it, and even the war-worn "Poilus" and the
supercilious "Tommies" condescended to experiment with it. And if you
think it is only physical competition that young human animals enjoy,
try them at putting on a play, or printing a magazine, or conducting a
debate, or building a house--anything whatever that involves healthy
competition, and is related to the big things of life, but without being
for the profit of some exploiter! Get clear the plain and simple
distinction between work and play: play is what you want to do, while
work is what the profit system makes you do!