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If workmen only put it into their heads to be lazy, all factories would have to be closed, for no measure of severity, no system of spying, would be of any use. You should have seen the terror caused in 1887 among British employers when a few agitators started preaching ‘Bad pay, bad work’; ‘Take it easy, do not overwork yourselves, and waste all you can’—‘They demoralize the worker, they want to kill our industry!’ cried those same people who the day before inveighed against the immorality of the worker and the bad quality of his work.
But if the workers were what they are represented to be—namely, the idlers whom the employer is supposed continually to threaten with dismissal from the worksplace—what would the word ‘demoralization’ signify? So when we speak of possible idlers, we must well understand that it is a question of a small minority in society; and before legislating for that minority, would it not be wise to study the origin of that idleness?
References
- Kropotkin, Peter. (1892). The Conquest of Bread Chapter 12. Objections (p. 212).
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