第40章 THE DISTRIBUTION OFHUMAN COSTS(4)

But the antithesis of creation and imitation or repetition has a different significance for the interpretation of physical costs.There it is not so much the absence of novelty involved in repetition, as the absence of personal liberty and spontaneity that counts most heavily.There are, in fact, few sorts of necessary productive labour which a man is not prepared to do for himself, with some measure of personal satisfaction, if he has within his own control the performance of this task and the result.But when another's will and purpose supersede his own, prescribing actions to be done under conditions of time, place and manner, determined by that other, this servitude to another's will is always irksome and may be degrading.

The human cost of most domestic service lies largely here.The work itself has more detailed variety and interest than most, and where the housewife herself does it, it often furnishes a net fund of human satisfaction.But the moral and intellectual costs of a hired servant, compelled to obey the arbitrary and capricious orders of a mistress, and to suppress her own will, tastes and inclinations in the execution of her task, are often very heavy.In a smaller degree this applies to all wage-earners engaged in any work where scope for their free volition is technically feasible.

To substitute another's will for one's own, in matters where one has a will, is always a human cost.That cost, however, need not be great.When a worker is a unit of labour in some great business, his actions conforming to rules which, however troublesome, belong to the system, the consciousness of loss of liberty is far less than when the changing will of a personal employer operating amid the details of his work is the instrument of discipline.

A shop-girl in a large business has a feeling of greater independence than a domestic servant, a factory-hand than a shop-girl, while the low wage of homeworkers is in part attributable to the removal of the worker from the mediate domination of the employer's will.

§6.In assessing the psychical elements of cost, it is well to distinguish those related to a loss of liberty, or an encroachment upon personality, from those which are the conscious results or counterparts of the physical strains.For the enlargement of certain of these psychical costs is an exceedingly important factor in what is called 'industrial unrest'.This irksomeness of narrowly specialised labour and of the 'enslaving'