"Political Ideals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Bertrand)

The tyranny of the employer, which at present robs the greater part of
most men's lives of all liberty and all initiative, is unavoidable so
long as the employer retains the right of dismissal with consequent
loss of pay. This right is supposed to be essential in order that men
may have an incentive to work thoroughly. But as men grow more
civilized, incentives based on hope become increasingly preferable to
those that are based on fear. It would be far better that men should
be rewarded for working well than that they should be punished for
working badly. This system is already in operation in the civil
service, where a man is only dismissed for some exceptional degree of
vice or virtue, such as murder or illegal abstention from it.
Sufficient pay to ensure a livelihood ought to be given to every
person who is willing to work, independently of the question whether
the particular work at which he is skilled is wanted at the moment or
not. If it is not wanted, some new trade which is wanted ought to be
taught at the public expense. Why, for example, should a hansom-cab
driver be allowed to suffer on account of the introduction of taxies?
He has not committed any crime, and the fact that his work is no
longer wanted is due to causes entirely outside his control. Instead
of being allowed to starve, he ought to be given instruction in motor
driving or in whatever other trade may seem most suitable. At
present, owing to the fact that all industrial changes tend to cause
hardships to some section of wage-earners, there is a tendency to
technical conservatism on the part of labor, a dislike of innovations,
new processes, and new methods. But such changes, if they are in the
permanent interest of the community, ought to be carried out without
allowing them to bring unmerited loss to those sections of the
community whose labor is no longer wanted in the old form. The
instinctive conservatism of mankind is sure to make all processes of
production change more slowly than they should. It is a pity to add
to this by the avoidable conservatism which is forced upon organized
labor at present through the unjust workings of a change.

It will be said that men will not work well if the fear of dismissal
does not spur them on. I think it is only a small percentage of whom
this would be true at present. And those of whom it would be true
might easily become industrious if they were given more congenial work
or a wiser training. The residue who cannot be coaxed into industry
by any such methods are probably to be regarded as pathological cases,
requiring medical rather than penal treatment. And against this
residue must be set the very much larger number who are now ruined in
health or in morale by the terrible uncertainty of their livelihood
and the great irregularity of their employment. To very many,
security would bring a quite new possibility of physical and moral
health.

The most dangerous aspect of the tyranny of the employer is the power
which it gives him of interfering with men's activities outside their
working hours. A man may be dismissed because the employer dislikes