O Happy Day

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu Dec 14 15:41:36 PST 2000



>Doug Henwood wrote:
> > I've never dug a ditch, and thank god for that.
>
>There are worse things. It's not bad unless your
>hands are too soft and you don't have gloves.
>I'd rather dig a ditch then work or even sit
>around doing nothing in a peach-packing shed.
>
>Carrol

We all, however, know that Doug is a socialist of the Oscar Wilde sort:

***** And as I have mentioned the word labour, I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessary dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine. ("The Soul of Man under Socialism") *****

Yoshie



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