Читать книгу The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West онлайн

43 страница из 79

It is difficult to describe the discouragement which results from such an experience. All about you is the tumultuous industry of a great city. You feel something of the splendid power of its ceaseless productivity; you guess at its vast consuming; and in the din of its noisy traffic you watch the swift shuttles which weave the varied fabric of its business. Its complexities and interdependencies bear down upon you with an inspiring sense of the volume of human life spent in ministering to life. Its multitudes throng you upon the streets, and you read in countless faces the story of unending struggle to keep abreast with pressing duty. Work? Everywhere about you there is work, stupendous, appalling, cumulative in its volume and intensity with the increasing momentum of a world-wide trade, which is driven by the natural forces of demand and supply and keenest competition. Men everywhere are staggering under burdens too grievous to be borne. And here are you idle, yet counting it the greatest boon if you might but add your strength to the mighty struggle.