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The hope of the future lies obviously in the training of the children, but the elder members of the community might also have more chances of growth. Employers, for instance, might more generally substitute holidays of weeks for holidays of days, and so encourage the workpeople to plan their reasonable use. They might also enlarge their minds by informing them about the material on which they work, whence it comes and whither it goes. Miss Addams tells of a firm in Ohio where the hands are gathered to hear the reports of the travellers as they return from Constantinople, Italy, or China, and learn how the goods they have made are used by strange people. In the same firm lantern lectures are given on the countries with which the firm has dealings, and generally the hands are made partners in the thoughts of the heads. “This,” as Miss Addams says, “is a crude example of the way in which a larger framework may be given to the worker’s mind,” and she adds, “as a poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling, so the workman needs some one to bathe his surrounding with a human significance.” Employers also, following the example of Messrs. Cadbury, might require their young people not only to attend evening classes to make them fitter for work, but also to attend one class which will fit them to ride hobbies, which will carry them from the strain and routine of work into other and recreating surroundings. Municipal bodies have in these latter days done much in the right direction by opening playing fields, picture galleries, and libraries, and by giving free performances of high-class music. They might perhaps do more to break up the monotony of the streets, introducing more of the country into town, and requiring dignity as well as healthiness in the great buildings. Such variety adds greatly to the joy of living, diverts the minds of weary workers, and stimulates the admiration which is one-third of life.

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