Work and Leisure

WORK AND LEISURE KARL F. HELLEINER ABOUT ten years ago the late Professor Wesley Mitchell presented the 24th Annual Report of the National Bureau of Economic Research (1944). This document contained the following statement: "One extension of our program ... impresses the staff [of the National Bureau1as especially desirable- a search for the leading factors that detennine the rate of secular change in national output and in standards of living ... a constructive study of factors that tend to accelerate and factors that tend to retard economic growth from generation to generation." It would be difficult to say whether Professor Mitchell's insistence on the importance of long-period analysis of economic change has been chiefly responsible for the recent spate of work in the field of secular growth. Undoubtedly, Truman's Point Four Program and the Colombo Plan, too, must have had a large share in stimulating interest in problems of econonUc development. But be that as it may, the fact remains that the last few years have seen a remarkable revival of efforts to examine the conditions of secular economic change. I say "revival," because scholarly interest in these matters is not exactly new. The fathers of political economy, from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill, were very much concerned with secular trends; and a man like Alfred Marshall, notwithstanding his mastery of short-run equilibrium analysis, on more than one occasion perrrritted himself to range freely over longer stretches of econonUc history. Nevertheless, theoretical work until recently .has been preoccupied almost exclusively with problems of equilibrium, and the "plutological" aspects of economics have been relatively neglected, or rather have been left to the tender mercies of the historian and the sociologist. That trend, as stated above, seems now to have reverged itself. Once again, economists are inquiring into the "Causes of the Wealth of Nations," that is to say, into the conditions of economic growth. This paper is concerned with only one factor of secular economic development, namely, changes in man's willingness to exert himself for the sake of obtaining material benefits. It can hardly be doubted that over long stretches of history an increase in the rate of econonUc growth was predicated on a decline in people's "propensity to consume leisure," as well as on improvements in their general working habits. 156 Vol. XXIV. no. 2, Jan., 1955 WORK AND LEISURE 157 This is by no means a new topic in economics. Alfred Marshall, in his Principles of Economics (8th ed., Book IV, chap. VI), discussing some qualitative aspects of population, has a few pertinent things to say about habits of work. Marshall stresses the importance for economic advance of what he calls the "general ability" of the working force, as distinguished from those kinds of skill and knowledge which are required for the performance of special tasks. Among the general qualities that are a prerequisite of economic success, perseverance and trustworthiness would seem to rank very high. Backward races are known to lack those very faculties. They "are unable to keep at any kind of work for a long time.... They have not the requisite assiduity ." What European and American observers are liable to call the indolence and sloth of native races has often been commented upon. However, that inability to concentrate on one kind of work, that unwillingness to labour at any kind of job for a long stretch at a time, and similar shortcomings (such as carelessness about tools and materials ) are not characteristic of backward races (or, as has sometimes been claimed, of tropical races) only. Lack of industrial discipline, absenteeism and the like were among the most serious obstacles to economic progress in the early factory age. In part, the reason for these shortcomings must be sought in man's unwillingness to part with working habits that were not inappropriate before the appearance of power machinery. Until then, man's rhythm of work was largely determined by Nature. But Nature's rhythm, while not without some long-run regularity, is unpredictable and anything but monotonous. So were the working habits of pre-industrial man. The change of seasons, the varying length of daylight, the alternation of rain and shine determined the...