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NO TIME TO LIVE
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posalls, electric toasters, mixers, percolators, sweepers, waxers — a score of machines of various kinds — have prO' vided leisure for the housewife, no doubt; and if we could just invent a machine for raising the children, she would have more freedom than the constitution guarantees. But even the housewife may and sometimes does take up bridge or culture and uplift clubs until she has no time. Most of the housewives I see complain that they have only one pair of hands and so can't get their necessary work done. In dreams I sometimes see that one pair of hands, scarred and roughened from its myriad tasks, one of which may be shuffling the deck.
It is, I think, the middle and upper classes, business and professional men, who find the stress of life growing. The machines have brought them no free time, no leisure. The automobile could be used to cut down our time needed to go places, and so provide more leisure; but it appears merely to make us think of more places to go. Measured in miles, or in the speed with which we cover them, we live a rich life; measured in significant things done, we verge on pauperism.
On fine spring or fall days, for instance, we start out on a round of calling, with a suit case full of calling cards, and two hours later return home to find an equal number of cards piled up around the front door. A philosopher friend of mine says that his hardest problem is to avoid most of the social contacts that mod
ern transportation and communication make possible.
So the machines haven't provided leisure. On the contrary they produce so much of so many things that we feel impelled to hurry to get the money to buy and the time to enjoy as much as possible. There are too many things that we can do, too many things to want, too many kinds of entertainment, too many ways of spending time; but why should this not be the happiest situation imaginable? Too many things, too many ways of enjoying ourselves, that's an odd complaint to make. The trouble is that so many of the goods are shoddy, so much of the entertainment we should be ashamed of. Over the door to the Twentieth Century should be inscribed in flaming letters: "Too Much And Too Poor."
So great is the pressure to take in as many sorts of entertainment as possible that we often try to enjoy several at the same time. So, at breakfast, I turn on the radio to get the news, read the newspaper, eat what I assume is my breakfast, and rub the dog with my foot, under the table, on the theory that the dog must be entertained too, perhaps also carrying on a desultory conversation with my wife, who is reading the Ladies Home Journal and pedaling the other side of the dog. So we have to listen to the car radio while driving, talk or read or do both while listening to the radio concert, and, on the other side, perhaps try to figure out whether we can afford a new rug.
Professor of Economics at the University of Kansas and author of a standard text on the subject published by Harper's, John Ise isn't always as pessimistic as this article would have you believe. Statistics show that he has his tongue in his chee\ a good percentage of the time, particularly when writing or ma\ing speeches.