to prevent capitalists from "using up nine generations of men in one
generation," as they began by doing until they were restrained by law at
the suggestion of Robert Owen, the founder of English Socialism. Most of
this legislation will become an insufferable restraint upon freedom
and variety of action when Capitalism goes the way of Druidic human
sacrifice (a much less slaughterous institution). There is every reason
why a child should not be allowed to work for commercial profit or for
the support of its parents at the expense of its own future; but there
is no reason whatever why a child should not do some work for its own
sake and that of the community if it can be shewn that both it and the
community will be the better for it.




Children's Happiness

Also it is important to put the happiness of the children rather
carefully in its place, which is really not a front place. The
unsympathetic, selfish, hard people who regard happiness as a very
exceptional indulgence to which children are by no means entitled,
though they may be allowed a very little of it on their birthdays or at
Christmas, are sometimes better parents in effect than those who imagine
that children are as capable of happiness as adults. Adults habitually
exaggerate their own capacity in that direction grossly; yet most adults
can stand an allowance of happiness that would be quite thrown away on
children. The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother
about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation,
because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person
is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is