It is impossible to have a healthy nation if the majority, or any very large part of it, work for excessive hours even in the factories where the best methods are employed to make the conditions as healthy as possible.  Medical men of the highest authority regard the influence of too prolonged hours of work as one which urgently demands attention.  Enlightened and experienced men of business like Lord Leverhulme have expressed very strong views on the subject.  Man, however, cannot be looked on as a mere machine for production, nor is even health the only question for him as a human being.  He must have time for other pursuits, for recreation, for a fuller life.  As civilisation and education advance this need becomes stronger.  The duller the work the greater the need for those who have any natural mental activity to find resources of interest outside.  The pleasure derived from literature and science should be open to all.  No one who knows working people can deny that the demand for it exists.  A fitter on weekly wages used to show in a poor cottage one of the best collections of British butterflies and moths, made entirely by himself.  Many of them had been captured late at night on Chat Moss.  A hair-dresser has told how to watch the habits of birds was the delight of his Sunday bicycle rides; his assistant called attention to some little known poet whose works had a special appeal for him; another said it was the study in his rare holidays at the seaside and in local museums of some form of animal life—­the name of it, now forgotten, would convey no meaning to most University graduates—­that made his interest in life.  You may find a large audience of workmen interested in a lecture on Shelley, and some of them as well acquainted with his poems as the lecturer.  Such cases as these may perhaps be exceptional, but given opportunity and sympathetic help and advice, they might be multiplied almost indefinitely.  Other men want time for cultivation of allotments, which ought to be within the reach of thousands of urban workers who find in them a perennial source of interest.  A growing number take a keen pleasure in seeing something of the beauties of their own country.  Tramping through the Yorkshire dales and knowing them well, it was interesting to meet one who knew them better, and to find that he was a chimney-sweep, who saved up his earnings to spend his holidays regularly there.

The success of the Workers’ Educational Association shows both the strength of the demand among the workmen, and sometimes, too, among working women, for intellectual life and their capacity to make use of any opportunities offered for regular study.  It is to be hoped that its promoters will not forget that some branches of natural science and literature, opening new realms of interest removed from the ordinary cares of life, are at least as important subjects for study as economic and social problems, and that one of the most important of such problems is how to give those who must earn their daily bread by work that is often dull and wearisome, the opportunity of sharing as far as possible in the intellectual life.  We may well wish Mr. Mansbridge and his friends success as pioneers in the work of reconstruction, and renewed and extended activity when the pressure of War requirements is removed.  It is to be hoped that the original ideals of the Association may never be forgotten.