2 OCTOBER 1953, Page 16

THE VICE OF WORK SIR,—Work is no vice. It is

the machine of earning that bruises the soul and leaves the mind empty.

I should like to leave a letter stamped on some indestructible material for the first generation of people to follow after the Atomic Age and the end of our own earning- ridden generation.

I should tell them that it's a silly thing to start minting money. I should tell them that since they must work to survive, a better idea would be to pay the worker in hours of leisure.

Perhaps a coal miner might earn one hundred and fifty hours of leisure a week; perhaps a shopkeeper handing out the free food would get one hundred and thirty ; and perhaps both of them would escape the urge of overtime, and the evolu- tionary spiral.—Yours faithfully,