Bigger and Better
BY ROY HARROD IN a pamphlet entitled The Problem of Bigness* Professol Sargent Florence demonstrates with irresistible logic tht inevitability of the trend to bigness in manufacture. Tht `long run' in the production of a commodity is needed to reduct costs and make it cheap enough for mass consumption, anc some diversification of output within one plant is often needec in order to spread economic and financial risks. For a variety of reasons, however, the trend to bigness is likely to be gradual so that we shall have some breathing time to adapt our mind and strive to solve the problems involved.
A survey then shows that most workers prefer the smallet unit. Some do not; there are some temperaments that a `more friendly atmosphere' and a 'more personal touch' may not appeal to, may indeed even repel. But more prefer the smallet unit than there are smaller units to cater for; we have thus already, a misfit, and this will get worse.
Mr. Arnold discourses on bigness in politics with reference to the great party machines. It becomes clear how thin. demo- cracy is, how far removed from popular cognisance and control are the vital decisions taken at the top political level; yet it would be wrong to assign no value at all to the slight element of democratic sovereignty that exists. Another survey shows that most people do not want to be given more political oppor- tunities, e.g., by referendum, to butt in and interfere with what is done. They think, sensibly enough, that the Government IS likely to know better than they do themselves. Finally we turn to bigness in recreation. In place of the old party by the seaside, the picnic, village cricket, the gathering at the local, all of low cost, we have mass-produced, but none the less more expensive, means of uniform entertainment—motor- cycles, football matches, illustrated papers, TV, the Pools.
In place of the former sports reports which described game in detail there are now mainly headlines, angled news, person; ality snippets and betting forecasts designed to attract Pools customers, and to sell more copies of the newspaper. The assumption is quite clear that the reader would not he inter- ested in more than a minimal description of actual gamec. Such sports reports can be viewed as another sign that modern mass entertainment is becoming an empty and mechanical occupation, and undoubtedly this is one of its aspects. I4° unexpectedly, among thinking people there has been some reaction in favour of the old, individual ways in which peoPle spent their leisure. In a sense this problem of leisure has priority over that of production, for the further, increase in productivity and the cheapening of goods thereby made possible have—or will very' soon have—as their principal end-result the provision of ever more elaborate equipment for the occupations of leisure. 111,11s . it could be argued that the whole process is a mistake: the making of factory conditions less agreeable in order to provio,c, a greater abundance of goods—cars, TV sets, etc.—that, w'l make the occupations of leisure more mechanical and less enriching to the soul. The brochure discusses Britain only: It does not touch on America, where mass production on the one hand and the stereotyping of individual interests on the other have gone farther than here. I believe this view to be mistaken, none the less. It is not adopted by the pamphlet, which is quite unddgmatic and tenta- tive. Its merit is that in a few unpretentious pages it is suggesci tive and extremely provocative of thought. It is an original /111 quaint little production.
• • * London Press Exchange.
In the old days there was very sparse leisure : one was tired; one might sit in the pub and drink, with a little conversation— salty perhaps, yes, it might be that, but not really very con- secutive or sustained. And as for the wife, there was no leisure for her, but just unremitting toil from morning till night. It is a very marvellous thing that the human race has thought it worth while to carry on through so many centuries of poverty and unrewarded toil. Now we, the great-grandchildren, are at long last coming in to the reward for all that, and we have to see how it works out.
We are presented with a slab of leisure and with a little surplus energy left over after the day's work is done. How fill in that slab, starting from nothing? I do not think that the cinema and TV, the motor-bicycle and the Pools, make a bad beginning. It is all very well for middle-class people, 'thinking People,' to be disdainful. They have the resources of a more elaborate education; they have, even in the middle middle-class sphere, a widely ramifying society; 'the world is so small'; a Personal contact with some politician, whether at a national or local level, brings the whole political scene to life—all that scene may be very boring, even meaningless, where there is no first- or second-hand contact. They have their theatres, their Clubs, etc.
What are required to fill the slab of leisure are things that exercise the mind without tiring it, things that can evoke Partisanship, things that have their own standards and intrica- cies and provide a common interest with others and topics for conversation, things that give the individual, however humble, scope—so absent in his working hours—for exercising his sovereign will and judgement. These are not so easy to find. Working in the garden satisfies some urges, but it is not enough. The 'thinking people' are condemnatory of the sensational Press. But this carries drama—it does not matter if it is a little lurid; it has a human appeal and thereby opens the mind. For one starting from scratch, or nearly so, the more serious- minded press must be tedious; and in exoneration of those who find it so one may reflect that most of those who write for it °WY half understand what they are writing about. One may ask oneself ruefully whether man with all his womierful gifts cannot find something better as his final aim than moving quickly on a mechanism from place to place, staring at TV or sorting through football coupons. But these e. onstitute the bread and butter of recreation. This slab of leisure has to be filled in by some standard routines. The `.ublimities and beauties of life, appreciable certainly by the 'nimblest of people, cannot be sought and gained by frontal attack. They come in by the way; they enter into the interstices of the daily round of work and recreation. After all, have the historic recreations of the privileged, the hunting and the shooting and the social round, been so very exalted? In a sense they have been just as standardised as the seen democratic routines. The latter are condemned, because 'e,en from the outside and not judged for what they are. It is "I the very nature of human life that there is repetition of fixed procedures, the repetitions of work and play being super- olelPosed on the still more basic patterns of eating and washing, One to bed, of rising in the morning. This is the framework. „..ne essential part of the framework has hitherto not been vr,Ovided for the working masses. The framework is not worth ‘I'11e in itself, but because it provides a social scene, common ;21 iterests and an interplay of purpose and desire, wherein arise "PPortunities for achieving the great ideals of love, goodness and beauty. of'. am accordingly not depressed by the early manifestations 8,autss recreation. The sensational press, the cinema and the 113k- music-hall shows stir the imagination in their own way, and make a beginning in the opening of wider horizons; and more and more people will no doubt gradually come to pay attention to the more elevated matter provided through the popular media. As our brochure tells us, 'millions of people are for the first time actively participating in a life of reading, seeing drama, hearing music; of travel and motoring, arranged for them on a basis of mass production.' We are only on the threshold of things, in the matter of providing a life of diversi- fied interests for the main mass of pCople. Their standards will inevitably rise as time proceeds. And I fear that, in order to increase the amount of leisure and effectuate the diversification and improvement of recreations in it, we shall have to allow the tendency to bigness in production—though not necessarily in all its branches—to proceed farther.
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