[DrStormyDaniels]

take a sample of Morris' own writing,

from 'Useful Work versus Useless Toil' :

"Worthy work carries with it the hope of pleasure in rest, the hope of the pleasure in our using what it makes, and the hope of pleasure in our daily creative skill. All other work but this is worthless; it is slaves' work — mere toiling to live, that we may live to toil."

And from 'News from Nowhere' (i.e. Utopia) :

"See all round you people engaged in making others live lives which are not their own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real lives — men who hate life though they fear death."

An American contemporary for comparison:

"experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other." - Frederick Douglass

[igravious]

Hope you get to see my reply

Great quotes.

Does this mean that he had contempt or the condition off the working-man or the working-man himself? I would have thought the former, right?

[DrStormyDaniels]

I think it was likely both. That conditions can diminish a human being is obvious to perceive but impossible to accept. However, if conditions don't suffice to explain, then it seems like there must be something wrong with the person themselves, not just the state of their being oppressed, & this often gets construed as contempt for "people" per se. So, by way of compassion, Morris also had contempt. But I'd say it was more like disappointment than contempt. (Which is perhaps even more provocative.)