It is assumed by most people nowadays that all work is useful, and by most well-to-do people that all work is desirable.   Most people, well-to-to or not, believe that, even when a man is doing work which appears to be useless, he is earning his livelihood by it — he is ’employed’ as the phrase goes; and most of those who are well-to-do cheer on the happy worker with congratulations and praises, if he is ‘industrious’ enough and deprives himself of all pleasure and holidays in the sacred cause of labor.  In short, it has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labor is good in itself — a convenient belief to those who live on the labor of others.  But as to those by whom they live, I recommend them not to take it on trust, but to look into the matter a little deeper.

        — William Morris, “Useful Work versus Useless Toil.”