THE SOURCE OF LABOR. 41 



though not more than it had given. The wheel, if questioned as to 

 the cause of its inability, must reply as others have done, that it has 

 shut up part of the labor in investments which it cannot realize. The 

 reason, as commonly stated, is, that friction has destroyed part of the 

 labor. The labor is not, however, destroyed. Science has shown that 

 heat and labor are connected; labor may be turned into heat, and 

 heat into labor. The labor absorbed by friction, is but turned into 

 heat. If, however, we try to extract labor from the heat thus diffused 

 through the different parts of the water-wheel, and make it available, 

 we find ourselves quite at a loss. The heat gradually diffuses itself 

 through surrounding bodies, and, so far as we are concerned, the labor 

 is wasted, though it still exist, like Cleopatra's pearl dissolved in the 

 cup of vinegar. 



If no labor is lost, so neither is any created. The labor we exert 

 is but the expenditure of labor stored up in our frames, just as the 

 labor invested in the wound-up spring keeps the clock going. Whence, 

 then, does all this labor originally come ? We see the waste how is 

 compensation made ? The answer is simple and easy to give. All the 

 labor done under the sun is really done by it. The light and heat which 

 the sun supplies are turned into labor by the organizations which exist 

 upon the earth. These organizations may be roughly divided into two 

 classes the collectors and the expenders of the sun's labor. The first 

 merely collect the sun's labor, so as to make it available for the other 

 class ; while, just as the steam-engine is the medium by which the 

 steam gives motion, so this second class is the medium by which the 

 sun's heat is turned into actual labor. 



Still, the sun does not work only through organized labor: his 



mere mechanical influence is very great. With the moon the only 



second post he deigns to fill he produces the tides by his attraction 



on the sea. But for the friction of the earth and sea, the tides, once set 



in motion, would rise and fall without any further effort ; but the work 



done in overcoming the friction is, though due to the sun and moon, 



not extracted from them, but by them from the earth. For it would 



take a vast effort to cause the earth to cease rotating. All this effort 



is, as it were, stored up in the revolving earth. As the tidal waters, 



then, rub along the bed of the sea, or the waters on which they rest 



and the adjacent coasts, this friction tends to make the earth move 



faster or slower, according: to the direction in which the tidal flow is. 



The general effect is, however, that the friction of the tides makes the 



earth revolve more slowly ; in other words, that part of the energy of 



rotation of the earth, so to speak, is consumed in rubbing against the 



tidal waters. All the work, therefore, that the tides do in undermining 



our cliffs, and washing away our beaches, is extracted by the sun and 



moon from the work stored up in the rotation of the earth. The 



diminution of rotation, indeed, is so small as scarcely to be perceived 



by the most refined observation, but the reality of it is now gener- 



