50 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters. 



2)ro quo in tlie ecstasy of tlie hour. "Why then is not thisp?'o- 

 ductive labor just as truly as if it had produced a ribbon for 

 ornament, or a shoe for protection, or bread for food? Proper 

 gratification of this kind cheers the spirits of men, and so in- 

 creases their productive energy. If the recreation is, in kind 

 or degree, exhausting, if the amusement is in its influence de- 

 moralizing, or if the taste be so fostered that amusement is 

 made itself an end — then the economist and the moralist may 

 fitly enter their joint protest against a waste and a wrong. But 

 that labor which brings refreshing relief to wearied body and 

 mind, or ministers a gratification to a pure and healthy taste, 

 cannot be fitly called unproductive. 



Still less properly can the term be applied to professional 

 labor generally. It is a very common notion, which has been 

 encouraged by some who would be esteemed philosophical 

 writers on the subject, that the manual labor of the farmer, 

 the carpenter, the cotton manufacturer, etc., is productive ; but 

 some are disposed to set down the mental labor of the doctor, 

 the lawyer, the editor, the teacher, the legislator, etc., as un- 

 productive. But the real diffei'ence is only that the labor of 

 the latter class is directed in a general way to favor the essen- 

 tial conditions of effective labor universally. It is expended 

 on the human beings individually and in their social state to 

 fit them for labor, to protect them in their labor and to gi-at- 

 ify and expand the wants which are to be satisfied by the 

 fruits of labor. So long as physical health, intelligence, mo- 

 rality, security under good government and just laws, justly 

 administered, and social refinement and good feeling are essen- 

 tial conditions of successful industry, all labor of the kind re- 

 ferred to must be set down as indirectly productive. Nor is 

 labor in this form further removed from, or less essential to 

 the ultimate result than is the labor of the miner in the ore- 

 bed, with reference to the needle and the comfort of the coat 

 made by its use. I have seen a pictorial sheet, the prominent 

 object in which is a farmer standing in the centre, while around 



