208 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



Bristol glass, knives of Swedish steel, and an 

 Irish table-cloth and napkins. 



Frederick proposed that we should calculate 

 the number of people that must have been em- 

 ployed in producing all these various articles. 

 He began with salt, as one of the simplest things 

 on the table, and he easily ran through the ope- 

 rations of digging it out of the mine, making the 

 little baskets in which it is sold, and conveying 

 them by land or by water carriage to Gloucester ; 

 nor did he forget the wholesale and retail dealers, 

 through whose hands they passed before they 

 were deposited with my aunt's housekeeper. But 

 my uncle reminded him that making fine salt was 

 not only a far more complicated process than he 

 seemed to imagine, but also that, unless he took 

 into account the machines employed in everyone 

 of the operations, and even the tools requisite for 

 making those machines, he would not be able to 

 give a satisfactory answer to his own proposition. 

 " The same remark," he continued, " will apply 

 to the production of everything else on the 

 table: this roll, for instance, must not only in- 

 clude the labour of the baker, but that of the 

 bolter, the miller, the reaper, the sower, and the 

 ploughman, besides the manufacturers of all the 

 implements they used. Or, take coffee, which, 

 however simple the mere gathering of the berries 

 and drying them in the sun may appear, can 

 only be brought (o this country through the 





