LABOUR. 



LABOUR. 



coast, is placed at the very bottom of the scale 

 of civilization, and is in point of comfort de- 

 cidedly inferior to many of the lower animals. 

 The first step in the progress of society is 

 made when man learns to hunt wild animals, 

 to feed himself with their flesh, and clothe him- 

 self with their skins. But labour, when con- 

 lined to the chase, is extremely barren and un- 

 productive. Tribes of hunters, like beasts of 

 prey, whom they closely resemble in their 

 habits and modes of subsistence, are but thinly 

 scattered over the countries which they occupy ; 

 and, notwithstanding the fewness of their num- 

 bers, any unusual deficiency in the supply of 

 game never fails to reduce them to the extre- 

 mity of want. The second step in the progress 

 of society is made when the tribes of hunters 

 and fishers devote themselves, like the ancient 

 Scythians and modern Tartars, to the domesti- 

 cation of wild animals and the rearing of 

 flocks. The subsistence of herdsmen is much 

 less precarious than that of hunters ; but they 

 are almost entirely destitute of the various 

 comforts and elegancies that give to civilized 

 life its chief value. The third and most de- 

 cisive step in the progress of civilization, in 

 the great art of producing the necessaries and 

 conveniences of life, is made when the wan- 

 dering tribes of hunters and shepherds re- 

 nounce their migratory habits and become 

 agriculturists and manufacturers. It is then 

 that man begins fully to avail himself of his 

 productive powers. He then becomes labo- 

 rious, and by a necessary consequence his 

 wants are then, for the first time, fully sup- 

 plied, and he acquires an extensive command 

 over the articles necessary for his comfort as 

 well as his subsistence. The importance of 

 labour in the production of wealth was very 

 clearly perceived by Locke. In his Essay on 

 Civil Government, published in 1689, he has en- 

 tered into a lengthened, discriminating, and 

 able analysis, to show that it is from labour 

 that the products of the earth derive almost all 

 their value. " Let any one consider," says he, 

 "what the difference is between an acre of land 

 planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat 

 or barley, and an acre of the same land lying 

 in common, without any husbandry upon it, 

 and he will find that the improvement of labour 

 makes the far greater part of the value. I think 

 it will be but a very modest computation to 

 say, that of the products of the earth useful to 

 the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of 

 labour; nay, if we rightly estimate things as 

 they come to our use, and cast up the several 

 expenses about them, what in them is purely 

 owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall 

 find that in most of them ninety-nine hundredlhs 

 are wholly to be put on the account of labour. 



"There cannot be a clearer demonstration 

 of any thing than several nations of the Ame- 

 ricans are of this, who are rich in land and 

 poor in all the comforts of life ; whom nature 

 having furnished as liberally as any other 

 people with the materials of plenty, i. e. a fruit- 

 ful soil apt to produce in abundance what might 

 serve for food, raiment, and delight, yet for 

 want of improving it by labour have not one 

 hundredth part of the conveniences which 

 might be enjoyed. 

 692 



"To make this a little clearer, let us but 

 trace some of the ordinary provisions of life 

 through their several progresses before they 

 come to our use, and see how much they 

 receive of their value from human industry. 

 Bread, wine, and cloth are things of daily use 

 and great abundance ; yet, notwithstanding, 

 acorns, water, and leaves or skins must be our 

 bread, drink, and clothing, did not labour fur- 

 nish us with these more useful commodities ; 

 for whatever bread is more worth than acorns, 

 wine than water, and cloth or silk than leaves, 

 skins, or moss, that is solely owing to labour 

 and industry ; the one of these being the food 

 and raiment which unassisted nature furnishes 

 us with ; the other provisions which our in- 

 dustry and pains prepare for us ; which how 

 much they exceed the other in value, when any 

 one hath computed, he will then see how much 

 labour makes the far greatest part of the value 

 of things we enjoy in this world. And the 

 ground which produces the material is scarcely 

 to be reckoned in as any, or, at most, but a 

 very small part of it; so little that even 

 amongst us, land that is wholly left to nature, 

 that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage 

 or planting, is called as indeed it is, waste; and 

 we shall find the benefit of it amount to little 

 more than nothing. 



"An acre of land that bears here twenty 

 bushels of wheat, and another in America, 

 which, with the same husbandry, would do the 

 like, are, without doubt, of the same natural 

 intrinsic value (utility). But yet the benefit 

 mankind receives from the one in a year is 

 worth five pounds, and from the other possibly 

 not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian 

 received from it were to be valued and sold 

 here; at least, I may truly say, not one thou- 

 sandth. It is labour, then, which puts the 

 greatest part of value upon land, without which 

 it would scarcely be worth any thing. It is to 

 that we owe the greatest part of all its useful 

 products ; for all that the straw, bran, bread, 

 of that acre of wheat, is more worth than the 

 product of an acre of good land which lies 

 waste, is all the effect of labour. 



"For it is not barely the ploughman's pains, 

 the reaper's and thrasher's toil, and the baker's 

 sweat is to be accounted into the bread we eat; 

 the labour of those who sell the oxen, who 

 digged and wrought the iron and stones, who 

 felled and framed the timber employed about 

 the plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, 

 which are a vast number, requisite to this 

 corn ; from its being seed to be sown to its 

 being made bread, must all be charged on the 

 account of labour, and received as an effect of 

 that; nature and the earth furnished only the 

 almost worthless materials as in themselves. It 

 would be a strange catalogue of things that 

 industry provided and made use of about every 

 loaf of bread before it came to our use, if we 

 could trace them ; iron, wood, leather, bark, 

 timber, stone, bricks, coals, lime, cloth, dyeing 

 drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the ma- 

 terials made use of in the ships that brought 

 away the commodities made use of by any of 

 the workmen to any part of the work ; all which 

 it would be almost impossible, at least too long, 

 to reckon up." 





