PRACTICAL PAPERS—LABOR AND CAPITAL. 
271 
This distinction of labor as directly or indirectly concerned 
in production, is much more simple and better every way than 
the old distinction much insisted on by some writers on politi¬ 
cal economy, and so strongly contested by others, of labor as 
productive or unproductive. The term unproductive can prop¬ 
erly be applied to labor only when it is labor wasted through 
indiscretion, as when a wag paid a man ten cents an hour to 
bail out the river, as its waters set up between two boats, or as 
a luckless inventor may spend years of brain work and manual 
toil on a machine which has no practical use. Certainly we 
may not say of Morse’s years of study and work in devising 
the electric telegraph, or of Webster’s labor to bring under sen¬ 
tence of the law the murderers of White; or of Coan’s preach¬ 
ing the Gospel in the Sandwich Islands, it was unproductive 
labor. 
Much exertion is put forth for mere recreation, as in hunting, 
boating, ball-playing, etc. If this really recruits mind and 
body it puts the laborer in better condition for productive toil 
and so indirectly aids it. 
There are professions, such as those of the musician and the 
actor, in which labor is put forth only to furnish a passing en¬ 
tertainment—a moment’s pleasure. Though, after the enter¬ 
tainment is over, nothing is left which can be laid up and 
counted as wealth, yet it is for the time a real gratification, and 
the sweet memory of it will abide. The true end of labor is 
accomplished immediately. The satisfaction follows the effort 
instantaneously. The hearer of Nilsson has his quid pro quo 
in the ecstacy of the hour. Why then is not this -productive 
labor just as truly as if it had produced a ribbon for ornament, 
or a shoe for protection, or bread for food. Proper gratifica¬ 
tion of this kind cheers the spirits of men, and so increases 
their productive energy. If the recreation is, in kind or de¬ 
gree, exhausting, if the amusement is in its influence demoral¬ 
izing, or if the taste be so fostered that amusement itself is 
made 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. 
