THE term Labor includes all human exertion in the production
of wealth, whatever its mode. In common parlance
we often speak of brain labor and hand labor as though they were
entirely distinct kinds
of exertion,
and labor is often spoken of as though it involved
only muscular exertion. But in reality any form of labor, that is
to say, any form of human
exertion in the production of wealth above that which
cattle may be applied to doing,
requires the human brain as truly as the human hand,
and would be impossible without the exercise of mental faculties
on the part of the laborer.
Labor in fact is only physical in external form. In its
origin it is mental or
on strict analysis spiritual. — The Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 16: The Production of Wealth, The
Second Factor of Production — Labor • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production
IT seems to us that your Holiness misses its real
significance in intimating that Christ in becoming
the son of a carpenter and
Himself working as a carpenter
showed merely that "there is nothing to be ashamed of in seeking one's bread
by labor." To say that is almost like saying that by not
robbing people He showed that there is nothing to be ashamed
of in honesty. If you will consider
how true
in any large view is the classification of all men into
working-men, beggar-men and thieves, you will see that
it was morally impossible that Christ during
His stay on earth should have been anything else than a
working-man, since He who
came to fulfill the law must by deed as well as word obey
God's law of labor.
See how fully and how beautifully Christ's life on earth illustrated
this law. Entering our earthly life in the weakness of infancy, as
it is appointed
that
all should enter it, He lovingly took what in the natural
order is lovingly rendered, the sustenance, secured by labor, that
one generation owes to its
immediate successors.
Arrived at maturity, He earned His own subsistence by that
common labor in which the majority of men must and do earn it. Then
passing to a higher — to
the very highest — sphere of labor. He earned His
subsistence by the teaching of moral and spiritual truths,
receiving its material wages in the love offerings
of grateful hearers, and not refusing the costly spikenard
with which Mary anointed his feet. So, when He chose His
disciples, He did not go to land-owners or other
monopolists who live on the labor of others but to common
laboring men. And when He called them to a higher sphere
of labor and sent them out to teach moral and
spiritual truths He told them to take, without condescension
on the one hand, or sense of degradation on the other,
the loving return for such labor, saying
to them that the "laborer is worthy of his hire," thus
showing, what we hold, that all labor does not consist
in what is called manual labor, but that
whoever helps to add to the material, intellectual, moral,
or spiritual fulness of life
is also a laborer. - The
Condition of Labor
NOR should it be forgotten that the investigator, the philosopher,
the teacher, the artist, the poet, the priest, though not
engaged in the
production of wealth,
are not only engaged in the production of utilities and
satisfactions to which the production of wealth is only
a means, but by acquiring and
diffusing knowledge,
stimulating mental powers and elevating the moral sense,
may greatly increase the ability to produce wealth. For
man does not live by bread alone. He is
not an engine, in which so much fuel gives so much
power. On a capstan bar or a topsail
halyard a good song tells like muscle, and a "Marseillaise" or a "Battle Hymn
of the Republic" counts for bayonets. A hearty laugh, a
noble thought, a perception of harmony, may add to the
power of dealing even with material
things.
He who by any exertion of mind or body adds to the aggregate
of enjoyable wealth, increases the sum of human knowledge
or gives to human life higher
elevation
or greater fulness — he is, in the large meaning
of the words, a "producer," a "working-man," a "laborer," and
is honestly earning honest wages. But he who without
doing aught to make mankind richer, wiser, better, happier,
lives
on the toil of others — he,
no matter by what name of honor he may be I called, or
how lustily the priests
of Mammon
may swing their censers before him, is in the last analysis
but a beggarman or a thief. — Protection
or Free Trade, Chapter 7 econlib ... ... go
to "Gems from
George"
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