Passages cited (153)

1. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Vol. 4, p. 292read · scan
2. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Vol. 4, p. 304read · scan
3. Dante Alighieri, Hell, Vol. 20, p. 48read · scan
4. Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Vol. 36, p. 332read · scan
5. Martin Luther, Concerning Christian Liberty, Vol. 36, p. 360–361read · scan
6. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Vol. 4, p. 165–170read · scan
7. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Vol. 4, p. 155read · scan
8. Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Vol. 2, p. 238read · scan
9. Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Vol. 2, p. 240read · scan
10. Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Vol. 2, p. 138read · scan
11. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Vol. 24, p. 107read · scan
12. Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, Vol. 25, p. 364read · scan
13. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the Reformer, Vol. 5, p. 48–50read · scan
14. William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, Vol. 1, p. 328–329read · scan
15. Benjamin Franklin, His Autobiography, Vol. 1, p. 141read · scan
16. Ecclesiastes; or, The Preacher, Vol. 44, p. 335read · scan
17. Ecclesiastes; or, The Preacher, Vol. 44, p. 337read · scan
18. Ecclesiastes; or, The Preacher, Vol. 44, p. 337–338read · scan
19. Stories from the Thousand and One Nights, Vol. 16, p. 25–26read · scan
20. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind, Vol. 34, p. 226read · scan
21. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poems, Vol. 42, p. 993–994read · scan
22. The Bhagavad-Gita; or, Song Celestial, Vol. 45, p. 797–799read · scan
23. George Herbert, Poems, Vol. 40, p. 341–343read · scan
24. Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, Vol. 25, p. 384read · scan
25. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Worship, Vol. 5, p. 286read · scan
26. Aesop, Fables, Vol. 17, p. 25read · scan
27. Benjamin Franklin, His Autobiography, Vol. 1, p. 58–59read · scan
28. Benjamin Franklin, His Autobiography, Vol. 1, p. 63–64read · scan
29. William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan England, Vol. 35, p. 309read · scan
30. William Caxton, Prefaces and Epilogues, Vol. 39, p. 13read · scan
31. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Vol. 36, p. 142read · scan
32. William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan England, Vol. 35, p. 303read · scan
33. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 263read · scan
34. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 263–265read · scan
35. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Vol. 24, p. 293read · scan
36. Tacitus, Germany, Vol. 33, p. 100read · scan
37. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, Vol. 23, p. 139–140read · scan
38. Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Vol. 36, p. 313–314read · scan
39. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Vol. 36, p. 179read · scan
40. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Vol. 36, p. 179read · scan
41. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Vol. 36, p. 179–183read · scan
42. Robert Burns, Poems and Songs, Vol. 6, p. 60–63read · scan
43. John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, Vol. 28, p. 133read · scan
44. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 177read · scan
45. Ecclesiastes; or, The Preacher, Vol. 44, p. 340–341read · scan
46. William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes, Vol. 28, p. 314read · scan
47. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, Vol. 23, p. 149read · scan
48. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 9read · scan
49. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 10read · scan
50. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 11–12read · scan
51. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 13read · scan
52. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 14read · scan
53. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 16read · scan
54. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 11read · scan
55. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 18read · scan
56. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 20–21read · scan
57. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 22read · scan
58. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Vol. 32, p. 300read · scan
59. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Vol. 11, p. 129read · scan
60. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Vol. 11, p. 282read · scan
61. Friedrich von Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, Vol. 32, p. 221–222read · scan
62. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar, Vol. 5, p. 6read · scan
63. Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits, Vol. 5, p. 399read · scan
64. William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes, Vol. 28, p. 315read · scan
65. Henry David Thoreau, Walking, Vol. 28, p. 397–398read · scan
66. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Vol. 37, p. 173read · scan
67. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Vol. 37, p. 175read · scan
68. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the Reformer, Vol. 5, p. 46–47read · scan
69. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the Reformer, Vol. 5, p. 47read · scan
70. William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes, Vol. 28, p. 339read · scan
71. William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes, Vol. 28, p. 327read · scan
72. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 34read · scan
73. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 36read · scan
74. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 48read · scan
75. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 50–51read · scan
76. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Vol. 32, p. 344–345read · scan
77. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 258read · scan
78. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 258read · scan
79. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 430read · scan
80. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 439read · scan
81. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 442read · scan
82. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 233read · scan
83. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 212–213read · scan
84. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 203–204read · scan
85. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 224read · scan
86. Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, Vol. 27, p. 353read · scan
87. Thomas Carlyle, Characteristics, Vol. 25, p. 335–336read · scan
88. Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits, Vol. 5, p. 367read · scan
89. Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits, Vol. 5, p. 394read · scan
90. Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Conservation of Force, Vol. 30, p. 192read · scan
91. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 67–68read · scan
92. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 68read · scan
93. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 144read · scan
94. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 69–70read · scan
95. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 72read · scan
96. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 72read · scan
97. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 72–74read · scan
98. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 75read · scan
99. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 81read · scan
100. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Vol. 25, p. 303–305read · scan
101. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 101–102read · scan
102. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 103read · scan
103. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 105–106read · scan
104. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 107read · scan
105. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 512read · scan
106. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 518read · scan
107. Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part I, Vol. 14, p. 37read · scan
108. Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part I, Vol. 14, p. 296–297read · scan
109. John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, Vol. 28, p. 121read · scan
110. John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman, Vol. 1, p. 303–304read · scan
111. Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. 29, p. 270read · scan
112. Benjamin Franklin, His Autobiography, Vol. 1, p. 19–20read · scan
113. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Vol. 36, p. 177–178read · scan
114. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 124read · scan
115. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 125read · scan
116. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 139read · scan
117. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 143–144read · scan
118. Herodotus, An Account of Egypt, Vol. 33, p. 81–82read · scan
119. Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday, Vol. 47, p. 487–489read · scan
120. Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday, Vol. 47, p. 535–536read · scan
121. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems, Vol. 42, p. 1271–1273read · scan
122. Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Vol. 31, p. 283read · scan
123. Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Old Age, Vol. 9, p. 64–65read · scan
124. Abraham Cowley, Of Agriculture, Vol. 27, p. 62read · scan
125. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind, Vol. 34, p. 177–178read · scan
126. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 129read · scan
127. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, Vol. 23, p. 19read · scan
128. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, Vol. 23, p. 292read · scan
129. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, Vol. 23, p. 361read · scan
130. William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude, Vol. 1, p. 389read · scan
131. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hermann and Dorothea, Vol. 19, p. 404read · scan
132. Plutarch, Demosthenes, Vol. 12, p. 196read · scan
133. Samuel Johnson, Preface to the English Dictionary, Vol. 39, p. 182–183read · scan
134. Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott, Vol. 25, p. 443read · scan
135. John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, Vol. 25, p. 53–54read · scan
136. Herodotus, An Account of Egypt, Vol. 33, p. 63read · scan
137. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Vol. 36, p. 142read · scan
138. Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. 29, p. 436read · scan
139. John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman, Vol. 1, p. 203read · scan
140. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 395read · scan
141. Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, Vol. 43, p. 424read · scan
142. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Vol. 24, p. 188–189read · scan
143. Voltaire, Letters on the English, Vol. 34, p. 107–108read · scan
144. William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes, Vol. 28, p. 361read · scan
145. William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes, Vol. 28, p. 347read · scan
146. William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes, Vol. 28, p. 365–366read · scan
147. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind, Vol. 34, p. 207read · scan
148. John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman, Vol. 1, p. 251read · scan
149. John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, Vol. 25, p. 143read · scan
150. William Morris, Poems, Vol. 42, p. 1195–1196read · scan
151. Plutarch, Pericles, Vol. 12, p. 47–48read · scan
152. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Vol. 36, p. 142read · scan
153. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 10, p. 332read · scan

Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.

1. 1The nature and meaning of labor
   1. 1aLabor as the penalty of the Fall and a divine ordinance
   2. 1bLabor as natural to man and as worth, dignity and cure
   3. 1cThe vanity and weariness of toil
   4. 1dWork without attachment to its fruits
2. 2Industry and idleness
   1. 2aDiligence and frugality as the way to success
   2. 2bIdleness as the mother of vices
   3. 2cIdle classes who live on the labor of others
   4. 2dRest as the sweet result of labor, and leisure earned
3. 3The theory of the division of labor
   1. 3aThe causes and advantages of the division of labor
   2. 3bDivision of labor as arising from exchange and limited by the market
   3. 3cDivision of labor among animals, tribes and households
4. 4The effects of the division of labor on the worker
   1. 4aThe fragmenting and stupefying of the worker
   2. 4bThe defense of manual labor against the division-of-labor objection
5. 5Labor as the source and measure of wealth
   1. 5aLabor as the measure and real price of commodities
   2. 5bProductive and unproductive labor
   3. 5cLabor, capital and the maintenance of workmen
   4. 5dMachinery and the saving of labor
6. 6Wages and the condition of the laboring poor
   1. 6aThe bargain between masters and workmen
   2. 6bDemand for labor, subsistence and the course of wages
   3. 6cWhy wages differ among employments
   4. 6dWages unpaid, withheld or inadequate in experience
   5. 6eTaxes upon wages and necessaries
7. 7Trades, crafts and apprenticeship
   1. 7aApprenticeship as training and as servitude
   2. 7bThe controversy over apprenticeship laws and corporations
   3. 7cThe dignity of the trade and the craftsman
   4. 7dFree movement of labor and the settlement laws
8. 8The kinds of work and workers
   1. 8aHusbandry and the tiller of the soil
   2. 8bThe sailor's hard service
   3. 8cMiners, porters and burden-bearers
   4. 8dHousehold work and domestic service
   5. 8eIntellectual labor and the toil of the scholar and artist
9. 9Forced and unfree labor
   1. 9aSlave labor and its effects
   2. 9bConvicts, captives and public works
10. 10The elevation and claims of the laboring classes
    1. 10aThe laborer's rise in culture, thought and self-respect
    2. 10bJustice to labor and the fruits of toil
    3. 10cEmployment of the poor and the problem of unemployment

1.The nature and meaning of labor

Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Conservation of ForceVol. 30

• p. 175–176The idea of mechanical work is drawn from comparison with human working power.read · scan
• p. 176Blacksmith, violinist and lacemaker all work through the same arm muscles.read · scan
• p. 182–183One labourer working four times as long does the same total work as four working a quarter hour.read · scan

1a.Labor as the penalty of the Fall and a divine ordinance

Aesop, FablesVol. 17

• p. 35Effort should accompany prayer; self-help is required.read · scan

Dante Alighieri, HellVol. 20

• p. 48Genesis is cited: man set to dress the garden and eat bread by the sweat of his face, as nature's means.read · scan

Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German NationVol. 36

• p. 332Tilling the ground, in the sweat of the face, is commanded to all as Adam's lot and is more godly than commerce.read · scan

Martin Luther, Concerning Christian LibertyVol. 36

• p. 360–361Adam was given the business of tending the garden so as not to be idle.read · scan

Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and MoralVol. 3

• p. 100–101Usurers break the law to eat bread in the sweat of one's own face, not another's.read · scan

William Shakespeare, The TempestVol. 46

• p. 419–422Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth needs no sweat or endeavour; nature supplies all without work.read · scan

John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4

• p. 292Adam must eat bread in the sweat of his face from thorny ground.read · scan
• p. 304Adam accepts earning bread by labor, judging idleness worse.read · scan
• p. 319Adam and Eve turn to the day's toil imposed by sweat, content to live in fallen state.read · scan

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among MankindVol. 34

• p. 205–206Labour became necessary and fields were watered with human sweat once men depended on one another.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 75–76Death says folk must do something for their bread, and so must Death.read · scan

William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28

• p. 321–322Excessive toil on matter that crushes the soul is at war with God's designs and becomes bondage.read · scan
• p. 356Contempt for manual labor is fading; labor ordained by God is worthy and can foster sound judgment and taste.read · scan

1b.Labor as natural to man and as worth, dignity and cure

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 73–74Odysseus works busily for four days felling and shaping timber.read · scan

Aesop, FablesVol. 17

• p. 23The members strike, and learn each performs necessary work.read · scan

Virgil, The AeneidVol. 13

• p. 165–167Simile of ants toiling in ordered work likens Trojan embarkation.read · scan
• p. 210The Trojans fell the ancient forest to build the pyre, Aeneas working with them.read · scan
• p. 355Latians and Trojans mix in the woods felling timber for funeral piles.read · scan

Luke, The Acts of the ApostlesVol. 44

• p. 468Paul worked with his own hands, coveted no silver, and urges laboring to help the weak.read · scan

Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of EpictetusVol. 2

• p. 125–126Man is made for an active life, but philosophic occupation differs from mere profit-making.read · scan
• p. 138Diogenes judges labour good only if it builds strength of soul.read · scan

Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2

• p. 193Learned endurance of labour and to work with his own hands.read · scan
• p. 238A man's labour is not contrary to nature or an evil so long as he does a man's work, as hand and foot do theirs.read · scan
• p. 240Men are labourers and co-operators in the universe's work, in different fashions.read · scan

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 165–168With goods common, men withdraw from labour, as the motive of one's own gain and security is removed.read · scan

Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German NationVol. 36

• p. 287–288The commons' proper task is to work.read · scan

Martin Luther, Concerning Christian LibertyVol. 36

• p. 365–366Work with one's hands so as to have something to give to those in need.read · scan

Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31

• p. 283–284Cellini says that if he stopped working he would fall ill and his art suffer; the King wants him to spare his strength.read · scan

Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and MoralVol. 3

• p. 19–20Children sweeten labors but make misfortunes bitter; parents should choose their children's vocations early, since the young are flexible and custom makes the chosen course easy.read · scan

William Shakespeare, The TempestVol. 46

• p. 432Ferdinand bears logs, finding base tasks nobly undergone and made pleasure by his mistress.read · scan

Thomas Dekker, Country Glee; Cold's the Wind; O Sweet ContentVol. 40

• p. 317–319Honest labour bears a lovely face.read · scan

Thomas Hobbes, Of Man, Being the First Part of LeviathanVol. 34

• p. 389In perpetual war no industry, culture of the earth, or navigation is possible.read · scan

Izaak Walton, The Life of Dr. John DonneVol. 15

• p. 333He longs to contribute by business or an occupation; to be no part of any body is to be nothing.read · scan

John Milton, Poems Written at School and at College, 1624-1632Vol. 4

• p. 26Carrier died for heaviness that his cart went light, crying 'More weight!', pining without work.read · scan

John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4

• p. 165–170Adam says God set labour and rest; man's daily work declares his dignity and heaven's regard, unlike idle beasts.read · scan

John Milton, Samson AgonistesVol. 4

• p. 415Samson would rather drudge and earn his bread than sit an idle burden.read · scan

John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning EducationVol. 37

• p. 109–110Bodily labor with some hardship is set as a task to make him return willingly to his book.read · scan
• p. 113Toys requiring labor should be procured for exercise, but children should do their own fitting.read · scan
• p. 130Children take great pains at play; their industry should be turned to useful things, and delight made of work.read · scan

William Penn, Some Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1

• p. 328–329Love labor: healthy for body and mind, prevents idleness and its evils.read · scan

Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1

• p. 140Men fell trees quickly and the fort is finished in a week despite rain.read · scan
• p. 141Franklin observes that men are most content when employed, and mutinous and quarrelsome when idle.read · scan

Samuel Johnson, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 503–504Levet's daily toil supplied the modest wants of the poor; the single talent well employed.read · scan

Christopher Smart, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 492–494Labour receives its reward as harvest sheaves are counted.read · scan

Oliver Goldsmith, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 527–528Dutch build dykes against the sea, reclaiming land through repeated toil.read · scan

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and BeautifulVol. 24

• p. 65Works that seem to need immense force and labor, like Stonehenge, strike us as grand.read · scan
• p. 107Providence makes rest harmful; labour, a surmounting of difficulties, is needed to keep body and finer organs of mind healthy.read · scan
• p. 108Common labour as mode of pain exercises grosser parts, terror the finer.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 27–28He trusts employment will supply his wants.read · scan
• p. 37–38He was bred to toil, plough and sow, and a man bred to labour is a match for fortune.read · scan
• p. 38–40He makes his daily bread by labour.read · scan
• p. 156–157Work gives the country fellow and girl contentment; want of work curses gentry.read · scan
• p. 196–198The busy find reward in their bustling pursuits, unlike the hope-abandoned speaker with no aim.read · scan

William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28

• p. 314Channing defends manual toil as good; elevating laborers does not mean releasing them from work, which builds effort and character.read · scan
• p. 314Labor has dignity: it gives force to will, courage and endurance, and even rest owes its sweetness to toil.read · scan

Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)Vol. 21

• p. 295–296Lucia seeks constant needlework to occupy her fingers and ease her grief.read · scan
• p. 350–351He held that life is meant as a time of employment for all, not a burden to many and pleasure to few.read · scan
• p. 616–617Renzo helps with the wine-vats and vintage, saying he tires sooner of idleness than of work.read · scan
• p. 620Renzo spends the waiting days as a labourer, working for his host and tending Agnese's garden.read · scan

Thomas Carlyle, CharacteristicsVol. 25

• p. 330–331Man's blessedness is to toil and know what to toil at; freedom lies in united victorious labour.read · scan
• p. 342Labour is man's inheritance; effort interrupts ease yet without it no rest is conceivable.read · scan

Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at EdinburghVol. 25

• p. 361First problem for a man is to find what kind of work he is to do.read · scan
• p. 364Work is the grand cure of all human maladies; the unhappiest man has no work cut out for him.read · scan
• p. 387–388Goethe's verse closes with 'Work, and despair not', the bidding to hope and press onward.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the ReformerVol. 5

• p. 44Young man must take the harness of routine or begin anew with the spade.read · scan
• p. 48–50Every man should stand in primary relation to the world's work; labor is God's education and wrests the sceptre from Nature.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, CompensationVol. 5

• p. 96–97All human labor, from sharpening a stake to building a city or epic, illustrates the perfect compensation of the universe.read · scan
• p. 100The soul's good is had by paying in nature's coin, labor allowed by heart and head.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 414–415English history vindicates the working faculty: who will work and dare shall rule; work should wear the crown.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1253–1254The pine yields sinew that subdued the fields; the forester surpasses the idle palace dweller.read · scan

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 982–983Men the workers, reaping something new.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Twenty-Four Years AfterVol. 23

• p. 391–392The Chinaman's minute, patient industry at an abandoned digging.read · scan

Henry David Thoreau, WalkingVol. 28

• p. 398The laborer's callous palms know finer self-respect and heroism than the languid fingers of idleness.read · scan

Walt Whitman, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1406–1408Pioneers reject soft ease and take a hard diet for the primal needed work.read · scan

Thomas Henry Huxley, Science and CultureVol. 28

• p. 221–222Industry is a means, not an end; men work only to get what they want.read · scan

Sir Archibald Geikie, Geographical EvolutionVol. 30

• p. 349Human works of tillage, canals, railways and buildings transform the ground.read · scan

1c.The vanity and weariness of toil

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 159Sisyphus strains endlessly to roll his stone uphill in vain.read · scan

Aesop, FablesVol. 17

• p. 39The bent labourer wearied by toil.read · scan

The Book of PsalmsVol. 44

• p. 309–311Toil is vain without Jehovah, yet the God-fearing shall eat the fruit of their labor.read · scan

Herodotus, An Account of EgyptVol. 33

• p. 85Two thousand boatmen took three years; the weary artificer groans and work stops.read · scan

Ecclesiastes; or, The PreacherVol. 44

• p. 335Asks what profit man has from all his labor under the sun.read · scan
• p. 336His great works and toil yield only a fleeting portion, striving after wind.read · scan
• p. 337He hates his toil because he must leave it to an heir who may be a fool.read · scan
• p. 337–338Questions the profit of labor yet counts enjoying it as God's gift.read · scan
• p. 338–339Skilful work provokes envy; better a handful with quietness than two with striving.read · scan
• p. 339–340A man alone toils endlessly with no one to labor for, which is vanity.read · scan

Luke, The Gospel According to LukeVol. 44

• p. 365–366Fishermen toiled all night in vain; then a great catch, and they leave their trade to follow him.read · scan

Plutarch, CaesarVol. 12

• p. 295Soldiers protest being used as if they had no sense of labor and could not be worn out.read · scan

Pliny the Younger, Letters of PlinyVol. 9

• p. 195–197Pliny complains that official work of hearing cases, petitions and accounts keeps him from his friend's lectures.read · scan

Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16

• p. 11Bull complains of ploughing and the mill while the ass lives at ease; the ass ends flayed by the yoke.read · scan
• p. 25The fisherman toils, diving to haul in the net and finding only an ass's carcass.read · scan
• p. 25–26Repeated toil brings only jars of mud and broken pots; the verse says work does not secure sustenance.read · scan
• p. 26He dives again and works the net to shore.read · scan
• p. 73The tailor sends the fugitive prince to earn subsistence by wood-cutting, selling loads for half a gold piece.read · scan
• p. 217The fisherman toils through the night to gain subsistence.read · scan
• p. 424–425Ali Baba lives by cutting wood and selling it in town.read · scan

Edward Haies, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to NewfoundlandVol. 33

• p. 296Men weary of toil and hard diet demand money to go home after an unprofitable voyage.read · scan

Francis Bacon, Proœmium, Epistle Dedicatory, Preface, and Plan of the Instauratio MagnaVol. 39

• p. 142God rested content with his works, but man found his own works vanity and vexation; toil may earn a sabbath.read · scan

John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4

• p. 90Spirits accomplish in an hour what men take ages of toil to do.read · scan

Andrew Marvell, PoemsVol. 40

• p. 376–377Men's incessant labors for the palm, oak or bays are vain beside the garlands of repose.read · scan

Blaise Pascal, ThoughtsVol. 48

• p. 51–52Set a soldier or labourer complaining of his lot to do nothing.read · scan

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among MankindVol. 34

• p. 226The savage desires exemption from labour; the citizen remains a drudge to his last minute.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 67–68Poor men drudge through wet and dry in ceaseless toil yet are no less blest.read · scan
• p. 82–84Weary from ploughing and tending horses, he resists writing.read · scan
• p. 143–145Drink strings the nerves of weary labour and cheers the poor at toil.read · scan
• p. 354–356Lament at excise duty searching old wives' barrels, staining his laurels, softened by thought of wife and children.read · scan

William Wordsworth, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 620Michael toiled all his life on the land yet gained little; resolves to resume the tasks he had given Luke.read · scan

Thomas Carlyle, CharacteristicsVol. 25

• p. 336Industry presses with crushing weight; peasant absurdly labours to raise wheat and then burn it.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American ScholarVol. 5

• p. 22Business principles disgust hopeful young men, who become drudges or die.read · scan

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1337–1338Toiling hands and weary feet of the city contrasted with the lovers' ceased labors.read · scan

John Greenleaf Whittier, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1357–1358Boy's free feet will be shod like a colt's to tread the mills of toil.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 494–495Admires the industry that created order on Ascension, but regrets it was wasted on so trifling an end.read · scan

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 993–994The mariners ask why man alone must toil while all things else have rest; there is no joy but calm.read · scan
• p. 995–996They ask why life should all be labor.read · scan
• p. 996–998The mariners choose slumber over toil, and the gods look down on the enduring toil of the ill-used race who cleave the soil.read · scan

Robert Browning, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1071–1072All men toil and bear their lack of success; the petty done, the undone vast.read · scan

Henry David Thoreau, WalkingVol. 28

• p. 399The walker wants to forget his morning occupations and obligations; thoughts of work intrude on his walk, and even 'good works' can implicate him.read · scan

John Ruskin, Sesame and LiliesVol. 28

• p. 95Vanity is the stimulus of toil and the balm of repose.read · scan

1d.Work without attachment to its fruits

See also: Duty 1c · Religion 14d · God 6c · Desire 4c

Confucius, The Sayings of ConfuciusVol. 44

• p. 53–54A servant of the king honours work and rates pay last.read · scan

The Book of PsalmsVol. 44

• p. 255–258Prayer that God establish the work of our hands.read · scan

The Bhagavad-Gita; or, Song CelestialVol. 45

• p. 794–795'Live in action! Labor!' urges disinterested work, casting all self aside.read · scan
• p. 797–799Krishna teaches that no one can escape action; work done without seeking gain is better than idleness, and sacrifice repays the gods.read · scan
• p. 800Idle, self-serving life is lost and shameful; toil pays tithes that uphold the rolling wheels of the world.read · scan
• p. 804–805Krishna made the four castes by qualities and gifts; works wrought without attachment do not bind, so Arjuna is told to work as the ancients did.read · scan
• p. 805Defines action and inaction: the wise man works freed from desire and renounces the fruit of deeds, so his work becomes sacrifice and does not bind him.read · scan
• p. 805–809Works are offerings; knowledge frees one from the bondage of works. Of renouncing works and working piously, the better way is to work without refraining.read · scan
• p. 809–813One who does rightful work without seeking gain is both renouncer and yogi; the perfect yogin acts unmoved by passion and sets the result aside.read · scan
• p. 813–814Yogic discipline and moderation, with a reference to waking betimes for duty; mainly about meditation, with only slight bearing on labor.read · scan
• p. 846If steady worship fails, work for God; give up the fruits of labor, renouncing results.read · scan
• p. 865–867The fruit of labors is threefold, but no fruit comes where no work was; none in the body can wholly abstain from acts.read · scan
• p. 870–871Work allotted to each caste, tilling, trade, service, brings perfection when done diligently and content.read · scan

Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2

• p. 207Work not unwillingly or distractedly.read · scan
• p. 268Labour without wretchedness or desire for pity or admiration, as social reason requires.read · scan

Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of ChristVol. 7

• p. 312–313Labour faithfully in God's vineyard; toil is short and rewarded.read · scan
• p. 323–324Nature loves ease, but Grace gladly embraces labour.read · scan

George Herbert, PoemsVol. 40

• p. 341–343A servant sweeping a room for God's sake makes drudgery divine.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 299Employment honestly followed in the light of truth, diligent yet fervent in spirit.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 106–107She works only for the sake of gold and soon slackens.read · scan

Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at EdinburghVol. 25

• p. 384Man is born to spend all his strength doing the work he is fit for; the reward is the work done.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, New England ReformersVol. 5

• p. 269–270Honest work done to one's own approbation, coarse or fine, earns its reward.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, WorshipVol. 5

• p. 286Emerson praises workers who love finishing their task for its own sake; work itself is victory and reward, not market or patronage.read · scan
• p. 292–293Honors him who finds support in labor instead of praise.read · scan

2.Industry and idleness

2a.Diligence and frugality as the way to success

See also: Wealth 5a · Virtue and Vice 7e

Aesop, FablesVol. 17

• p. 22–23Steady work brings regular food.read · scan
• p. 25The ant toils in summer while the grasshopper plays.read · scan

Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16

• p. 233He says his prosperity came only after severe fatigue, toil and many terrors.read · scan
• p. 234–235The poets' saying holds that eminence is gained in proportion to labour, as the pearl diver wins fortune.read · scan

Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German NationVol. 36

• p. 308Holy days cost the common man a day's work and unfit him for labour; work day honours saints better.read · scan

William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35

• p. 309Soil is now more fruitful because countrymen are more painful, skilful and careful through gain, no longer idle.read · scan
• p. 312Farmers profit by converting moory ground into hopyards; industry maintains families.read · scan

Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and MoralVol. 3

• p. 87Riches gained by just labor come slowly; improving the ground is the most natural way.read · scan
• p. 87–88Ordinary trades are honest, furthered by diligence and good name for fair dealing.read · scan
• p. 102Usury is said to dull and damp industries, improvements and new inventions, discouraging productive employment of money.read · scan

Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's HolidayVol. 47

• p. 500–501Ralph, lacking limbs and lands, will trust to God and his hands; Eyre promotes his workmen.read · scan
• p. 505–509Shoemakers work at Hodge's shop-board, hoping to rise to lord mayors or aldermen.read · scan
• p. 536Eyre's rise from apprentice's water-tankard bearer to lord mayor, feasting the apprentices of the craft.read · scan

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's ProgressVol. 15

• p. 230–231Mercy is never idle, making garments for the needy, which impresses Brisk as good housewifery.read · scan

William Penn, Some Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1

• p. 343–344Industry, patience and diligence supply want of parts and remove mountains.read · scan

William Penn, More Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1

• p. 379–380Do not multiply work needlessly; overrunning business leaves the harvest to others.read · scan

Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1

• p. 12–13Constant labor and industry maintained a large family; the epitaph urges diligence in one's calling; he learns from watching tradesmen.read · scan
• p. 27–28The two printers are poorly qualified for their trade; Franklin gains money by industry and frugality.read · scan
• p. 30–31Father counsels steady industry as the way to save enough to set up in business.read · scan
• p. 45–46Franklin gains influence among fellow printers and is favored by the master through diligence and quickness at composing.read · scan
• p. 54Decow tells how he rose from wheeling clay to surveyor-general and a good estate through industry.read · scan
• p. 58–59Franklin works late to compose a sheet a day, winning credit and custom through industry.read · scan
• p. 63–64Diligent trade work, a good compositor and an apprentice; Franklin even wheels paper through the streets to show he is not above his business.read · scan
• p. 64Neglect of business, versus diligence, decides which printers survive.read · scan
• p. 75Diligence in his calling and indefatigable industry in the printing business.read · scan
• p. 91Industry and frugality inculcated through the almanac; one man focused on a plan can work great changes.read · scan
• p. 93Partnership in printing business; widow managed it successfully.read · scan
• p. 103–104Franklin sets up his workmen in printing-houses in other colonies on partnership terms, raising several families.read · scan
• p. 113Franklin superintends workmen and materials, freed by his industrious partner David Hall in the printing office.read · scan
• p. 146–147He sets Kinnersley to earn a living exhibiting the experiments.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 184–186Better husbandry is said to require a long course of frugality and industry; colonial farmers exhaust land rather than manure it.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 365–367Turned gauger for fifty pounds a year; will make besoms rather than let his family want.read · scan

William Wordsworth, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 617–620Michael recalls toiling over seventy years and expects Luke to repair the loss by thrift.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 104–105The industrious girl toils spinning until her fingers bleed, contrasted with the idle sister.read · scan
• p. 157Simpleton earns success by real effort, while his brothers take no trouble and bring coarse substitutes.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-RelianceVol. 5

• p. 75–76The sturdy lad who tries every trade and always falls on his feet beats the city dolls who despair when first ventures fail.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 330–331The industry of ages has turned every rood of land to its best use.read · scan
• p. 352Island lucrative to free labor; Saxon as worker.read · scan
• p. 353Saxons are the hands of mankind, with taste for toil; the island turns every adventurer into a laborer.read · scan
• p. 356–357Steady combinations in agriculture, manufacture and tools; no want and no waste.read · scan
• p. 359–360Emerson praises English patient, thorough toil: every man trained to an art, master of his craft, hard-worked leaders in Parliament.read · scan
• p. 360–361English pertinacity in public aims and research: Herschel's star catalogue, Arctic expeditions, Elgin's marbles, faithful performance honored.read · scan
• p. 384–385English day-laborers hold out under vast amounts of work without harm.read · scan

Hans Christian Andersen, TalesVol. 17

• p. 232–233The swineherd lets no day pass without working at some new invention.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 428Mission farm at Waimate with crops, tools, forge and mill and native labourers shows industry.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Twenty-Four Years AfterVol. 23

• p. 401–402Bennett sets up a stall to turn a penny.read · scan

2b.Idleness as the mother of vices

See also: Virtue and Vice 7e

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 191He never loved field labor or thrifty home-keeping.read · scan
• p. 253–254Eurymachus offers the disguised Odysseus hired farm labour at wages, taunting him as idle and fit only for begging.read · scan
• p. 283The beggar is mocked as skilled in no peaceful work nor deed of war.read · scan

Ecclesiastes; or, The PreacherVol. 44

• p. 347–348Slothfulness ruins the house; the one who watches wind and clouds does not sow or reap.read · scan

Virgil, The AeneidVol. 13

• p. 87The Tyrians toil at building walls, citadel, harbor and theater, likened to bees in a hive driving out lazy drones.read · scan

Tacitus, GermanyVol. 33

• p. 100They scorn tilling the ground, thinking it spiritless to earn by sweat what blood can gain.read · scan
• p. 101–102Warriors leave household and land to women and the old, passing time in idleness, sleep and feasting.read · scan
• p. 107They refuse to labour to match land's fertility, planting no orchards or gardens, exacting only corn.read · scan

Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16

• p. 345Mother complains she spins night and day for an idle son; the Moor urges him to learn a craft and support himself.read · scan

William Caxton, Prefaces and EpiloguesVol. 39

• p. 5Caxton, bound to shun sloth as mother of vices, takes up virtuous occupation by translating a French book.read · scan
• p. 7He takes up the third book to avoid idleness, mother of all vices, having leisure at Cologne.read · scan
• p. 13Citing Jerome, Augustine and Bernard, idleness is condemned; Caxton resolves to occupy himself with translation.read · scan

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 142Idle gentlemen and their serving-men, having no craft, are turned out to starve or steal; useful work is lacking.read · scan
• p. 142Discarded serving-men lack craft; husbandmen will not hire men bred to idleness for small wages.read · scan
• p. 142Men brought up in good crafts and laborious works would not be effeminate; idleness makes them weak.read · scan
• p. 188Travellers must work their task wherever they are; no taverns or hideouts allow idleness, so all apply themselves to labour or honest pastimes.read · scan
• p. 215Zapoletes live by hunting and stealing, enduring labour but despising tillage.read · scan
• p. 224–229The religious embrace hard, vile work for others, shunning idleness as the road to felicity.read · scan

Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German NationVol. 36

• p. 299Pilgrimages produce beggars and vagabond life.read · scan
• p. 299Wandering begging monks do no good; they should be provided for and need not beg.read · scan

William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35

• p. 224–225Yeomen work as farmers, graziers and keep working servants, unlike idle gentlemen's servants.read · scan
• p. 226The fourth sort, day-labourers, artificers and husbandmen, are ruled and have no voice; idle serving-men are profitless.read · scan
• p. 236Idleness replaced industry, so home commodities were neglected.read · scan
• p. 303Idle beggars abhor labour and live off the sweat of true labourers, thieves and caterpillars in the commonwealth.read · scan
• p. 369Idle men shake hands with labour for ever and prey on rich and poor.read · scan

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Francis Drake RevivedVol. 33

• p. 181–182Idleness and delay are held worse than sickness for undermining an enterprise.read · scan

Edward Haies, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to NewfoundlandVol. 33

• p. 283–285Blames the foolish sloth of countrymen who prefer to live miserably at home rather than adventure to settle.read · scan

Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and MoralVol. 3

• p. 39–40Banishing idleness and cherishing manufactures; the work and carriage may be worth more than the material.read · scan
• p. 85Colonists should be gardeners, ploughmen, smiths and carpenters, not idle rogues.read · scan

William Shakespeare, The TempestVol. 46

• p. 419No occupation; all men idle in Gonzalo's commonwealth.read · scan

John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning EducationVol. 37

• p. 177Want of application, not leisure, keeps men from mastering several arts; laziness is like sickness.read · scan

Sir Richard Steele, The Spectator ClubVol. 27

• p. 85True power comes from arts and industry; sloth has ruined more nations than the sword.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 263The proportion of capital to revenue determines a people's industry or idleness; trading towns are industrious, court towns idle and poor.read · scan
• p. 263–265Cities maintained by capital, like Glasgow, are more industrious than court cities like Edinburgh, whose idle spenders corrupt industry.read · scan

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in FranceVol. 24

• p. 293Idleness spurs industry; Burke pities the wretches in degrading occupations and finds monastic quiet less objectionable.read · scan

William Wordsworth, Appendix to Lyrical BalladsVol. 39

• p. 295The ant's provident labor is held up against the sluggard's sleep, whose poverty will come.read · scan

William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28

• p. 353–355Languid working and shrinking from difficulty keep laborers poor.read · scan

Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)Vol. 21

• p. 454–455Idle workmen of every trade and dismissed apprentices wander begging.read · scan
• p. 493Agnese and Perpetua ask for work so as not to eat the bread of idleness.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 74The idle girl is beaten for not spinning; the Queen prizes industry as dowry enough and sets her a huge task.read · scan
• p. 123Elsie sleeps rather than reaping the corn, while Hans mistakes her supposed industry for diligence.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 160–161Indolence excused by long days or poverty; abundant horses and food, and feast-days, destroy industry.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23

• p. 48The men's habitual occupation of doing nothing, interrupted only by chasing blown-off roofs.read · scan
• p. 139–140Islanders refuse work for wages while they have money, and will work only when it is gone.read · scan
• p. 170Americans are more industrious than Spaniards, but laziness spreads to their children.read · scan

2c.Idle classes who live on the labor of others

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 195–196Swineherds toil while others devour the fruit of their labor.read · scan
• p. 275–276The weakest of twelve women grinds at the mill, worn out by toil for the wooers.read · scan

Confucius, The Sayings of ConfuciusVol. 44

• p. 61The old man scorns a master who does not toil with his limbs.read · scan

Jean Froissart, The Chronicles of FroissartVol. 35

• p. 60–62Toil in the fields sustains the lords' estates.read · scan

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales; The Nun's Priest's TaleVol. 40

• p. 12He scorns study and manual work in the cloister: how shall the world be served?read · scan

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 179Six hours' work suffices because idle women, clergy, gentlemen, servants and beggars are numerous and many trades serve only superfluity.read · scan
• p. 179Setting idle and unprofitable workers to useful trades would make little time enough; few Utopians are exempt, and magistrates work by example.read · scan

Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German NationVol. 36

• p. 303Priests seek support without toil, contrary to God's command to eat bread by the sweat of the brow.read · scan
• p. 313–314Citing St. Paul, Luther says those who will not work should not eat; it is wrong that one works so another may be idle.read · scan

John Calvin, Dedication of the Institutes of the Christian ReligionVol. 39

• p. 35Fathers said a monk who does not work with his hands is a cheat, yet idle monks are fed on others' substance.read · scan

William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35

• p. 222Living without manual labour is the mark of a gentleman.read · scan

William Penn, More Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1

• p. 394Keeping many servants for mere state rather than business is poor use of money and their time.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 161–162Greater surplus rent gives the landlord command over more of other people's labour.read · scan
• p. 177Land's produce gives landlord command over the labour of those it feeds.read · scan
• p. 207–208Improvements in labour's productive powers indirectly raise rent; landlord commands others' labour.read · scan
• p. 208–209Wages of labour are one of three constituent revenues; landowners' revenue costs neither labour nor care.read · scan
• p. 261–262The lord could command tenants' labour in peace and service in war; productive and unproductive hands depend on the division of produce.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 60–63Hundreds labour to support a lordling's pride; overworked wretch begs leave to toil while a weeping family mourns.read · scan
• p. 248–250The rustic's toil upholds the glitter of the rich, who treat him as made for their use.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 407–408Peers idle because every man in England works for them.read · scan

John Ruskin, Sesame and LiliesVol. 28

• p. 133Asks who will do hard and dirty work for the rest and for what pay; the gentry live by others' stupefied toil.read · scan

2d.Rest as the sweet result of labor, and leisure earned

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 174A simile of a ploughman wearied by the day's work who longs for supper.read · scan

The Book of PsalmsVol. 44

• p. 272Man goes out to his work and labor until evening.read · scan

Ecclesiastes; or, The PreacherVol. 44

• p. 340–341The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, while the rich cannot sleep.read · scan

Pliny the Younger, Letters of PlinyVol. 9

• p. 229Spurinna earned his repose by toil in office; retirement must not be mere indolence.read · scan
• p. 354Attending to tenants' complaints is balanced with city occupations and literary study.read · scan

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 179Utopians work only six hours a day, avoiding the toil of workmen elsewhere worse than bondage, while syphogrants ensure none sit idle.read · scan
• p. 179–183Magistrates shorten working hours when work is scarce; time spared from necessary labour is for the liberty and cultivation of the mind.read · scan

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Francis Drake RevivedVol. 33

• p. 148–149Half the company works on ships and victuals while the other half rests; houses are built and smiths set up a forge.read · scan

Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and MoralVol. 3

• p. 19Only the closing line, 'Children sweeten labors', touches labor; the passage itself concerns simulation and dissimulation.read · scan

Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's HolidayVol. 47

• p. 501–502Eyre gives his shoemakers a holiday and calls for a morris in honour of the trade.read · scan
• p. 520–521Eyre gives apprentices a holiday every Shrove-Tuesday, freeing them from their shops.read · scan
• p. 524–527Apprentices rejoice in the new lord mayor's bounty and the holiday from work.read · scan
• p. 527–528Prentices celebrate Shrove-Tuesday as a yearly jubilee when they shut shops and are free as the lord mayor.read · scan

John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4

• p. 155Their gardening toil is sweet and only enough to make ease more easy.read · scan

Love Will Find Out the Way; Phillada Flouts MeVol. 40

• p. 381–382Lovesickness prevents work and sleep.read · scan

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's ProgressVol. 15

• p. 219Mercy remarks how sweet rest is to those who labour, on the toilsome climb.read · scan

John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning EducationVol. 37

• p. 89Recreation is as necessary as labour or food.read · scan

William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28

• p. 314Labor has dignity: it gives force to will, courage and endurance, and even rest owes its sweetness to toil.read · scan

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1310–1311Labor is personified as knocking at the gates of morning, then all sounds of labor are silenced for the holiday.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23

• p. 149Completes the curing process and describes the daily task system: fixed work, free time afterward, Sunday rest, so men worked hard without driving.read · scan
• p. 149–151Leisure earned by hard, fast work; the disagreeable, fatiguing hide work is made bearable by independence, plus wood-gathering chores.read · scan

Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Conservation of ForceVol. 30

• p. 177Human arm's fatigue and recovery through rest and nourishment parallels exhaustion of inorganic forces.read · scan

3.The theory of the division of labor

3a.The causes and advantages of the division of labor

See also: Art 2c

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 9Division of labour is the greatest cause of improved productive power and skill, easier to see in small manufactures.read · scan
• p. 10Pin-making example: eighteen operations divided among workmen yield thousands of pins per person versus perhaps one alone.read · scan
• p. 11Division of labour increases productivity in every art, but agriculture admits less subdivision than manufactures because of seasons.read · scan
• p. 11–12Division of labour raises output through dexterity, saved time, and machines.read · scan
• p. 13Confining a man to one simple operation increases dexterity, illustrated by nail-makers far outproducing ordinary smiths.read · scan
• p. 13Division of labour saves time lost passing between kinds of work and tools.read · scan
• p. 14Division of labour leads workmen, attending to one object, to invent machines that abridge labour.read · scan
• p. 15Division of labour multiplies produce, yielding universal opulence and exchange among workmen.read · scan
• p. 16A day-labourer's coat and tools embody the joint labour of a vast multitude of workers and trades.read · scan
• p. 16Even the meanest person's furnishings require co-operation of many thousands of workers.read · scan
• p. 167Improved cultivation frees half of society to other work; the poor compete to serve the rich, and division of labour grows.read · scan

Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of MoralsVol. 32

• p. 300Division of labour improves trades and arts; jacks-of-all-trades leave manufactures barbarous, an analogy for philosophy.read · scan

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1280–1281Wondrous how many wheels of toil one thought sets in motion; every climate and soil contributes timber to the ship.read · scan

3b.Division of labor as arising from exchange and limited by the market

See also: Wealth 12a

René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking the Truth in the SciencesVol. 34

• p. 26–27A busy crowd, attentive to its own affairs, lets him live solitary amid conveniences.read · scan

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human UnderstandingVol. 37

• p. 358Artificers and manufacturers count on the labour of others and on market exchange as on their tools.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 18Division of labour arises not from foresight but from the human propensity to truck, barter and exchange.read · scan
• p. 19Propensity to truck and barter gives rise to division of labour, as hunters specialize as armourer, carpenter, smith, tanner.read · scan
• p. 20–21Differences of talent are more the effect than the cause of division of labour; exchange makes differing talents useful.read · scan
• p. 22Division of labour is limited by the extent of the market; in sparse Highlands one worker must do many trades.read · scan
• p. 23Wider markets from cheap transport encourage subdivision of industry.read · scan
• p. 27Division of labour leaves a man's own produce able to supply little of his wants.read · scan
• p. 306Artificers such as smiths and carpenters serve farmers and settle together, forming villages and towns.read · scan
• p. 326A wider market lets division of labour reach perfection and improves productive powers.read · scan
• p. 327The new market occasioned new divisions of labour and improvements of art, raising productive powers and revenue.read · scan
• p. 336Tailor, shoemaker and farmer each employ industry where they have advantage, exchanging products.read · scan
• p. 361–363Brewers and retailers are necessary divisions of labour; workmen are better served buying from them.read · scan
• p. 371Drawbacks preserve the natural division and distribution of labour in society.read · scan
• p. 372–373Duties disturb the natural division and distribution of labour, which drawbacks tend to re-establish.read · scan

3c.Division of labor among animals, tribes and households

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 92Fifty handmaids grind grain and weave; Phaeacian men skilled at ships, women at the loom.read · scan
• p. 117–118The Cyclopes do not plough or plant, trusting the gods, and lack shipwrights and the trade that would settle their fertile island.read · scan

Herodotus, An Account of EgyptVol. 33

• p. 42Physicians divided by specialty, each practising a single branch.read · scan

Luke, The Acts of the ApostlesVol. 44

• p. 434–435The apostles divide duties, assigning table service to others while they attend to prayer and the word.read · scan

The Voyages to VinlandVol. 43

• p. 8–10Leif divides the company's labors between gathering grapes, cutting vines and felling trees for cargo.read · scan

The Story of the Volsungs and NiblungsVol. 49

• p. 306–307Bekkhild stayed home learning handicraft while Brynhild went to war.read · scan

Christopher Columbus, The Letter of Columbus to Luis de Sant Angel Announcing His DiscoveryVol. 43

• p. 23Women appear to work harder than men.read · scan

Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of GuianaVol. 33

• p. 340The people are canoe-makers who trade canoes for gold and tobacco, and endure hard labor of hunting and fishing.read · scan

John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4

• p. 260Eve proposes dividing their labours in separate places.read · scan
• p. 261Eve proposes dividing gardening labours since work outgrows their hands; Adam says toil is not imposed strictly.read · scan

William Penn, Some Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1

• p. 352–353Each craft its own: the tailor doesn't make locks.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 206–207Coarse cloth was made by family members in spare time, unlike fine cloth by those living wholly by it.read · scan
• p. 304Division of labour between town and country benefits all occupations, letting countrymen obtain manufactures with less labour.read · scan

Thomas Babington Macaulay, MachiavelliVol. 27

• p. 372–373Occupations differ in compatibility with military service: herding, farming, and later trades.read · scan
• p. 374Fighting in armor demanded daily training for years, becoming a separate profession.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Origin of SpeciesVol. 11

• p. 100Physiological division of labour is said to be advantageous, favouring separate stamens and pistils.read · scan
• p. 118–119Analogizes diversification of species to physiological division of labor among organs of one body.read · scan
• p. 129Completeness of the division of physiological labour is a measure of organisational rank.read · scan
• p. 264Masters do no work, while slaves do all the nest labour; sanguinea masters bring in materials and food.read · scan
• p. 282Ant castes compared to division of labour among civilised men; ants use inherited organs, man acquired knowledge and instruments.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 78Division of labour: women load and make tents, men fight, hunt and make bolas over two days.read · scan

4.The effects of the division of labor on the worker

4a.The fragmenting and stupefying of the worker

Friedrich von Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of ManVol. 32

• p. 221–222Division of occupations chains man to a fragment, the monotonous wheel making him the impress of his craft; enjoyment is separated from labour.read · scan
• p. 222–223Exclusive cultivation of one function or craft for honour and profit neglects the other faculties.read · scan

William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28

• p. 315Labor is good in due proportion, but excessive division of labor stupefies the civilized worker; variety of occupation is needed.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 76The spinners' deformities come from their trade, and the prince forbids his bride ever to spin, freeing her from flax-spinning.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American ScholarVol. 5

• p. 6Division of labor reduces farmer, tradesman, priest and mechanic to routine functions, losing the dignity of the whole man.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 399Division of labor and repetitive mill work dwarf the worker's strength and wit; best economy is care and culture of men.read · scan

Henry David Thoreau, WalkingVol. 28

• p. 396–397Mechanics and shopkeepers sitting in shops all day deserve credit for not committing suicide.read · scan
• p. 397–398Thoreau marvels at neighbors confined to shops and offices all day, year after year, with moral insensibility.read · scan

4b.The defense of manual labor against the division-of-labor objection

John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning EducationVol. 37

• p. 173A gentleman should learn manual trades, useful arts that increase skill and health, as recreation from study.read · scan
• p. 174Manual work like gardening and carpentry recommended as healthy diversion for men of study.read · scan
• p. 175Ancient statesmen like Cincinnatus, Cato and Cyrus combined manual work and agriculture with government, showing labor as fit recreation.read · scan

William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28

• p. 315–317All should share manual toil as true discipline; flight into trade and professions breeds fraud and demoralization.read · scan
• p. 327Labor is transformed when thought is joined to it; the worker should understand the laws and reasons of his trade, not work like a brute.read · scan
• p. 339Rejects claim that division of labor means some think and others toil; laborers must not be starved by drudgery.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American ScholarVol. 5

• p. 14–15Emerson welcomes the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen; virtue lies in hoe and spade for learned hands.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the ReformerVol. 5

• p. 46–47Manual labor recommended as part of every young man's education, in primary relation with soil and Nature.read · scan
• p. 47Defends manual labor against division-of-labor objection; work of hands gives health, education and basis for higher accomplishments.read · scan

5.Labor as the source and measure of wealth

5a.Labor as the measure and real price of commodities

See also: Wealth 10a

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 5Annual labour is the fund supplying a nation's necessaries; skill and the proportion of useful workers determine abundance.read · scan
• p. 34Toil and trouble is the real price of everything; division of labour makes men depend on others' labour.read · scan
• p. 35Labour measures value, but differing hardship and ingenuity are hard to measure; market higgling adjusts roughly.read · scan
• p. 36Equal quantities of labour are always equal in value to the labourer, costing his ease, liberty and happiness.read · scan
• p. 37–38Labourer is rewarded by the real price of labour (necessaries) not nominal money price.read · scan
• p. 40–41Labour is the standard by which commodity values are compared at all times and places.read · scan
• p. 42–43Real value of a commodity is compared by the quantity of labour its price could purchase.read · scan
• p. 48In early society exchange value follows quantity of labour, with allowance for hardship and skill; the labourer keeps the whole produce.read · scan
• p. 51Wages of farmers' labourers, millers, bakers, spinners and weavers form part of each commodity's price.read · scan
• p. 52Some goods, like Scotch pebbles, have price consisting wholly of the wages of labour.read · scan
• p. 53Revenue from labour is called wages; the farmer earns partly from labour, partly from stock.read · scan
• p. 151–152Cattle in a rude country cost little more than the labour of catching them, while corn requires much labour and so commands a higher price.read · scan
• p. 165Price of unused materials equals only the labour and expense of fitting them for use.read · scan
• p. 174–175Price of metals must replace the stock, food, clothes and lodging consumed by workers in bringing them from mine to market.read · scan
• p. 181Real price measured by quantity of labour and subsistence commanded.read · scan
• p. 183Real value is the quantity of labour a product can purchase or command.read · scan
• p. 192–193Real price is measured by the greater labour and subsistence it costs to bring produce to market.read · scan
• p. 199–200Supplying an enlarged market requires more than proportionately more labour, larger vessels and costlier machinery.read · scan
• p. 200–201Rich countries can afford to spend more labour and subsistence buying gold and silver superfluities.read · scan
• p. 223Wages of labour form one of the three parts into which the price of every commodity resolves.read · scan
• p. 256The value of metals relative to goods depends on the quantity of labour required to bring them to market.read · scan
• p. 383–384Value of corn is measured by the quantity of labour it maintains, making corn the regulating commodity.read · scan

Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of MoralsVol. 32

• p. 344–345Skill and diligence in labour have only market value, below the dignity of morality.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, CompensationVol. 5

• p. 95–96Labor is watched by pitiless laws; cheap labor is dearest, and the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue.read · scan

5b.Productive and unproductive labor

See also: Wealth 11b

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 54Wages of self-employed farmers, manufacturers and gardeners are confounded with profit; industrious versus idle consumption of the annual produce of labour.read · scan
• p. 258Distinguishes productive labour, which adds value to a commodity and lasts, from unproductive labour like a menial servant's, which perishes at once.read · scan
• p. 258Ranks sovereign, officers, army, churchmen, lawyers, physicians, and players as unproductive labourers whose work perishes when produced.read · scan
• p. 259–260Productive and unproductive hands are all maintained by annual produce; capital pays only productive labour's wages.read · scan
• p. 260Distinguishes productive workers maintained by capital from unproductive hands maintained by revenue, including workmen's spare wages and taxes.read · scan
• p. 262–263Funds maintaining productive labour are proportionally larger in rich than poor countries.read · scan
• p. 266–267Prodigality diminishes the funds for productive labour and thus the annual produce.read · scan
• p. 267Food distributed to productive hands would have reproduced its value with profit, giving two values instead of one.read · scan
• p. 268–269Injudicious projects diminish the funds maintaining productive labour.read · scan
• p. 270Unproductive hands are maintained by productive labourers' produce, reducing funds for future production.read · scan
• p. 272Capital diverted from productive to unproductive hands loses the labour that would have replaced its value with profit.read · scan
• p. 276Money spent employing masons, carpenters and mechanics maintains productive hands, unlike hospitality's unproductive ones.read · scan
• p. 288–289Merchants and retailers are productive labourers whose labour fixes in commodities, adding value at least equal to their maintenance.read · scan
• p. 290Farm servants and cattle are productive labourers who reproduce their consumption, the capital, profits and rent.read · scan
• p. 293Productive labour is ranked by how much value each employment of capital adds to annual produce.read · scan
• p. 427–428Division of people into productive cultivators and unproductive manufacturers and merchants.read · scan
• p. 428Cultivators' labor is called productive because it yields a neat produce beyond replacing expenses.read · scan
• p. 430Artificers' labour is described as barren, replacing only materials, tools and wages advanced by employers.read · scan
• p. 431Lace-worker's two years' labour merely repays his subsistence; his poverty shows wages equal subsistence.read · scan
• p. 431–432Workmen of the unproductive class are likened to servants working outdoors, maintained at the expense of proprietors and cultivators.read · scan
• p. 433The unproductive class frees cultivators to concentrate on land, indirectly raising productive labour's powers, a kind of division of labour.read · scan
• p. 439Manufacturers' labour fixes itself in vendible commodities, unlike menial servants' perishing services, so is productive though less than farmers'.read · scan
• p. 440An artificer's ten pounds of work adds to annual produce, unlike the same subsistence consumed by a soldier or menial servant.read · scan
• p. 440–441Subdivision of labour and machinery improve manufacturing more than farming, so cultivators have no advantage in improving labour's productive powers.read · scan
• p. 442Industry of town inhabitants draws subsistence and work materials from others' land.read · scan
• p. 442Criticizes the view that only agricultural labour is productive.read · scan
• p. 509–510Distinguishes productive labour maintained by capital from unproductive labour maintained by sovereign revenue.read · scan
• p. 557Public borrowing diverts produce from maintaining productive labourers to maintaining unproductive ones.read · scan
• p. 558Distinguishes productive from unproductive labour maintained by capital or revenue.read · scan

5c.Labor, capital and the maintenance of workmen

See also: Wealth 11c · Prudence 8c

Captain Walter Bigges, Drake's Great ArmadaVol. 33

• p. 243Lack of people to work the mines caused them to be given over.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 6Productive powers of labour and proportion of productive workers depend on capital stock and its employment.read · scan
• p. 49Workers' added value splits into wages and employer's profit; profit is not wages for inspection and direction.read · scan
• p. 70–71Funds for wages come from surplus revenue and surplus stock of employers, determining employment of servants and journeymen.read · scan
• p. 147Tenant's share must cover seed, labour wages, cattle and instruments of husbandry.read · scan
• p. 149–150Food can command labour, and land produces more than enough to maintain the labour bringing it to market.read · scan
• p. 198–199Human industry's efficacy in increasing rude produce depends on other countries' manufacture and export restraints, making it limited and uncertain.read · scan
• p. 212Division of labour makes each man depend on others' produce, requiring stock stored beforehand; contrasted with rude state of self-provision.read · scan
• p. 212–213Division of labour advances only as stock accumulates, and accumulation in turn improves productivity through better distribution of work and machines.read · scan
• p. 215–216The labouring poor derive revenue from labour only, having stock for merely days or weeks.read · scan
• p. 216Workmen's wages and maintenance are circulating capital; instruments of trade are fixed.read · scan
• p. 219–220Machines and land yield nothing without circulating capital maintaining the workmen.read · scan
• p. 221–222Capital employed in land, mines and fisheries determines the produce of industry.read · scan
• p. 230Circulating capital furnishes the materials and wages that set industry in motion.read · scan
• p. 232Additional materials and tools employ industrious people who reproduce their consumption with profit, unlike idle consumers.read · scan
• p. 233Putting industry in motion requires materials, tools and wages; the exported metal is likely to employ industry rather than maintain idleness.read · scan
• p. 234The industry a capital can employ is measured by workmen supplied with materials, tools and maintenance.read · scan
• p. 237–238Greater trade gives constant employment to more industrious people preparing goods for market.read · scan
• p. 246–247Productive stock supplies materials, tools and subsistence to work with, increasing the annual produce of land and labour.read · scan
• p. 265–266Saved revenue becomes capital consumed by labourers and artificers who reproduce its value with profit.read · scan
• p. 271Produce increases only through more productive labourers or greater productive powers, via machinery and division of employment, both needing added capital.read · scan
• p. 278–279Borrowed capital maintains productive labourers who reproduce its value, whereas consumption maintains the idle.read · scan
• p. 279Borrowed capital furnishes the industrious with tools, materials and maintenance for work.read · scan
• p. 287–288Equal capitals set in motion different quantities of productive labour according to their employment.read · scan
• p. 288Retailing lets poor workmen buy provisions daily and keep more stock employed as productive capital.read · scan
• p. 290Manufacturers' capital distributes wages among workmen, setting more productive labour in motion than the merchant's capital.read · scan
• p. 291–292A foreign exporting merchant reduces the society's productive labourers by only one man, the merchant himself.read · scan
• p. 292–293Capital is measured by the quantity of productive labour it sets in motion and the value it adds to produce.read · scan
• p. 295–296Home trade replaces two domestic capitals, sustaining more productive labour than foreign trade, which replaces one.read · scan
• p. 298Freight paid to native ships and sailors employs some domestic labourers.read · scan
• p. 302Investors never consider how much productive labour their capital sets in motion.read · scan
• p. 332The number of workmen employed is bounded by society's capital; regulation cannot increase industry.read · scan
• p. 333Individuals seek the most advantageous employment of capital, favoring home industry; the passage concerns capital and trade more than labor itself.read · scan
• p. 333–335Capital employed in home trade sets more domestic industry in motion and gives revenue and employment to more inhabitants; employers direct industry toward the greatest value of produce.read · scan
• p. 359–360Trade replaces capitals that maintain inhabitants, giving revenue and maintenance to workers in both countries.read · scan
• p. 360–361Capital employed in trade is distributed among a country's people as revenue and maintenance.read · scan
• p. 380Exported metal returns as materials, tools and provisions maintaining industrious people who reproduce their consumption with profit.read · scan
• p. 392–393Capital saved from roundabout trade would excite additional industry and raise annual produce.read · scan
• p. 531Wages of productive labour and small profits distribute most of a country's capital among the inferior ranks.read · scan
• p. 560Capital stock pays wages of productive labour in agriculture, manufactures and commerce.read · scan
• p. 560–561Industry falls when capital that supported it is removed.read · scan
• p. 561–562Individual frugality and good conduct repair the waste of government through saving and accumulation of capital, sustaining industry.read · scan

5d.Machinery and the saving of labor

See also: Art 2c

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 201–203Better machinery, dexterity and division of work reduce the labour needed for any piece of work, outweighing rising wages.read · scan
• p. 203–204Division of labour and machinery improvements explain the great fall in prices of metalwork like watches and hardware, far more than in clothing.read · scan
• p. 206Machinery improvements such as the spinning-wheel, winding machines and the fulling mill reduced the labour needed to bring cloth to market.read · scan
• p. 217–219Workman's improved dexterity is likened to a machine that abridges labour.read · scan
• p. 224Fixed capital and machinery increase the productive powers of labour; cheaper machinery frees workmen and materials to augment total work.read · scan
• p. 229Savings in the cost of instruments that leave the productive powers of labour undiminished improve the revenue.read · scan

Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of PoetryVol. 27

• p. 353Mechanical inventions abridging and combining labor have increased inequality and burdened mankind.read · scan

Thomas Carlyle, CharacteristicsVol. 25

• p. 335–336Labour's thousand arms of sinew and metal serve man, yet the laborer stays poor and hungry.read · scan

Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at EdinburghVol. 25

• p. 382Mute organised systems in mechanical and manufacturing departments could save human labour and misery.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 361They have tilled, builded, forged, spun and woven; steam engines perform the world's labor.read · scan
• p. 363Steam weaves, forges and ploughs; manufacturing industry raises agriculture.read · scan
• p. 367Machinery applied to all work leaves men merely to tend engines, giving mechanical regularity to life; hardly thought is free.read · scan
• p. 394Englishmen work three times the hours of other Europeans; machinery replaces workers and strikes are answered by self-acting mules.read · scan
• p. 394Steam machinery lets one man do the work of two hundred fifty; the laborious race and mills multiply production.read · scan

Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of GrassVol. 39

• p. 390Praises noble free American workmen and workwomen, factories and labor-saving machinery.read · scan

Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Conservation of ForceVol. 30

• p. 179Winding a clock stores working capacity, saving continual human effort.read · scan
• p. 181–182Water power replaced human and animal labour; workmen hoist stones and cargo with machines.read · scan
• p. 192Engines supply crude force so intelligent human force is spared for better purposes.read · scan

6.Wages and the condition of the laboring poor

6a.The bargain between masters and workmen

Jean Froissart, The Chronicles of FroissartVol. 35

• p. 60Tenants owe labor service and demand wages like others.read · scan

Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31

• p. 26–27Disputes over wages between journeyman and masters.read · scan
• p. 37Custom of the trade gives journeymen two-thirds of gain and masters one-third.read · scan

Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1

• p. 52Employer wants to abate wages as other hands improve; the worker leaves on a quarter's warning.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 67–68Wages depend on contract between workmen and masters whose interests oppose; workmen combine to raise wages, masters to lower them.read · scan
• p. 68Wage disputes between masters and workmen; masters combine tacitly to hold wages down while workmen's combinations are noisy and usually fail.read · scan
• p. 77Computations of labourers' family expense and income by Hales and King; law cannot properly regulate wages.read · scan
• p. 133–134Law has failed to regulate wages; competition keeps curates' pay low and labourers' wages higher than legal intent.read · scan
• p. 144Regulation of wages between masters and workmen: fixed wages destroy emulation, and laws favor masters while workers' combinations are punished.read · scan
• p. 418Trades such as tanners and shoemakers compete for advantage; dispersed graziers cannot combine as manufacturers can.read · scan

Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)Vol. 21

• p. 641Scarcity of workmen and orders limiting the price of labor after the plague.read · scan

John Stuart Mill, On LibertyVol. 25

• p. 291Protection of workers in dangerous occupations may legitimately be enforced on employers.read · scan

Thomas Henry Huxley, Science and CultureVol. 28

• p. 222–223Prosperity of industry depends on mutual understanding between capitalist and operative, employer and artisan.read · scan

6b.Demand for labor, subsistence and the course of wages

See also: Wealth 10c · Progress 5a

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 187A kind lord rewards a laboring servant with house, land and wife.read · scan

William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35

• p. 245Poor artificers and labourers cannot provision themselves at market as bodgers take everything.read · scan
• p. 279The artificer and poor labouring man cannot afford wheat or rye and must eat beans, peas and oats.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 39Real price of labour differs by society's condition: more liberal when advancing to opulence than stationary or declining.read · scan
• p. 40Money price of labour follows average, not temporary, price of corn.read · scan
• p. 69–70Wages cannot fall below what maintains a workman and enables him to raise a family; scarcity of hands raises wages.read · scan
• p. 71Real price of labour in North America is higher, giving labourers more necessaries of life.read · scan
• p. 72Demand for labourers outpaces supply in North America, so labour is well rewarded.read · scan
• p. 72In a stationary economy like China, competition among labourers drives wages to the lowest subsistence level.read · scan
• p. 72–74Where funds for maintaining labour decay, competition for work reduces wages to misery, causing famine and mortality.read · scan
• p. 75Liberal reward of labour is symptom of increasing wealth; British wages exceed bare maintenance, shown by seasonal wage patterns.read · scan
• p. 76Wages vary more by place than provisions prices, showing British labourers are in affluence where wages are lowest yet sustaining families.read · scan
• p. 77Wages are higher in England than Scotland though grain is cheaper in real terms, so labouring poor are in affluence.read · scan
• p. 77Wages rose over a century while grain grew cheaper, so the labouring poor are better off; demand for labour follows improvements.read · scan
• p. 79Labourers' real recompence has increased; cheaper necessaries and better tools benefit the working poor.read · scan
• p. 81Demand for labourers regulates the production of men like any commodity; liberal wages encourage marriage and multiplication.read · scan
• p. 82–83Wages must sustain the race of labourers according to demand; liberal wages cause population growth.read · scan
• p. 83High wages encourage industry, though piece-work leads to overwork, ruined health and alternating idleness.read · scan
• p. 83–84Moderate constant work preserves health and yields the most; plenty does not make most workers idle, and wages rise in cheap years.read · scan
• p. 85In dear years wages sink and servants grow dependent; independent workmen are more industrious than hired ones who share produce with masters.read · scan
• p. 86Smith weighs Messance's claim that the poor work more in cheap years against manufacturing output data.read · scan
• p. 86–87Labour's price follows demand for labour and the cost of necessaries, with plenty raising demand.read · scan
• p. 87–88In plenty masters bid for workers raising wages; in scarcity workers bid for jobs lowering them; wages steadier than provisions.read · scan
• p. 88Growing stock raises wages but also productivity through division of employment and machinery, so labour's price rise is offset.read · scan
• p. 91–92Employers bidding for workmen in thriving towns raise wages, while in remote places workers bidding for jobs lower them.read · scan
• p. 92Wages of labour are lower in France than England, shown by the common people's dress and condition.read · scan
• p. 93Wages of labour said to be higher in Holland than in England.read · scan
• p. 94Wages stay high in colonies because demand for labour grows with stock, even as profits fall.read · scan
• p. 94–95Increase of stock is tied to increased demand for useful labour.read · scan
• p. 96Competition for employment in a fully peopled country reduces wages to bare subsistence for maintaining the labourers.read · scan
• p. 97–98In a fully rich country almost every man must be employed in business or trade.read · scan
• p. 98–99Lowest wages equal bare subsistence; low profits may offset high wages, letting thriving countries sell as cheap.read · scan
• p. 99A rise in wages raises price only in arithmetical proportion to workers and days employed.read · scan
• p. 209–210Labourer's wages depend on rising demand for labour; his condition leaves him unable to understand his interest or be heard.read · scan
• p. 281Growing demand for productive labour and competition among capitals raise wages and cut profits.read · scan
• p. 283Real wages are measured by goods and labour commanded, not the number of silver pieces paid.read · scan
• p. 284Augmented capital raises the demand for productive labour and its real wages.read · scan
• p. 377–378The money price of labour is regulated by corn, enabling the labourer to maintain his family in the manner the society's condition allows.read · scan
• p. 409Silk preparation needs much hand labour, which is very dear in America, so the bounty was unlikely to work.read · scan
• p. 473–474Population is limited by the produce available to maintain people at their mode of living.read · scan

William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28

• p. 362Warns that competition with half-famished European workmen may depress American laborers and import the degradation of Old World manufacturing poor.read · scan

Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)Vol. 21

• p. 284Renzo expects demand for skilled Milanese weavers to revive and pay well once famine ends.read · scan
• p. 285–286Bortolo, head workman at the silk-mill, explains the scarce demand for workmen in the famine.read · scan
• p. 619–620Business resumes; masters seek workmen, especially silk-weavers, and Renzo promises to work again.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 168–169Hans receives a lump of gold as wages for seven years' faithful service, and the master says the reward matches the service.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 321The best thing Carlyle knows of America is that a man can have meat for his labor.read · scan

John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25

• p. 67–68Limiting population would secure full employment at high wages for the labouring population.read · scan

John Stuart Mill, On LibertyVol. 25

• p. 303–305Overpopulation through many children reduces the reward of labor by competition, offending those who live by wages.read · scan

Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation ProclamationVol. 43

• p. 324–325Freedmen are advised to labor faithfully for reasonable wages.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23

• p. 140The captain waits until the Islanders' money is gone, then hires them to work.read · scan

6c.Why wages differ among employments

See also: Wealth 10d · Chance 7b

Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31

• p. 28Working for different masters, earning wages and gains in the goldsmith guild.read · scan

Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part IVol. 14

• p. 377Compares the soldier's greater labour with his lesser reward against the learned man's.read · scan

René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking the Truth in the SciencesVol. 34

• p. 55–57Paid artisans, spurred by hope of gain, can carry out prescribed experiments accurately.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 56–57Wages of labour have an ordinary rate set by the society's circumstances and the nature of each employment.read · scan
• p. 60–61Wages of weavers and tailors respond differently to a market understocked with work done or with labour.read · scan
• p. 64–65Proposes to explain circumstances that determine rate of wages and their proportion across employments.read · scan
• p. 101–102Advantages of different employments tend toward equality when workers freely choose occupations; five circumstances explain differences in wages.read · scan
• p. 102–103Wages vary with ease, cleanliness, danger and honourableness of work; pleasant occupations like hunting and fishing pay poorly as many pursue them.read · scan
• p. 103Skilled labour earns more than common labour to repay the cost of education, like an expensive machine; apprenticeship laws distinguish them.read · scan
• p. 104–105Smith explains how wages vary by trade: costly education and inconstancy of employment (masons, carpenters) raise the pay of some occupations.read · scan
• p. 105–106Wages rise above ordinary rates where employment is inconstant or the work hard, dirty and disagreeable, as with colliers and coal-heavers.read · scan
• p. 107Wages vary with the trust reposed in workmen and the probability of success in a trade; goldsmiths, physicians and lawyers are paid more.read · scan
• p. 108Rewards of exceptional talents must cover acquisition costs and the discredit attached to exercising them for gain.read · scan
• p. 111Soldiers' and sailors' wages are no higher than common labourers' despite hardship; London rates regulate seamen's pay.read · scan
• p. 111–112Wages are high in unwholesome trades; sailor's pay must support his family at home.read · scan
• p. 113Of five circumstances varying wages, only two affect profit; apothecary's high 'profit' is really reasonable wages for skill and trust.read · scan
• p. 114The grocer must be accomplished in reading, accounts and judging goods; his labour deserves wages distinct from profit of stock.read · scan
• p. 115–116Circumstances of employment create inequalities in wages of labour that are offset by advantages and disadvantages.read · scan
• p. 116–117Wages are higher in new trades than old; equality of advantages requires established, ordinary, principal employments.read · scan
• p. 117–118Demand for labour varies with season and war, raising wages of harvest workers and sailors.read · scan
• p. 119Cotters with a second livelihood work for lower wages in their spare time, depressing the price of labour.read · scan
• p. 120Those with another subsistence knit and spin cheaply; in opulent countries one trade employs all a person's labour.read · scan
• p. 133European policy creates inequalities in employments by restraining or increasing competition; clergy wages compare with journeymen's.read · scan
• p. 135Competition of indigent men of letters reduces their pay to a paltry recompense.read · scan
• p. 145–146Wages and profits in different employments keep the same proportion whatever the state of society.read · scan

John Stuart Mill, On LibertyVol. 25

• p. 283Bad workmen enforce equal wages, punishing skilled workers and employers who reward superior skill or industry.read · scan

6d.Wages unpaid, withheld or inadequate in experience

See also: Chivalry 7c

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 165The poor are more profitable to the commonwealth through daily labour than to themselves.read · scan
• p. 236Poor laborers, ploughmen and carpenters toil harder than beasts, and are abandoned in old age.read · scan
• p. 236Rich men hire the labor of the poor for as little as possible.read · scan

William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35

• p. 289The poor tailor endures fretting and reproach from customers who send garments back.read · scan

Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part IVol. 14

• p. 36The boy, a shepherd servant, is beaten by his master over his care of the flock.read · scan
• p. 37The servant is owed nine months' wages; the master offsets shoes and bloodletting against them.read · scan
• p. 37Andrew complains his master denies him wages for his sweat and labour.read · scan
• p. 162–163Sancho asks whether squires were paid by month or day like masons' men; wages versus trust in a lord's courtesy.read · scan
• p. 296–297A servant is flogged rather than paid his wages by his master.read · scan

Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1

• p. 44–45Printing-house work, bodily strength, wages wasted on drink and workers' exactions of a footing fee.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 303–304Laborers' and spinning women's low daily wages and food arrangements in various counties.read · scan
• p. 304–305Post-boys suffer and freeze riding all night in winter for speedy business.read · scan
• p. 305–306Self-denial in trade and handicraft labor and just wages.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 406Poor scattered spinners, mostly women, do most of the labour of linen yet are unprotected while master manufacturers buy their work cheap.read · scan
• p. 406–408Manufacturers strive to keep down wages of weavers and spinners, not for the workman's benefit.read · scan

Oliver Goldsmith, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 509The pale artist plies a sickly trade while the courtier glitters.read · scan

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for ScandalVol. 18

• p. 149–150Trip complains of small wages in arrear, fifty pounds a year, for footmen.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 134–136Weary cotter ends his week of toil, children in service and daughter bringing wages to help parents.read · scan

William Wordsworth, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 647–649Aged couple toil beyond their strength; Simon's vain effort to unearth a tree root.read · scan
• p. 660–661The old man survives by the hazardous, wearisome work of gathering leeches from pond to pond, poor but honestly maintained.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 113–114Animals are cast off when age makes them unfit for work, after long faithful service.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 393Brutal political economy gives the laborer's son no place at nature's table; the English proceed by labor and thrift.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 271–272Labourers give daily service without wages for a small plot, leaving their own patches neglected.read · scan

John Ruskin, Sesame and LiliesVol. 28

• p. 121Father and son work night and day mending boots, ruining their eyes, yet earn too little to eat.read · scan
• p. 122Witness says they could work if they had food; useless labor ends in penalty of death.read · scan

William Morris, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1197The poor labored through squalid life and died in sordid grief.read · scan

6e.Taxes upon wages and necessaries

See also: Taxation 5d · Wealth 13a

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 344–345Argues the price of labour rises with the labourer's subsistence, raising the cost of all domestic commodities.read · scan
• p. 376–377High corn prices reduce the subsistence or increase wages of labourers, restraining industry and population.read · scan
• p. 380–383Bounty hinders our workmen and burdens industry without raising the quantity of labour corn can maintain.read · scan
• p. 477–478Taxes may obstruct industry and discourage employment-giving branches of business.read · scan
• p. 490–491Poor spend most of their little revenue on food and necessities, while the tax must be drawn from wages, profits or rent.read · scan
• p. 511Workmen's wages depend on demand for labour and price of provisions; a tax on wages must raise them more than the tax.read · scan
• p. 512A direct tax on wages is really advanced by employers, since wages must rise to preserve the labourer's subsistence.read · scan
• p. 512–513Taxes on wages reduce demand for labour and employment of the poor; examples from French taille and Bohemian artificers.read · scan
• p. 513–514Pay of artists and professionals keeps proportion to trades, so a tax raises it; office emoluments are unregulated by competition and bear taxing.read · scan
• p. 516–517Capitation taxes on the lower ranks are direct taxes on the wages of labour.read · scan
• p. 518Wages are regulated by demand for labour and the price of subsistence, so taxing necessaries acts like a direct tax on wages.read · scan
• p. 518–519Taxed luxuries have not raised the wages of common labour in London.read · scan
• p. 520Rising necessaries prices without matching wages reduce the poor's ability to rear families and supply labour.read · scan
• p. 521Such taxes raise the expense of the industrious poor and so the wages of their labour.read · scan
• p. 521–522Fuel price influences labour cost, so manufactures cluster in coal countries.read · scan
• p. 529–530Free importation of necessaries lowers money wages but not real recompense, letting home manufactures undersell foreign rivals.read · scan
• p. 532–533A tax on necessaries must raise wages or reduce demand for labour, reducing the annual produce.read · scan
• p. 537Such taxes reduce the quantity of productive labour employed in preparing taxed goods or the goods exchanged for them.read · scan

7.Trades, crafts and apprenticeship

7a.Apprenticeship as training and as servitude

Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16

• p. 341The tailor's poverty prevents apprenticeship elsewhere; the boy shirks his father's trade while the mother spins cotton to live.read · scan
• p. 345–346The uncle offers a merchant's trade in place of learning a craft.read · scan

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 177–178Everyone, men and women, learns husbandry and one craft, usually the father's; changes or a second craft are permitted.read · scan

Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31

• p. 14–15Apprenticeship in the trade, reaping fruits of labour, with wages withheld by his father.read · scan
• p. 22–23Cellini works for his master and supports his father and household.read · scan
• p. 279Cellini arranges wages for his apprentices and workshop premises for the work.read · scan

Francis Bacon, The New AtlantisVol. 3

• p. 179–180Organized offices, apprentices and servants keep the work in succession.read · scan

Henry Carey, Sally in Our AlleyVol. 40

• p. 403–405Apprentice bound to a master for seven years, neglects work and is beaten.read · scan

Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1

• p. 9–10At ten he was set to cutting wicks and molding candles in his father's tallow-chandler business.read · scan
• p. 10–11He disliked his father's trade and longed for the sea.read · scan
• p. 13–14He is bound apprentice to his brother the printer at twelve, making great proficiency.read · scan
• p. 19–20Apprenticeship treated as tedious servitude to a brother acting as master.read · scan
• p. 21–22Having a trade, he seeks work from printers in New York and Philadelphia.read · scan
• p. 26Seeks work from local printers.read · scan
• p. 48–49Franklin leaves printing for mercantile work and considers earning by a swimming school.read · scan
• p. 50–51Keimer's printing-house hands, their wages, trades and indentured service; Franklin manages and orders the shop.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 174–175Works on the plantation, then tends shop and keeps books as shopkeeper's employee.read · scan
• p. 180He learns the tailor's trade to earn a plain living without heavy business cares.read · scan
• p. 302He offers to work at his mechanical trade so as not to be chargeable to Friends.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 128As journeyman tailor he complains of poor food from his master's household and is driven out.read · scan

Percy Bysshe Shelley, The CenciVol. 18

• p. 298–300Giacomo wishes he had been apprenticed to a mechanic trade to meet his needs by daily toil.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 31Blacks taught various trades in workshops on the estate.read · scan
• p. 429Natives taught to build, plough, graft and mill; their workmanship is the result of missionary instruction.read · scan

7b.The controversy over apprenticeship laws and corporations

See also: Wealth 10b · Law 8c

Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part IVol. 14

• p. 178Quixote argues the trade needs examiners and licensed numbers like other brokers' trades.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 63Apprenticeship laws raise workmen's wages in prosperity and trap them in decay; caste occupation in Egypt and Indostan.read · scan
• p. 121–122Corporation privileges and apprenticeship rules restrict entry into trades and raise the cost of education.read · scan
• p. 122Limits on apprentices and seven-year terms restrict entry into trades.read · scan
• p. 123–124No one may exercise a trade without seven years' apprenticeship, in England, and similar requirements in France.read · scan
• p. 124A poor man's patrimony is his hands' strength; apprenticeship laws unjustly restrain it.read · scan
• p. 125Long apprenticeships do not form industry; piece-work journeymen are industrious while apprentices are idle.read · scan
• p. 126–127Corporation laws prevent free competition that would reduce wages and profits.read · scan
• p. 127–128Wages of workmen and profits of employers make up the town's gain; regulations let town labour buy more country labour.read · scan
• p. 128Wages of labour and profits of stock are higher in towns; combining wool-combers can reduce the manufacture to slavery to themselves.read · scan
• p. 131–132Customers' fear of withdrawing employment disciplines workmen better than corporations; exclusive privilege breeds poor workmanship.read · scan
• p. 405Restrictions on exporting materials aim to give native workmen an advantage to undersell foreigners.read · scan
• p. 423–424Masters restrict apprentices and confine knowledge of trades, yet forbid workers teaching foreigners.read · scan

7c.The dignity of the trade and the craftsman

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 237–238Eumaeus lists craftsmen, prophets, healers and minstrels as welcome for the work they do.read · scan

Herodotus, An Account of EgyptVol. 33

• p. 81–82Manual crafts are despised and forbidden to warriors; occupations name the classes; Corinthians least scorn handicraft.read · scan

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Letters of CiceroVol. 9

• p. 110A dilatory builder is supervised; his shoddy work must be taken down and redone.read · scan

Virgil, The AeneidVol. 13

• p. 260Smiths forge helmets, shields and blades; rustic tools give place to arms.read · scan

Luke, The Acts of the ApostlesVol. 44

• p. 465Craftsmen's livelihood in making shrines stirs their alarm and rioting.read · scan

Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16

• p. 20–21Trade and shopkeeping contrasted with profitless travel.read · scan
• p. 217–220The fisherman jokes that the Khalifeh wants to learn the trade of fishing as a profitable craft.read · scan
• p. 263–265Carpenter and blacksmith work under his instruction, producing goods for sale.read · scan
• p. 291–292The master asks whether Sindbad knows any art or trade and sets him to shoot elephants.read · scan

Dante Alighieri, HellVol. 20

• p. 81–84Diviners abandoned honest trades of cobbler, needle, shuttle and spindle for witchcraft.read · scan

Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German NationVol. 36

• p. 267–268Every calling, cobbler or smith, is a useful office serving the others like members of a body.read · scan

Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31

• p. 16Cellini works at the goldsmith's trade in Siena while his brother idles in dissipation.read · scan
• p. 87–88On reaching Rome he takes profitable goldsmith's work in Raffaello del Moro's workshop.read · scan
• p. 198–200He reopens a larger shop in Rome with many workmen and large commissions in gold and silver.read · scan
• p. 200–201Cellini employs eight workers day and night, working for honour and gain, after the Perugian workman absconds.read · scan
• p. 282–283Many journeymen work day and night in his busy workshop.read · scan
• p. 283The King finds Cellini and his men busily hammering silver plate for the Jupiter statue in the workshop.read · scan
• p. 286–288Cellini drives his mixed-nation craftsmen relentlessly; some Germans, unable to keep pace, ruin themselves with excess and die.read · scan
• p. 395Cellini worries that journeymen in his absence spoil work and idle, and that the Duke will tire of the delay.read · scan

William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35

• p. 226–228Artificers are excellent yet their haste and greed make work weak; too many useless trades exist.read · scan

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Francis Drake RevivedVol. 33

• p. 151–152Negro helpers' special skill speeds the building of storehouses.read · scan
• p. 154–155The Cimaroons raise two large houses with wonderful speed and the crew builds a timber fort.read · scan

Edward Haies, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to NewfoundlandVol. 33

• p. 273The fleet carries shipwrights, masons, carpenters, smiths and refiners of every needed faculty.read · scan

William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of DenmarkVol. 46

• p. 190–191Gravediggers claim Adam's profession; grave-maker builds stronger than mason or carpenterread · scan
• p. 192–193The grave-maker's houses last till doomsday; little employment gives the hand daintier senseread · scan

Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's HolidayVol. 47

• p. 475Eyre tells Jane to work for her living; the shoemaker's craft supplies both gifts and pride.read · scan
• p. 479–480Eyre rouses his household and workmen to work; Lacy relies on the gentle craft as a living.read · scan
• p. 480–482Shoemakers banter about work; Firk prays for good leather, and Eyre wants to hire a skilled journeyman.read · scan
• p. 482–483Eyre tests the new journeyman's skill in the shoemaker's craft and tools.read · scan
• p. 483–484Eyre hurries his men to work before breakfast, and rebukes his wife for the late meal.read · scan
• p. 487–489Master Eyre defends his journeymen shoemakers and the dignity of the gentle craft against his wife's scolding.read · scan
• p. 489–490Journeymen are set to work making shoes for ladies and the mayor's daughter; Eyre praises fine workmanship.read · scan
• p. 510–511Shoemakers work at their trade, breaking off for breakfast, with banter about jobs and the ambition to be mayor.read · scan
• p. 511–512Ralph takes a commission to make shoes for a wedding.read · scan
• p. 516–517Firk defends the gentle craft of shoemaking against the insult of knave.read · scan
• p. 535–536Shoemakers celebrated as the gentle craft; Eyre seeks a leather-market privilege for their trade.read · scan

John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4

• p. 331A smith works at the forge, melting ore and making tools.read · scan

John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning EducationVol. 37

• p. 177–178Parents disgraced by names of mechanic and trade are urged to see the value of learning them.read · scan

Voltaire, Letters on the EnglishVol. 34

• p. 93Trade is defended as a useful occupation benefiting the world.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 271Men whose trade is sleight-of-hand are called of no use to the world.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 307Artificer is servant of customers, while planter on own land is independent; manufactures subdivide and improve.read · scan
• p. 454–455Riquet the engineer is rewarded with the canal's tolls, giving his family an interest in maintaining the work.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 133–134Happy tinker's toil at heckle, spoon and kettle by day, joy at night.read · scan
• p. 145–147Ploughmen and smiths gather at the forge with their drink.read · scan
• p. 175–177Lower orders such as the laboring hind, artisan and shepherd are each aided in their trades by spirits.read · scan
• p. 526–528Carding, spinning and warping wool for a garment, with the tailor stealing the lining.read · scan

Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)Vol. 21

• p. 26–27Renzo's silk-weaving trade and plot of land, declining work and emigrating workmen, give him a modest livelihood.read · scan
• p. 39–40Lucia proposes flight, as Renzo has a trade and she can work.read · scan
• p. 89–90Renzo, a silk-weaver, could find work and make a fortune at Bergamo.read · scan
• p. 432–433Renzo is placed as an honest, skilful workman in a silk-mill; Venice cultivates silk-weaver emigration.read · scan
• p. 522Bands of artificers march under their banners.read · scan
• p. 541–542Renzo, skilled silk worker, is valued by Bortolo but cannot rise for inability to write.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 75The three women's spinning, each with a trade-marked body, clears the rooms of flax for the distressed girl.read · scan
• p. 171–172The scissors-grinder claims his trade yields gold whenever a man reaches into his pocket.read · scan
• p. 172The grinder's trade requires only a grindstone; Hans is tempted by easy money.read · scan

Treaty with the Six NationsVol. 43

• p. 231Annuity buys implements of husbandry and pays useful artificers residing among the Indians.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, BeautyVol. 5

• p. 302Useful labor of farmer, carpenter and smith is becoming to the wise eye, but not when done to be seen.read · scan

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1271–1273The village smith earns his living by honest daily toil, owing no man, an example of life shaped at the forgeread · scan
• p. 1283–1284Vigorous work in the shipyard; happy is he who sees his labor well begun and does not idly wait.read · scan
• p. 1302–1303The blacksmith's craft is held in repute in all ages; children watch him shoe horses.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 159Dexterity of the slaughterer with the lazo; wagers on skinning and staking fifty hides in a day.read · scan

7d.Free movement of labor and the settlement laws

See also: Liberty 8b · Law 8c · Wealth 12c

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 136–138Apprenticeship statutes and corporation privileges obstruct free circulation of labour between employments and places.read · scan
• p. 138Apprenticeship statutes and corporations keep workmen from shifting between similar trades, leaving some at bare subsistence and forcing them onto the parish.read · scan
• p. 139Smith describes how corporation and poor laws obstruct the free circulation of labour, especially the poor man's freedom to work outside his own parish.read · scan
• p. 140Settlement rules hinder poor workers from moving to new parishes; notice serves to force the parish to remove or accept them.read · scan
• p. 140–141Settlement rules make it nearly impossible for a poor labouring man to gain residence elsewhere; service and apprenticeship exclude married men.read · scan
• p. 141–142Independent workmen, however healthy and industrious, are liable to removal at an officer's caprice; certificates were invented to restore free circulation of labour.read · scan
• p. 142–143Certificates only partly restore the free circulation of labour that settlement statutes had removed.read · scan
• p. 143–144The law of settlements causes unequal wages between nearby parishes by preventing workers moving from places of surplus to scarcity.read · scan
• p. 348–349Sudden free imports might deprive thousands of employment; export-oriented manufactures would be little affected.read · scan
• p. 349Discharged soldiers and seamen found new work; manufacturers can readily transfer their industry, unlike soldiers accustomed to idleness and dissipation.read · scan
• p. 349–351Workmen thrown out of work should be free to seek employment in another trade or place.read · scan
• p. 422–423The artificer is treated as a living instrument of trade, restrained from going abroad.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23

• p. 141–142Islanders hire themselves out to cure hides and man vessels, leaving when they choose.read · scan

Convention Between the United States and the Republic of PanamaVol. 43

• p. 456Canal workmen of any nationality may enter freely with their families and are exempt from Panama's military service.read · scan

8.The kinds of work and workers

8a.Husbandry and the tiller of the soil

See also: Wealth 10e · Old Age 4a

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 243–244Eumaeus returns to tend the swine and farm, their livelihood.read · scan
• p. 254–255Odysseus challenges Eurymachus to a contest of mowing and ploughing from dawn to dusk, proving his worth in work.read · scan

Confucius, The Sayings of ConfuciusVol. 44

• p. 41Confucius disclaims skill in husbandry; the ruler's task is to show the people the way.read · scan
• p. 42Confucius refuses to rank with husbandmen and gardeners; the ruler's work is different.read · scan

Herodotus, An Account of EgyptVol. 33

• p. 11–13Delta farmers gather crops with less labour than anyone, letting swine tread in seed and thresh.read · scan

Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Old AgeVol. 9

• p. 53–54Old Sabine farmers plant trees for future generations, working for a posterity they will not see.read · scan
• p. 62–64The farmer's work, planting, pruning, irrigating and manuring, gives old age repose and cheerful occupation.read · scan
• p. 64–65Praises farming and cultivation of the land as the most useful and blessed occupation, one that suits old age.read · scan
• p. 66–67Xenophon's Cyrus takes personal pride in planting; agriculture is worthy of princes and pursued into extreme old age.read · scan

Tacitus, GermanyVol. 33

• p. 118Aestyans farm with more assiduity than other Germans and dredge for amber.read · scan

Pliny the Younger, Letters of PlinyVol. 9

• p. 246Estate management, stewards, tenants and workers are considered.read · scan
• p. 354–355Servants are set to oversee tillage; the plan requires honesty, sharp eyes and many hands.read · scan

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales; The Nun's Priest's TaleVol. 40

• p. 25–26The Plowman threshes, ditches and delves honestly, unpaid for the poor, and pays his tithes.read · scan

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 171–172Farm households rotate town and country workers yearly so none is forced into hard husbandry, though many choose to stay.read · scan
• p. 172–174Husbandmen plough, breed cattle and send harvest workers from the city so harvest is done in one day.read · scan
• p. 204Diligent husbandry compensates for poor soil; people endure labor when needed but prefer study.read · scan

Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and MoralVol. 3

• p. 75–76Henry VII's standard farms kept the plough in owners' hands, not mere hirelings.read · scan
• p. 76–77Delicate manufactures suit poorly a warlike people; natives should be tillers, free servants and strong handicraftsmen.read · scan

Izaak Walton, The Life of Mr. George HerbertVol. 15

• p. 404–405Ploughmen pause from work at the prayer bell and return to their labour with his blessing.read · scan

John Milton, Poems Written at Horton, 1632-1638Vol. 4

• p. 30Ploughman, milkmaid, mower and shepherd cheerfully at their work.read · scan
• p. 30Haymaking, binding sheaves, and the goblin's threshing of corn.read · scan

John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4

• p. 180Pair go to morning rural work pruning trees and training vines.read · scan
• p. 319Reaper and shepherd bring the fruits of tillage and flock as offerings.read · scan
• p. 341–342Men till the soil and reap corn, wine and oil.read · scan

Abraham Cowley, Of AgricultureVol. 27

• p. 61Husbandry's utility to the man himself and necessity to all mankind are praised.read · scan
• p. 62Agriculture is the necessary art on which all other arts depend for materials; it can live without others.read · scan
• p. 64The husbandman's satisfaction in the fruits of his own diligence, seeing like God that his works are good.read · scan

Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1

• p. 101Only hardy, industrious husbandmen accustomed to labor are fit for a new settlement.read · scan

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among MankindVol. 34

• p. 177–178Agriculture requires labor, foresight and society; no one would toil in a field that could be robbed by the first comer.read · scan
• p. 206–207Agriculture required sacrificing present ease for future gain, foreign to savage foresight.read · scan

Thomas Gray, PoemsVol. 40

• p. 443–445The villagers' harvest and plowing toil are honored as useful and worthy.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 181Poor settlers clear land, build houses and raise corn in the wilderness; Woolman works at tailoring.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 129Husbandry needs no apprenticeship yet requires great variety of knowledge and experience, more judgment than mechanic trades.read · scan
• p. 129Country labour requires more skill than most mechanic trades; corporation laws keep country wages below what they would otherwise be.read · scan
• p. 150Better pasture requires less labour to tend cattle, so the landlord gains both ways.read · scan
• p. 150–151A corn field needs more labour than pasture but yields a greater surplus for farmer's profit and rent.read · scan
• p. 163Rice cultivation requires more labour, yet leaves a greater surplus after maintaining the labourers.read · scan
• p. 163–164Potato-fed labourers leave greater surplus after replacing stock and maintaining cultivation labour.read · scan
• p. 168–169All rent-bearing produce derives its value from improved powers of labour in producing food.read · scan
• p. 184Collecting scanty produce of waste lands for stable feeding would require too much labour and expense.read · scan
• p. 188–189Farmer's improved methods let him sell cheaper, since plenty could not last unless he could afford it.read · scan
• p. 190Higher prices pay for more labour and care, making the dairy worthy of the farmer's attention.read · scan
• p. 304–305Industry providing subsistence must precede that supplying luxury; cultivation is man's original, primitive employment.read · scan

Oliver Goldsmith, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 509Toil made pleasant by village sports; the peasantry as the country's pride.read · scan
• p. 524–525The peasant's cheerful toil of fishing, ploughing and hunting fits him to the soil.read · scan

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in FranceVol. 24

• p. 323–324Agriculture is laborious and less lucrative than finance; an experienced peasant is worth more than bank directors.read · scan

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Tragedy of Faust, Part IVol. 19

• p. 98–101Faust scorns digging and tilling as degrading, refusing the spade for a narrow life.read · scan

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hermann and DorotheaVol. 19

• p. 338Fine harvest weather and the coming grain-gathering; the town's trades and manufactures.read · scan
• p. 367The pastor praises the quiet citizen tilling inherited acres, patient and useful, as the man who supports us all.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 25–26The ploughman sings that no life is like the ploughman's in May.read · scan
• p. 102–104Harvest cares and wishes for good crop to reach the sack.read · scan
• p. 148–149Mare pulled the plough through hard days, turning six roods; farmer feeds her extra in frost.read · scan
• p. 150–151The ploughman recalls years of hard work with his mare, who drew his plough through weary days.read · scan
• p. 151–152The cottar toils digging ditches and building dykes to sustain wife and children.read · scan
• p. 186–187Farm hands (gaudsman, thrasher) and work-beasts are enumerated as his working household.read · scan
• p. 311–312Industry, peasants, farmers, merchants and mechanics are the useful many.read · scan
• p. 437–439Farm servant is hired for ploughing; the lass values the ploughman who can labour lea.read · scan

Friedrich Schiller, William TellVol. 26

• p. 420–422The soil is theirs by hard labour, clearing forest, bridging chasms.read · scan
• p. 461–462Melchthal praises the arm that tames the earth and makes it blossom.read · scan

William Wordsworth, PoemsVol. 41

• p. 614–615Michael, an old shepherd, is strong, keen and watchful in his calling.read · scan
• p. 615–617Shepherd household lives in endless industry, working by lamplight at wool, spinning and repairing tools.read · scan
• p. 617Child is given a shepherd's staff and set as watchman to turn the flock.read · scan
• p. 620Michael continues his daily labour for his sheep and land, and returns to the unfinished sheepfold.read · scan
• p. 645–647Simon Lee introduced as former huntsman in his active prime, unconcerned with tillage.read · scan
• p. 653–655The Highland lass sings while reaping and binding grain alone.read · scan

Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)Vol. 21

• p. 53Weary peasants sow seed unwillingly and can barely use the spade.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 182The woodcutter toils from dawn to night and doubts the schooled son can bear rough work.read · scan
• p. 184Father insists on continuing work and scorns the student's ignorance of woodcutting.read · scan

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1300Farmers raise dikes with incessant labor; women spin flax and laborers return home at evening.read · scan
• p. 1304Milking, bringing hay from the marshes and tending flocks close the day's farm work.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 226Party builds wigwams and digs gardens for the settlers.read · scan
• p. 260Describes Chilean agriculture: irrigation, cattle rodeo, wheat, beans as labourers' food, and palm-sap treacle production.read · scan

Henry David Thoreau, WalkingVol. 28

• p. 399–400Human improvements, farming, trade and manufactures occupy little space in the landscape; they deform nature and are dwarfed by it.read · scan
• p. 412–413The spade, plough and bog-hoe are the weapons of our victories; the farmer redeems meadow and swamp.read · scan

Walt Whitman, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1403–1404Pioneers march, armed and ready for danger, as the youthful races on whom the rest depend.read · scan
• p. 1416–1417Fields busy with labor, farmers preparing crops and workaday houses going on with daily usages.read · scan

Treaty with MexicoVol. 43

• p. 303Those whose occupations serve common subsistence and benefit of mankind may continue their employments unmolested.read · scan

8b.The sailor's hard service

See also: Custom and Convention 9b · Art 6a

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Francis Drake RevivedVol. 33

• p. 149–150The crew rows and hauls the pinnaces upstream with great labour, working by spells timed with half-hour glasses.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 292–293Describes the hardships of sailors' night watches and wet lodging; urges owners to ease them.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 328–330Sailors' hard life, abuse and poor pay; they stay from pride.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 183Describes the organized system of tracking boats upstream, with shared hauling spells, rotating cooks and night watches.read · scan
• p. 192–193Hard days' labor ascending the river on half allowance of bread, versus rapid descent.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23

• p. 5Attention and sympathy have turned toward common seamen, whose working life has not been told from within.read · scan
• p. 5–6Hopes to draw attention to seamen's welfare and diminish the hardships of their daily life.read · scan
• p. 12–13No time allowed for daydreaming; crew must turn to at first light washing decks and greasing masts.read · scan
• p. 16–17Describes shipboard ranks and work: second mate neither officer nor man, steward, cook, carpenter and their duties.read · scan
• p. 17–18Describes the watch system dividing the crew's working and resting hours, and the shipboard routine of duty at sea.read · scan
• p. 18Corrects landsmen's belief that sailors are idle; discipline keeps every man constantly at work, like convicts in prison.read · scan
• p. 19Shows the endless upkeep of rigging and manufacture of small stuffs aboard ship; work never finishes across two years.read · scan
• p. 20–21Sailors kept at make-work like picking oakum and scraping cables, exposed to storms for twelve dollars a month.read · scan
• p. 21Sailor's life is an unvarying repetition of duties; even a carpenter is kept constantly employed on a ship.read · scan
• p. 22Sunday is the one day of rest at sea; on Monday the men return to six days of labor.read · scan
• p. 27Reefing described as the most exciting part of sailors' duty, with all hands working quickly.read · scan
• p. 34Hardened sailors endure wet, exhausting watches, sleeping anywhere, with meagre meals fetched at risk from the galley.read · scan
• p. 50Shipboard work of preparing the vessel: tarring down the rigging, which falls mostly on two green hands.read · scan
• p. 50–51Tarring stays and painting the ship: hard, dirty, dangerous sailor's work done by the crew.read · scan
• p. 53Sailors spend watches below making and mending clothes, an indispensable trade skill.read · scan
• p. 59Islanders' hard work loading hides through the surf; the mate wryly contrasts it with Cambridge college, 'head work'.read · scan
• p. 60–61Islanders launch a heavily loaded boat through the breakers, a skill the newcomers must learn.read · scan
• p. 64Coordinated seamanship: loosing topsails, manning sheets and slipping the cable at command.read · scan
• p. 74Sailors deprived of their Sabbath rest slow their work by 'sogering', working well only when there is real need or good treatment.read · scan
• p. 75The officers bait the men with fishing leave if the work is finished, so they do it quickly.read · scan
• p. 77–78Sailors work hard from daylight to dark at the new trading business.read · scan
• p. 86Sailors work all Sunday boating and breaking out cargo, with no holiday.read · scan
• p. 88Sailors wade into the surf carrying heavy stiff hides on their heads, learning the technique, under the captain's demand for 'California fashion'.read · scan
• p. 89Describes the sailors' harsh daily routine of hide-carrying, washing decks and harbor duty, contrasting the division of time in port and at sea.read · scan
• p. 89–90Sailors have no time to themselves in port; Sunday work interrupts rest, and the long trade voyage weighs on the crew.read · scan
• p. 92–93Crew kept working all day in port and at sea, hazed with pointless tasks like picking oakum in the rain.read · scan
• p. 96Sailors must carry goods up the hill 'California fashion' while idle Indians look on and refuse to help.read · scan
• p. 97Hard, disagreeable days of hauling hides and goods over stones, wearing out shoes, with Indians employed to drive oxen.read · scan
• p. 105Crew works all Sunday moving cargo in the hold with no kind word.read · scan
• p. 106Sailors expect endless hide-handling and wages consumed in clothes.read · scan
• p. 112Crews are kept at work all week in port, with the Sabbath their only rest.read · scan
• p. 112Liberty offers relief from the confinement and toil of shipboard labor.read · scan
• p. 120After liberty, crew works from dawn to starlight landing hides; San Diego is the best place for the trade.read · scan
• p. 120–121Hides are cured by a regular process; Sandwich Islanders refuse ship work because of the flogging but will work ashore.read · scan
• p. 121–122Sailors sing out in a practiced way to heave together at the windlass.read · scan
• p. 124A weakened, discontented crew faces two years of hard service short-handed.read · scan
• p. 125–126Monotonous shipboard work of rolling goods and pitching hides.read · scan
• p. 133American crews tarring rigging yield weeks more labor a year than Catholic ships; Jack has no festival.read · scan
• p. 134–135American and English ships are thinly manned yet efficient, outworking larger crews.read · scan
• p. 136–138The crew must get hides down a four-hundred-foot cliff by throwing them, a laborious trade scheme.read · scan
• p. 138–139Sailors throw hides down the cliff and carry them to the boat; hide-droghing is hard, risky work.read · scan
• p. 141Dana becomes a hide-curer at the hide-house, describing its quarters and the crew who cure the hides.read · scan
• p. 148Dana begins describing the hide-curer's trade, the whole process from bullock's hide to shipment to Boston.read · scan
• p. 148Detailed hide-curing routine: soaking, brining, staking, cleaning; skill needed, beginners' backache, Dana's growing speed from eight to twenty-five hides.read · scan
• p. 151–152Cutting and carrying back-loads of scrubby wood is toilsome, though a pleasant change from shipboard drudgery.read · scan
• p. 158–159The men cure the hides, then gather a week's wood, the hardest work Dana had ever done, tearing his clothes.read · scan
• p. 174–175Crew discharge hides and return to hide-curing; ship's officers and trades described, with the mate liked though hard.read · scan
• p. 177Detailed morning routine of scrubbing, holystoning and assigned jobs shows the strict division of shipboard work under the mates.read · scan
• p. 177Weighing anchor and setting sail described, with discipline, system and good will making heavy work go quickly.read · scan
• p. 180Ordinary shipboard work continues on rigging, carpentry and sailmaking while the watch chat.read · scan
• p. 180–181Tacking ship described with each man having a fixed station and answerable for his rope.read · scan
• p. 181–182Continued account of tacking ship, with commands and coordinated crew work; efficiency depends on rigging arrangements.read · scan
• p. 183Anchoring and furling sails, each man at his station, with the mate demanding perfect furls repeated until right.read · scan
• p. 184Describes shipboard work of furling sails and sending down yards, then the crew's dance and relaxation afterward.read · scan
• p. 184–186Port duties, division of labor among a large crew, and the good will that makes work go well on a big ship.read · scan
• p. 186–187The gig crew's hard rowing all day is preferred to the drudgery of cargo work aboard ship.read · scan
• p. 187–188Owners gain by throwing sailing work onto the crew's only day of rest, the Sabbath, costing sailors their rest.read · scan
• p. 193Twenty-two years of hard labor yielded only a chest of old clothes; worked like a horse.read · scan
• p. 196Hard hide-handling work of the crew, with the crew debating who is fit for the task.read · scan
• p. 196–197Crew's hard physical work loading hides, hauling boats through surf, and handling sail under the captain's urging.read · scan
• p. 197–199Sailors' teamwork at the windlass and aloft, reefing sails in a gale, with the narrator proud of his new skill.read · scan
• p. 205Crew pull the boat hard toward a new ship, eager for news from home.read · scan
• p. 205–206The whaleship's slovenly, raw crew take half an hour to furl sails that a trained crew do faster.read · scan
• p. 208Skilled seamanship and teamwork: crews beach-combing, launching boats and anchoring the drifting brig; experience distinguishes the crews.read · scan
• p. 209Crew's coordinated work getting boats off and the ship under sail.read · scan
• p. 211Coordinated crew work setting sail, hoisting and aloft on the yards.read · scan
• p. 211–212Crew called out to reef topsails and furl torn sails through the night.read · scan
• p. 212–214Hard sailors' work preparing for storm; darkness, cold and wet are the worst parts of a storm.read · scan
• p. 214–215Watch struggles to save sails in the gale, laboring through the night, denied rest.read · scan
• p. 215–216All hands work to secure the storm-damaged ship: furling sails, setting up rigging, lashing the galley and anchors.read · scan
• p. 217Exhausting hours of bending and unbending sails in a gale; sailors' hard, skilled work and watches at sea.read · scan
• p. 221Sailors' hard service in open boats in constant rain, and hides everywhere over the ship.read · scan
• p. 222Men suffer exposed, exhausting boat duty in rain, unfed and abandoned by the agent.read · scan
• p. 223Crew cuts and ferries wood in an open launch, enduring rain and a wretched night of exposure.read · scan
• p. 223Wading barefoot in frost to load wood; hard work, the youngest men bearing water-work.read · scan
• p. 223–225Unloading wood, then wet-weather shipboard work picking oakum and making gaskets and ropes for the voyage.read · scan
• p. 225–226Sailors industriously sew their own clothes in the evenings, preparing for Cape Horn.read · scan
• p. 252–253Sailors' toil at San Pedro and the coming hardest work of unloading and clearing ship at San Diego.read · scan
• p. 255Sailors heave out ballast and smoke the ship; dumping ballast overboard saves a week of labor.read · scan
• p. 256–257Loading forty thousand hides for six weeks, with division of labor into beating, carrying and boating; hard, skilled work that lamed Dana's wrists.read · scan
• p. 258–259Crew pulls together on the tackles; work songs give strength and timing, needed as the drum and fife are to soldiers.read · scan
• p. 260Hard work all week in the close hold, ended by Sunday rest, sustained by enormous meals.read · scan
• p. 261The Pilgrim's crew are condemned to another year of hard service on the coast, and one man buys his place home.read · scan
• p. 268Final tasks of loading cargo, watering and bending sails before departure.read · scan
• p. 272Crew's coordinated seamanship in setting sails and weighing anchor, with the cargo stowed and ship made ready.read · scan
• p. 276Hard work and exposure on the coast broke down old and weak men; palsy, rheumatism and death left the crew short-handed.read · scan
• p. 276–277The forecastle becomes a workshop where sailors make and mend their own gear during watches below.read · scan
• p. 292Sailors furl sails aloft in sleet and wind, numbed and soaked, under the captain's orders to carry sail to the last minute.read · scan
• p. 292Short-handed crew take successive reefs in topsails and mainsail; injury doubles their toil, and even the cook and steward are sent aloft.read · scan
• p. 292Numb-handed sailors furl the top-gallant sails on iced yards, knowing the mate will call them again if the work is slack.read · scan
• p. 294–295Hands must stow studding-sails and rig in booms in a gale, with ice-stiffened ropes, before getting any rest.read · scan
• p. 295Crew send down yards and masts in ice and gale, work sailors welcome as it ends repeated furling.read · scan
• p. 306–307Merchant ships are undermanned, so no one can be spared to nurse the sick.read · scan
• p. 308Hard cold work readying anchors and gear restores the crew's spirits.read · scan
• p. 308Handling ground-tackle in cold weather is the sailor's worst work: chains, frozen hawsers, constant anchoring.read · scan
• p. 317Captain has the watch furl the sail rather than call up the exhausted hands; short-handed hard work.read · scan
• p. 317Five men do work meant for many, comparison with a sixty-gun ship's crew.read · scan
• p. 321Crew set sail and secure rigging with a shanty chorus.read · scan
• p. 328–329Work of readying the ship for port keeps all hands busy; sailors call it hard usage.read · scan
• p. 333–334Sailors' shipboard work is shown: helmsman, sailmaker, carpenter, and hands handling sail as the squall strikes.read · scan
• p. 334–335Sailors' hard duty under the all-hands system, snatching scant sleep and quickly restoring sail after squalls.read · scan
• p. 339Sailors' routine preparing ship for a gale, the captain driving sail and the crew losing rest.read · scan
• p. 339Crew called from sleep to reef topsails in a gale; grumbling, competing watches, hard seamen's work.read · scan
• p. 339–341Hands work sail through the gale and race to get topsails set.read · scan
• p. 344Hands work daily from daylight to dark preparing the ship for port.read · scan
• p. 345The work must be done; the mate sends men aloft in turn and sailors cannot leave their jobs even when ill.read · scan
• p. 352Sailors kept running aloft repeatedly, furling and loosing royals, with Dana's last hours at the helm.read · scan
• p. 354–356Final tasks of docking the ship, furling sails and hauling to the wharf with a chorus, then crew dismissed.read · scan
• p. 357Sailor's life is plain drudgery and hardship, stripped of romance; the author asks what can be done for seamen as they are.read · scan
• p. 361Describes sailors' cramped forecastles, poor food and lack of sleep, which wear out and shorten merchant seamen's lives.read · scan
• p. 369Practice of shipping and treating seamen: careful selection of crews and attention to their provisions and conditions of work.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Twenty-Four Years AfterVol. 23

• p. 381Hides were the constant toil and chief object of the crew, once hated, now almost dear.read · scan
• p. 385–386Death, change and distance transform wearisome manual labor into something cherished.read · scan
• p. 386He recalls carrying heavy loads up the hill and hides barefoot over rocks.read · scan

8c.Miners, porters and burden-bearers

Buddhist WritingsVol. 45

• p. 776–777Moggallana's five hundred priests haul logs and stones by supernatural power to raise the two-story building swiftly.read · scan

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Letters of CiceroVol. 9

• p. 111Contract work is priced per foot, and workmen die when a tunnel collapses.read · scan

Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16

• p. 231The poor porter bears burdens for hire and is wearied by the heat and load.read · scan
• p. 278–279Sindbad joins the townsmen in gathering cocoa-nuts by pelting apes with stones, and is told to sell them for his living.read · scan

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Francis Drake RevivedVol. 33

• p. 167Cimaroons carry the provisions and hunt for the party on the march.read · scan
• p. 180–181The Cimaroons serve as spies, guides, purveyors, builders and porters, carrying the sick and provisions.read · scan

Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of GuianaVol. 33

• p. 305–306Extracting gold ore from hard stone required men, instruments and time that the expedition lacked.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 432–434Collier lass earns her own five pennies a day and needs no fine silk.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 148The seven dwarfs dig and delve in the mountains for ore.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 72Population encamps by the river drawing out salt in bullock-waggons during the season.read · scan
• p. 262–264Describes mining work and the Cornish superintendent, contrasting the quiet Chilean copper mines with English ones.read · scan
• p. 264–265Miners work from light to dark for a pound a month, living on figs, beans and bread, rarely tasting meat.read · scan
• p. 270Miners carry 200-pound loads up a 450-foot shaft, live on beans, and are treated like horses by their masters.read · scan
• p. 296The road of logs pegged into the earth is a great labour to build and maintain.read · scan
• p. 321Laborers, miners and cattle drivers are the usual discoverers of mines.read · scan
• p. 341Livelihood by washing gold and small cultivation.read · scan
• p. 343Miners work harder than beasts of burden in desolate spots, then spend wages in excess.read · scan
• p. 344–345Apires carry loads of 200 pounds up mine shafts twelve times daily, a revolting spectacle of toil.read · scan
• p. 380–381Spaniards work catching tortoises, drying fish and salting meat, and gathering salt from the lake.read · scan
• p. 411Tahitian guides carry fifty pounds at each end of a pole all day and catch fish by diving.read · scan

Walt Whitman, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1404–1406Felling forests, stemming rivers, and mining: a world of labor and the march.read · scan

8d.Household work and domestic service

Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22

• p. 82–83Household work of washing, spinning and preparing the wain.read · scan
• p. 83–84The maidens wash clothes in busy rivalry, then play ball.read · scan
• p. 120–121The giant busily milks, curdles and stores milk and fetches wood.read · scan
• p. 186Eumaeus's built courtyard, styes and care of the swine show a loyal servant's work.read · scan
• p. 207–208Odysseus in disguise boasts of his skill in serving-man's tasks like fire-building, carving and pouring wine.read · scan
• p. 276–277The household is set to sweeping, fetching water and preparing for the feast.read · scan

Aeschylus, The Libation-BearersVol. 8

• p. 106–107Nurse describes her toil as nurse and washerwoman, two handicrafts in one.read · scan

Virgil, The AeneidVol. 13

• p. 270Housewives rising at night to ply the distaff earn their children's bread.read · scan
• p. 270–282Housewives' night toil for children's bread is compared to the forging god's labor; Cyclops work at anvils.read · scan

Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of EpictetusVol. 2

• p. 178Share with attendants the labour and enjoyment of the feast.read · scan

The Destruction of Dá Derga's HostelVol. 49

• p. 237Nia and Bruthne are praised as the best table-servants in Erin, browned by the fire, unmatched in their art.read · scan

Traditional BalladsVol. 40

• p. 146–148Little John takes service with the sheriff for a yearly fee of twenty marks.read · scan

Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part IVol. 14

• p. 255She keeps the farm accounts and supervises servants and laborers on her father's estate.read · scan

William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King LearVol. 46

• p. 230Kent describes the service he can render and says his best quality is diligence.read · scan

William Penn, More Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1

• p. 389A true servant is diligent and does not defraud his master of time, care, pains or money.read · scan
• p. 389–390A true servant is diligent, secret and respectful, deserving liberal reward from his master.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 247–248Young women's attending to household business praised over dependence on slave labor.read · scan

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Tragedy of Faust, Part IVol. 19

• p. 135–137Margaret cooks, sews, sweeps and washes daily without a maid, toiling all year.read · scan

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hermann and DorotheaVol. 19

• p. 356–358The mother's industrious tending of garden, vines and fruit; an industrious woman wastes no step.read · scan
• p. 389–390Servants' carelessness burdens the mistress; Dorothea offers skilled work as a servant.read · scan
• p. 392–394The justice compares hiring an honest, able servant with careful inspection in bargaining over animals.read · scan
• p. 404The pastor describes the burdens of service: weary steps, unceasing toil, a master's caprice, and the mistress's temper.read · scan

Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6

• p. 252–254Rustic labour cuts up the haggis, a glorious sight.read · scan

Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)Vol. 21

• p. 486Household is set to preparing dormitories, beds and stores of provisions for the guests.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 98She is forced into hard kitchen drudgery from morning to night.read · scan
• p. 99–100The lentil sorting is imposed drudgery.read · scan
• p. 129–131He tries work with masters and as inn servant, exposing the maids' pilfering.read · scan
• p. 143–144Unaccustomed to fires, cooking and weaving, she is set to household toil and basket-making.read · scan
• p. 144–145She fails at spinning, selling pots, then becomes a kitchen-maid doing dirtiest work for leavings.read · scan
• p. 149Snow-white earns her keep by cooking, sewing and keeping house for the dwarfs who mine copper and gold.read · scan
• p. 163The runaway princess is put to menial kitchen work, carrying wood and water and sweeping ashes.read · scan
• p. 164She endures wretched kitchen drudgery and secretly cooks the king's soup.read · scan

Hans Christian Andersen, TalesVol. 17

• p. 315–316She scorns sewing the cook's slipper as vulgar work and breaks doing it.read · scan
• p. 333–334She serves industriously at the parsonage, asking no wages, only shelter among good people.read · scan

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1309Her woven stuffs show her housewifely skill.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 71Indians earn a little making horse gear and some young men willingly work on a sealing voyage.read · scan

8e.Intellectual labor and the toil of the scholar and artist

Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Old AgeVol. 9

• p. 49–51Plato, Isocrates and Gorgias kept working diligently to extreme old age; first charge is that age withdraws us from active employments.read · scan

Paul, The First Epistle of Paul to the CorinthiansVol. 45

• p. 514–515Believers urged to submit to those who help in the work and labor of ministry.read · scan

Plutarch, DemosthenesVol. 12

• p. 195Demosthenes lamented being the most industrious pleader yet unheeded by the people.read · scan
• p. 196His power in speaking was attributed to labor and industry rather than natural genius; his arguments were said to smell of the lamp.read · scan

Pliny the Younger, Letters of PlinyVol. 9

• p. 221At the Saturnalia he retreats to the summerhouse so servants' mirth and his studies do not interrupt each other.read · scan
• p. 231He combined official duties with tireless nightly work.read · scan
• p. 231Intense application enabled great literary output despite public duties.read · scan

Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2

• p. 222Turners and dancers exhaust themselves working at their arts.read · scan

Saint Augustine, The Confessions of St. AugustineVol. 7

• p. 125–126Augustine sells the skill of speaking as Alypius sells legal counsel, both burdened by business.read · scan

Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31

• p. 59–60He works incessantly and diligently at his several branches of art while the club breaks up.read · scan
• p. 254–256Without the prison's discipline, he says, none can labour well; he is refined like gold.read · scan
• p. 274–275Cellini wants a fixed place to stop and work, weary of following the court.read · scan
• p. 293Cellini works day and night on the models, and the King notes he works hard and is devoted to his work.read · scan
• p. 300–301They say Cellini's passion for labour will lose the King both artist and masterpieces.read · scan
• p. 310He stresses the great toil by which he earned the king's notice and the commission.read · scan
• p. 345Cellini struggles to get a workshop built for the Perseus amid slow, incompetent officials, while relying on the skilled carpenter Tasso.read · scan
• p. 349He strains night and day, and finds an industrious young laborer who learns the craft and becomes his best assistant.read · scan
• p. 363–364He labors intensely and pays workmen from his own pocket after the subsidy is withdrawn.read · scan
• p. 372He works at dawn and on feast-days to fit the Narcissus in alongside his Perseus.read · scan
• p. 376–377He strains every nerve stoking the furnace and directing workmen until exhaustion brings on fever.read · scan
• p. 417He counts the cost of marble, iron frame and assistant's wages in his self-funded work.read · scan
• p. 433He says the crucifix cost hours of unimaginable labour, repaid by princely praise.read · scan

Izaak Walton, The Life of Dr. John DonneVol. 15

• p. 356–357Donne's industrious study and sermon-making; rising at four, leaving abridgments of 1400 authors and 120 sermons.read · scan

John Eliot, Eliot's Brief NarrativeVol. 43

• p. 140Ministry is hard, poorly supported labor; ministers must live of the Gospel.read · scan

John Milton, AreopagiticaVol. 3

• p. 209–210Licensing is unpleasant, wearying journey-work, reading unchosen books at all times in poor hand.read · scan

Blaise Pascal, LettersVol. 48

• p. 359He stresses the vigils and pains spent perfecting the invention.read · scan

Samuel Johnson, Preface to the English DictionaryVol. 39

• p. 182–183The lexicographer is an unpraised drudge, slave of science, toiling at lower employments driven by fear of blame rather than hope of reward.read · scan
• p. 206–207Seven years of struggle to finish his work with no assistance or encouragement.read · scan

Edmund Burke, A Letter to a Noble LordVol. 24

• p. 394Burke stresses his industry and perseverance in public service, especially India, which wore down his health.read · scan

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, EgmontVol. 19

• p. 277–279The secretary chafes at long waiting and the press of business, wishing his master were stricter with time.read · scan

Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at EdinburghVol. 25

• p. 374–376Heyne edited Tibullus in poverty in a garret, boiling peas for dinner.read · scan

Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter ScottVol. 25

• p. 397Proposes paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.read · scan
• p. 420–421Scott treats writing, printing and bookselling as practical means of producing cash.read · scan
• p. 431Scott alternates his official court duties with country retreats at Abbotsford with his henchman Tom Purdie.read · scan
• p. 443No great thing in writing was ever done with ease; it demands toil and long preparation.read · scan
• p. 444–445Quality and quantity are two conditions of work; rapid writing shows habit and health, not genius.read · scan
• p. 445–446Ready-writers and newspaper editors thrash the same straw nightly; the vitality of man is great.read · scan
• p. 448He toiled unweariedly in declining years, writing and selling to pay large ransoms.read · scan

John Henry Newman, The Idea of a UniversityVol. 28

• p. 51Cleanthes supports his studies by drawing water and carrying loads, continuing servile toil even as head of school.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American ScholarVol. 5

• p. 5The anniversary is one of hope and perhaps not enough labor; a people too busy for letters.read · scan
• p. 12–13Drudgery, calamity and want are instructors in eloquence and wisdom; the scholar should share in action.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the ReformerVol. 5

• p. 50Weighs the plea that manual labor disqualifies scholars, yet holds separation from labor costs the seer power and truth.read · scan

John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25

• p. 8Father supported family by writing and completed the History of India through extraordinary energy and conscientious labour.read · scan
• p. 53–54Mill argues office clerkship suits a thinker better than writing for the press, which forces drudgery and leaves less leisure for own pursuits.read · scan
• p. 54Mill finds office duties a restful, not straining, occupation that leaves energy for his own intellectual work.read · scan
• p. 80–83Contributors to the Westminster Review wrote without pay as the Review's funds ran out.read · scan
• p. 152–154His official work and promotion to Examiner of India Correspondence.read · scan

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1273–1275The humble poet sang through long days of labor and nights without easeread · scan

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, The TidesVol. 30

• p. 289–291Notes years of laborious calculation by computers, including native calculators in India.read · scan

9.Forced and unfree labor

9a.Slave labor and its effects

Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16

• p. 164He sews for her diligently while earning nothing, abandoning his trade.read · scan
• p. 165The tailor works unpaid for days without food, sewing twenty shirts, then is yoked to the mill like a bull.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 182–183Masters who live in ease on slaves' hard labor contrasted with frugal ones giving moderate burdens.read · scan
• p. 203Contrasts free people laboring moderately for their families with those living on slaves' labor; free men find satisfaction in improving.read · scan
• p. 206–207Slaves' heavy toil supports the luxuries of others.read · scan
• p. 210–211Moderate exercise supplies wants; slaves are wrong method of living.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 395Slave labor displaced free workers, so a poor freeman could not find work as farmer or labourer.read · scan
• p. 502–503Farmers' stock and cultivation are treated as employments; poll-taxes on slaves in the colonies are taxes on agricultural stock.read · scan

John Henry Newman, The Idea of a UniversityVol. 28

• p. 43Athenians left manufacture to resident foreigners; labour was cheap.read · scan

Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln's Second Inaugural AddressVol. 43

• p. 424Bondman's 250 years of unrequited toil created wealth.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23

• p. 82Indians do all the hard work, kept by even the poorest households for food and coarse cloth.read · scan
• p. 116–117The mission Indians tend cattle and work the large garden.read · scan

9b.Convicts, captives and public works

See also: Punishment 4c

Herodotus, An Account of EgyptVol. 33

• p. 50–52Captives are compelled to drag huge stones and dig canals across Egypt.read · scan
• p. 63Vast gangs work in three-month shifts hauling stones for ten years on the causeway and twenty on the pyramid.read · scan
• p. 69Offenders raise the earth of their cities in embankment work.read · scan
• p. 78–79Twelve myriads of Egyptians perished digging Necos's canal to the Red Sea.read · scan

Tacitus, GermanyVol. 33

• p. 116Gothinians are made to labour in iron mines as disgraceful tribute.read · scan

Pliny the Younger, Letters of PlinyVol. 9

• p. 381–382Many hands are needed for the canal; the populous country can supply them, and the work benefits all.read · scan

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 142Convicts work as common laborers; the slothful are chained and whipped.read · scan
• p. 142Condemned men work for the commonwealth or private hirers at wages, yielding daily revenue.read · scan
• p. 215Soldiers themselves, not slaves or drudges, dig the trench, so the whole army's labour finishes it quickly.read · scan

John Milton, Samson AgonistesVol. 4

• p. 415Samson's labor at the mill earns his keeping and profits his owners.read · scan

Friedrich Schiller, William TellVol. 26

• p. 391–393Forced labor: peasants must haul stones to build their own prison, driven by a taskmaster for wages.read · scan

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17

• p. 197The king sets an impossible task of felling a forest with glass tools within a day.read · scan
• p. 198Impossible tasks of clearing a forest and a fish-pond are done by earth-men through the princess's magic.read · scan
• p. 199A third impossible task, clearing briars and building a castle in a day, is accomplished by earth-men.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 298–299Indians are ordered to row the periagua unpaid; they work cheerfully and manage lifting the cow.read · scan
• p. 436Convict gangs in chains build good roads; forced labour credited as a main cause of colony's early prosperity.read · scan
• p. 442–444Describes sheep-grazing farm run by assigned convict laborers and harvest-men.read · scan

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23

• p. 45Convicts driven to build aqueduct and wharf while the others idle.read · scan
• p. 45–46Convicts driven at a trot with burdens by taskmasters, contrasted with idle settlers.read · scan

10.The elevation and claims of the laboring classes

10a.The laborer's rise in culture, thought and self-respect

See also: Progress 6c

Voltaire, Letters on the EnglishVol. 34

• p. 107–108Nineteen of twenty men do manual labour and never hear of Locke.read · scan

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in FranceVol. 24

• p. 187–188Servile occupations like hair-dresser are no matter of honour and mean employment is a poor title to command.read · scan
• p. 188–189Ecclesiasticus says laboring men are not fit for public counsel though they maintain the world.read · scan

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Tragedy of Faust, Part IVol. 19

• p. 43–45The people have risen from bonds of toil and cheerless rooms.read · scan

William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28

• p. 309Channing addresses lectures to mechanics and apprentices, hoping improvement can be joined with labor.read · scan
• p. 311Laboring men gathering for lectures signify their rise and repeal of the degradation put on the masses.read · scan
• p. 311–312Topic is elevation of those who live by manual labor; prejudice against labor as degrading is giving way.read · scan
• p. 312–313Outlines the discussion of the elevation of the laboring multitude, its practicability and grounds of hope.read · scan
• p. 325–327Strenuous effort, including hard thinking, is required to rise; difficulty invigorates rather than discourages.read · scan
• p. 331–332Man works for others not servilely but from wise self-regard, justice and benevolence, without degrading himself.read · scan
• p. 333–334Labor is a better condition for receiving great ideas than luxurious life, even than a studious life fostering vanity.read · scan
• p. 335–337Introduces the elevation of the laboring class, whose laborer is also to be student and thinker.read · scan
• p. 337Laborers need not exchange toil for shallow reading; the elevation of laborers does not depend on many books.read · scan
• p. 337–339Laborers understand their own business thoroughly and do useful work, so claim no inferiority.read · scan
• p. 345The laboring classes can take part in reforming social intercourse and manners.read · scan
• p. 347Answers the objection that a laborer's toil leaves no time for thought and that political economy dooms him to ignorance.read · scan
• p. 348Laborers in America are rising intellectually without starving, showing toil need not exclude improvement.read · scan
• p. 349Laborers would create time and strength for their high calling once inspired by the idea of elevation.read · scan
• p. 350Mental culture of laborers will make industry more efficient rather than starving them.read · scan
• p. 350–351Considers objection that burdened laborers cannot cultivate their minds, and traces such depression to the sufferers' own faults.read · scan
• p. 351–352Depression of laborers traced to their own habits, leaving little leisure for culture.read · scan
• p. 352–353Health is the working man's fortune, lightening work and enabling earnings.read · scan
• p. 356Contempt for manual labor is fading; labor ordained by God is worthy and can foster sound judgment and taste.read · scan
• p. 358Concern is the improvement of the laboring class through schooling of their children.read · scan
• p. 361Manual toil and self-improvement can go together; laborers may attain refinement, intelligence and lofty ideas.read · scan
• p. 362Fears laboring classes may be depressed or ruined by their own recklessness and by changes bringing prosperity to others.read · scan
• p. 362–364Urges the working class to make its intellectual and moral well-being its first concern, above party politics.read · scan
• p. 365–366Salvation of the modern world lies partly in the intellectual and moral elevation of the laboring class; Boston's laborers have unusual advantages.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the ReformerVol. 5

• p. 55–56Society lives apart from laboring men and women and disregards their talents and hopes.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, New England ReformersVol. 5

• p. 255Manual labor and poverty give a healthful culture the protected person loses; pay is disproportionate.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 413–414Steam, ships, printing and money belong to those who can handle them; toil can travel where grandeur did.read · scan

John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25

• p. 171Mill issues cheap People's Editions of his works for working men, sacrificing profit.read · scan

John Greenleaf Whittier, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1342–1344Northern free workers' honest labor is undisturbed by Southern threats.read · scan

10b.Justice to labor and the fruits of toil

Paul, The First Epistle of Paul to the CorinthiansVol. 45

• p. 494Each worker will be rewarded according to his labor, and each man's work will be tested by fire.read · scan
• p. 501Paul argues workers deserve support from their work, citing soldier, vinedresser, shepherd and the ox treading corn; apostles may forbear manual work.read · scan

Luke, The Gospel According to LukeVol. 44

• p. 381The harvest is plenteous but laborers few; the laborer is worthy of his hire.read · scan

John Eliot, Eliot's Brief NarrativeVol. 43

• p. 140–142The laborer is worthy of his hire; missionaries need maintenance, and in all labor there is profit.read · scan

Voltaire, Letters on the EnglishVol. 34

• p. 89–90It was abominable that many sowed and few reaped; laborers' work and blood were their masters' property.read · scan

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among MankindVol. 34

• p. 207Labour of the hands gives the husbandman title to the produce and the land.read · scan

John Woolman, The Journal of John WoolmanVol. 1

• p. 195–196Luxury and costly habits multiply labor beyond what God intends, and immoderate labor breeds craving for liquor.read · scan
• p. 196–197Rightly managed estates would not require some to make luxuries or others to labor too hard.read · scan
• p. 251Recalls his hard youthful labor and believes that if the wealthy lived plainly, labor could be reduced to an agreeable employment for all.read · scan
• p. 252God provided that labor rightly divided would be suitable employment for all.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 50–51The labourer must share his produce with the owner of stock and the landlord.read · scan
• p. 66–67In the original state the whole produce of labour is the labourer's wages, and division of labour would have raised them and cheapened goods.read · scan

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in FranceVol. 24

• p. 324No one will work or save without knowing the value of his pay.read · scan
• p. 373People must labour for what labour can obtain; destroying this consolation deadens industry and acquisition.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the ReformerVol. 5

• p. 53Each should ask whether he has earned his bread by contributing energies to the common benefit.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, New England ReformersVol. 5

• p. 259Fourierist communities aim at shared manual labor and equal reward of labor and talent, joined with liberal culture.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1261–1264None but Toil shall have; exploiting another's labor and sweat is condemnedread · scan

John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25

• p. 105Under the St. Simonian scheme every individual takes a share of labour and is remunerated according to work.read · scan
• p. 143Ideal that all work and share the produce of combined labour, not divided by accident of birth.read · scan
• p. 151The chapter on the future of the labouring classes is credited to his wife.read · scan
• p. 151–152Discussion of two opposed theories on the proper condition of the labouring classes.read · scan

John Ruskin, Sesame and LiliesVol. 28

• p. 125Nation lives by the unthanked labor of policeman, sailor, student and worker, while it pursues false business of money-making.read · scan

James Russell Lowell, DemocracyVol. 28

• p. 468–470Hands should receive a larger share of the wealth they combine with brains to produce.read · scan

William Morris, PoemsVol. 42

• p. 1195–1196Envisions a future when workers rejoice in their work, fear no want, and keep the full fruit of their labor.read · scan

10c.Employment of the poor and the problem of unemployment

See also: Punishment 3c

Plutarch, PericlesVol. 12

• p. 47Colonies and naval service relieve an idle, meddling crowd and supply the poor.read · scan
• p. 47–48Building projects give the home-staying mechanic multitude employment and public pay without idleness.read · scan
• p. 49Every trade and its hired laborers organized like soldiers, so public works distributed plenty through every age and condition.read · scan

Plutarch, CaesarVol. 12

• p. 310Drained marshes would employ thousands in tillage.read · scan

Niccolò Machiavelli, The PrinceVol. 36

• p. 36Towns keep common stocks of materials so the poor can work handicrafts for a year, the sinews of such cities.read · scan

Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36

• p. 142Pasture needs one shepherd where tillage needed many hands; willing workers can find no work.read · scan
• p. 142Decayed husbandry throws servants and workers into idleness, begging and stealing.read · scan
• p. 142Restoring tillage and clothworking would give honest labor to the idle who become thieves.read · scan
• p. 179Good order in Utopia means houses last and few workmen are needed, so surplus labour mends highways.read · scan

Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German NationVol. 36

• p. 313Proposes abolishing begging, each town supporting its own poor and detecting idle vagabonds.read · scan

William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35

• p. 232Dispossessed villagers are forced to become hired servants or beg, often without any occupation.read · scan
• p. 305Vagabonds may escape punishment by being bound into a year's service with a householder.read · scan
• p. 318English clothworkers starve and lose skill for lack of daily practice when cloth is dressed abroad.read · scan

William Penn, More Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1

• p. 391Better employment for the poor: land cultivation, manufactures, plantations.read · scan

Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1

• p. 119A poor industrious man is hired to sweep the pavement for sixpence per month per house.read · scan
• p. 120–121A feeble poor woman sweeps the whole street in three hours for a shilling.read · scan
• p. 121–122Poor people to be employed with brooms and scavengers to carry away dust.read · scan

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10

• p. 300Without an outlet for surplus, the labourers producing it would lose employment.read · scan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5

• p. 458–459Common masons in Boston lift a giant granite block with a derrick; Englishmen hungry for work while plains are sheep-walk.read · scan

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29

• p. 277Inhabitants are industrious but no demand for labour exists, so the lower orders cannot earn money.read · scan
• p. 490–491Public works out of proportion to the island's value, and workers lack employment after reduced public service.read · scan

Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation of AmnestyVol. 43

• p. 418Freed people described as a laboring, landless, homeless class needing temporary arrangements.read · scan

See also: Wealth, Art, Taxation, Slavery, Progress, Education