And it would
be a sufficient satisfaction to witness the growth of knowledge and
morality, thereby elevating society, and rendering its institutions more
secure.
These higher results will be accompanied, however, by others of
sufficient importance to be considered. When we _hire_, or, what is,
for this inquiry, the same thing, _buy_ that commodity called, _labor_,
what do we expect to get? Is it merely the physical force, the animal
life contained in a given quantity of muscle and bone? In ordinary cases
we expect these, but in all cases we expect something more. We sometimes
buy, and at a very high cost, too, what has, as a product, the least
conceivable amount of manual labor in it,--a professional opinion, for
example; but we never buy physical strength merely, nor physical
strength at all, unless it is directed by some intellectual force. The
descending stream has power to drive machinery, and the arm of the idiot
has force for some mechanical service, but they equally lack the
directing mind. We are not so unwise as to purchase the power of the
stream, or the force of the idiot's arm; but we pay for its application
in the thing produced, and we often pay more for the skill that has
directed the power than for the power itself. The river that now moves
the machinery of a factory in which many scores of men and women find
their daily labor, and earn their daily bread, was employed a hundred
years ago in driving a single set of mill-stones; and thus a man and boy
were induced to divide their time lazily between the grist in the hopper
and the fish under the dam.
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