LABOR, in political economy, is term so dependent for its meaning on the circum stances in which it is used, that any scientific definition of it would lead to misunder standing. The best service, in fact, towards rendering it intelligible, is to clear away some attempts that have been made to subject it to scientific analysis and definition. It has been separated into productive and unproductive, but no such division can be fixed. A turner who puts a piece of wood on his lathe and makes a top is of course a productive laborer The same quality cannot be denied to the man who beams is web for the loom; but if he shares in the production of the cloth, so does the over seer who walks about and adjusts the industrial arrangements of the manufactory.
Having included him, we cannot well say that the policeman., who keeps order in the district, and enables its manufactures to go on, should be excluded. Again, the man who contributes to make a book, of course appears as a productive laborer; but what the author contributes is not matter, but intellect; and it would be difficult to main tain that he ceases to be productive if he deliver such matter in an oration or a sermon. We can hardly count the distiller, who makes a glass of whisky, a productive
laborer, and exclude the musician, who produces another and less dangerous excite ment. It is ec:naliy impossible to draw the line between bodily and intellectual labor, since there is scarcely a work to which man can put his hand which does not require some amount of thought. A distinction between capital and labor has often been attempted to be established, with very fallacious and dangerous results. Capital in active operation infers that its owner labors. If the capital is not labored the owner must be content to let it lie at ordinary interest. If he want profit from it, he must labor, and often severely. In a large manufactory, where the proprietor is supposed to be a gentleman at large, drawing his fortune from the sweat of tire brow of his fellow-men, he is often the most anxious and the hardest-worked mau in the whole establishment. •