12. Finally, there seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbours. This is robbery.—The second by commerce, which is generally cheating.—The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle wrought by the hand of God in his favour, as a reward for his innocent life, and his virtuous industry.
B. FRANKLIN.
April 4, 1769.
FOOTNOTE:
[84] This article has been inserted in The Repository for select Papers on Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures. Vol. I, p. 350. B. V.
[Political Fragments, supposed either to be written by Dr. Franklin, or to contain Sentiments nearly allied to his own][85].
[§ 1. Of the Employment of Time, and of Indolence: particularly as respecting the State.]
All that live must be subsisted. Subsistence costs something. He, that is industrious, produces, by his industry, something that is an equivalent, and pays for his subsistence: he is therefore no charge or burden to society. The indolent are an expence uncompensated.
There can be no doubt but all kinds of employment, that can be followed without prejudice from interruptions; work, that can be taken up, and laid down, often in a day, without damage; (such as spinning, knitting, weaving, &c.) are highly advantageous to a community; because in them may be collected all the produce of those fragments of time, that occur in family-business, between the constant and necessary parts of it, that usually occupy females; as the time between rising and preparing for breakfast, between breakfast and preparing for dinner, &c. &c. The amount of all these fragments is, in the course of a year, very considerable to a single family; to a state proportionably. Highly profitable therefore it is, in this case also, to follow that divine direction, gather up the fragments that nothing be lost. Lost time is lost subsistence; it is therefore lost treasure.
Hereby, in several families, many yards of linen have been produced, from the employment of those fragments only, in one year, though such families were just the same in number as when not so employed.