“Then our settlement,” said the captain, “is not stripped of all its property. We have some wealth left.”
“Poor as we are,” said his friend, “we are richer than if we were in the midst of the sandy desert to the north of us, with a waggon full of gold in our possession. We have here what gold could not buy in such a place, food and shelter.”
“And other things too,” said the captain. “We have clothing, for flax grows in the woods, and there are plenty of animals within reach, whose skins can be dried and cleaned to make us cloaks or beds, or tanned for shoes and caps and aprons for our workmen. We have furniture, for there is plenty of timber in the woods to make tables and chairs. We have——”
“Stay,” interrupted his friend, “you are getting on too fast. All these things are likely to become ours, I grant you; but before we can call them our own,—before they become wealth to us, something must be added which we have not yet taken into consideration. You forget that there is no wealth without labour; and labour must be applied before the commonest productions can become wealth.”
“True,” replied the captain. “The flax must be gathered, and dried, and hackled, and woven, before it will make a shirt; and the animals must be caught, and a great deal of labour be spent upon their skins before they become fit for clothing or bedding; and the timber must be felled and sawn, and the pieces put skilfully together, before we possess it in the form of tables and chairs. But surely the case is different with food, of some kinds at least. There is fish in the pond, and fruit on the tree, ready made for man’s use. Man spends no labour on the fruit that grows wild in such a climate as this; and yet we daily find that it is wealth to us.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Stone. “There is the labour of gathering it. An orange is of no use to any man living unless he puts out his hand to pluck it. And as for the fish in the pond,—think of the carp that Hill told us of this morning. They are no wealth to us till we can catch them, though the pool is within reach, and they belong to nobody else.”
“We should have had them by this time if we had but got a net,” said the captain.
“The net is one thing wanting, certainly,” said his friend, “but labour is another. If the net were now lying ready on the bank, we should be no better for the fish, unless some one took the trouble of drawing them out of the water. I do not say that unassisted labour will furnish us with all that we want; but I do say that nothing can be had without the exertion of getting it; that is, that there is no wealth without labour.”
“True,” said the captain. “Even the manna in the wilderness would have been of no more use to the Hebrews than the carp in the pool to us, if they had not exerted themselves to gather it up. Food was never yet rained into the mouth of any man.”
“And if it had been,” said Mr. Stone, “he must have troubled himself to hold back his head and open his mouth. So you see what conclusion we come to, even in an extreme case.”