“However hard our people worked,” said Mr. Stone, “they were divided into productive and unproductive labourers, as the people of every civilized society are. If you will just run over a few names, we will try to divide the two classes.”
“Let us begin with the lowest,” said George. “The labourers on Robertson’s farm and on yours, sir, are productive labourers, because they produce corn for ourselves, and hay for the horses, and flax for our clothes. Then there are the other servants, who have wages paid them,—the captain’s errand-boy, and your maid, ma’am, who nurses the child, and kept the house clean when you had one, and Goody Fulton, who attended to Arnall’s shop when he was out shooting——”
“Well: go on,” said Mr. Stone; “tell us what they produced.”
George laid down his bow to consider; but he could not think of anything produced by these last-mentioned people. He owned that however industrious and useful they might be, domestic servants were unproductive labourers. Then he went on with his list.
“Fulton, I suppose, sir, produces leather out of what was only the hide of a beast; and Harrison makes bricks out of what was only clay; and Links——let me see, what does the farrier do? He puts on horse-shoes: that is not making anything. He is unproductive, I suppose.”
“As a farrier;—but he is also a smith, and makes horse shoes and nails, and implements of many sorts, out of what was only a lump or a bar of iron.”
“Then he is a labourer of both kinds. That is curious. And so are you, Mr. Hill. You make medicines; but when you give your advice, or bleed your patients, or shave my father on Saturday night, you are an unproductive labourer.”
“And at the same time, one of the last men we could spare,” said Mr. Stone. At which, Hill rose and bowed low.
“I am afraid my father is an unproductive labourer,” said George. “I cannot think of anything that a butcher makes.”
“Why should you say ‘afraid’?” inquired Mr. Stone. “Your father is of the same class with the captain.”