84 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.
one generation owes to its immediate successors. Arrived at maturity, he earned his own subsistence by that com- mon labor in which the majority of men must and do earn it. Then passing to a higher to the very highest sphere of labor, he earned his subsistence by the teach- ing of moral and spiritual truths, receiving its material wages in the love-offerings of grateful hearers, and not refusing the costly spikenard with which Mary anointed his feet. So, when he chose his disciples, he did not go to landowners or other monopolists who live on the labor of others, but to common laboring-men. And when he called them to a higher sphere of labor and sent them out to teach moral and spiritual truths, he told them to take, without condescension on the one hand or sense of degradation on the other, the loving return for such labor, saying to them that " the laborer is worthy of his hire," thus showing, what we hold, that all labor does not consist in what is called manual labor, but that whoever helps to add to the material, intellectual, moral or spirit- ual fullness of life is also a laborer.*
- Nor should it be forgotten that the investigator, the philosopher,
the teacher, the artist, the poet, the priest, though not engaged in the production of wealth, are not only engaged in the production of utilities and satisfactions to which the production of wealth is only a means, but by acquiring and diffusing knowledge, stimulating mental powers and elevating the moral sense, may greatly increase the ability to produce wealth. For man does not live by bread alone. . . . He who by any exertion of mind or body adds to the aggregate of enjoyable wealth, increases the sum of human know- ledge, or gives to human life higher elevation or greater fullness he is, in the large meaning of the words, a "producer," a "working- man," a "laborer," and is honestly earning honest wages. But he who without doing aught to make mankind richer, wiser, better, happier, lives on the toil of others he, no matter by what name of honor he may be called, or how lustily the priests of Mammon may swing their censers before him, is in the last analysis but a beggar- man or a thief. Protection or Free Trade, pp. 74-75.
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