17200 Essays 3 
clothed and better lodged. And if, instead of em- 
ploying a man I feed in making bricks, I employ him 
in fiddling for me, the corn he eats is gone, and no 
part of his manufacture remains to augment the 
wealth and convenience of the family; I shall there- 
fore be the poorer for this fiddling man, unless the 
rest of my family work more, or eat less, to make up 
the deficiency he occasions. 
Look around the world and see the millions em- 
ployed in doing nothing, or in something that 
amounts to nothing, when the necessaries and con- 
veniences of life are in question. What is the bulk 
of commerce, for which we fight and destroy each 
other, but the toil of millions for superfluities, to the 
great hazard and loss of many lives by the constant 
dangers of the sea? How much labor is spent in 
building and fitting great ships, to go to China and 
Arabia for tea and coffee, to the West Indies for 
sugar, to America for tobacco? These things can- 
not be called the necessaries of life, for our ancestors 
lived very comfortably without them. 
A question may be asked: Could all these people 
now employed in raising, making, or carrying super- 
fluities be subsisted by raising necessaries? I think 
they might. The world is large, and a great part of 
it still uncultivated. Many hundred millions of acres 
in Asia, Africa, and America are still in a forest, and 
a great deal even in Europe. On a hundred acres of 
this forest a man might become a substantial farmer, 
and a hundred thousand men, employed in clearing 
each his hundred acres, would hardly brighten a spot 
big enough to be visible from the moon, unless with 
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