Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-laborer
in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the
number of people, of whose industry a part, tho but a small part, has
been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all
computation. The woolen coat, for example, which covers the
day-laborer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the product of
the joint labor of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the
sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the
scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many
others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even
this homely production.
How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in
transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others, who
often live in a very distant part of the country! How much commerce
and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors,
sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring
together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come
from the remotest corners of the world! What a variety of labor, too,
is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those
workmen!
To say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor,
the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us
consider only what a variety of labor is requisite in order to form
that very simple machine, the shears with which the shepherd clips the
wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the
feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in
the smelting-house, the brick-maker, the bricklayer, the workmen who
attend the furnace, the millwright, the forger, the smith, must all of
them join their different arts in order to produce them.
Were we to examine in the same manner all the different parts of his
dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears
next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies
on, and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at
which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for
that purpose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him,
perhaps, by a long sea and a long land carriage, all the other
utensils of his kitchen, all the furniture of his table, the knives
and forks, the earthen or pewter plates upon which he serves up and
divides his victuals, the different hands employed in preparing his
bread and his beer, the glass window which lets in the heat and the
light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with all the knowledge and
art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention,
without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have
afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of all
the different workmen employed in producing those different
conveniences; if we examine, I say, all these things, and consider
what a variety of labor is employed about each of them, we shall be
sensible that, without the assistance and cooperation of many
thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be
provided, even according to what we very falsely imagine the easy and
simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated. Compared, indeed,
with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must
no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true,
perhaps, that the accommodation of a European prince does not always
so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the
accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the
absolute masters of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked
savages.