And precisely the same argument answers the common one about “taking employment out of the hands of the industrious laborer.”  Why, what is “employment” but the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical force?  We are continually in search of means to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry.  We waste our future resources to get this strength, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath, and production of its variously noisome forms of ashes!  Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first.  The industrious hands must already have so much to do that they can do no more, or else we need not use machines to help them.  Then use the idle hands first.  Instead of dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put it on a canal, and drag it with human arms and shoulders.  Petroluem cannot possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere.  We can always order that, and many other things, time enough before we want it.  So, the carriage of everything which does not spoil by keeping may most wholesomely and safely be done by water-traction and sailing-vessels; and no healthier work can men be put to, nor better discipline, than such active porterage.

* In order fully to utilize this natural power, we only require machinery to turn the variable into a constant velocity—­no insurmountable difficulty.

131. (2d.) In employing all the muscular power at our disposal we are to make the employments we choose as educational as possible; for a wholesome human employment is the first and best method of education, mental as well as bodily.  A man taught to plough, row, or steer well, and a woman taught to cook properly, and make a dress neatly, are already educated in many essential moral habits.  Labor considered as a discipline has hitherto been thought of only for criminals; but the real and noblest function of labor is to prevent crime, and not to be Reformatory, but Formatory.

132.  The third great principle of employment is, that whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occupation should be directed to the production of useful articles only; that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing, and preserving these.  It is yet little understood by economists, and not at all by the public, that the employment of persons in a useless business cannot relieve ultimate distress.  The money given to employ riband-makers at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn from what would have employed lace-makers at Honiton; or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere.  We must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody.  If we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend it; if we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into some one else’s pockets, or merely gone to pay navies for making a useless embankment, instead of to pay riband or button