A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 6 - Labor]
In the first place you want to bear in mind that our day's labor, as
I have told you before, is very short, in an average less than two
hours a day; but there is no place in our society for an idler. All
sound, able- bodied persons, men, women and children, are expected to
work at some suitable productive labor. We teach that labor is
necessary and honorable; that idleness is robbery and a disgrace. Our
public opinion shuns an idler or unproductive laborer as much, as you
shun a burglar. We believe that a proper amount of physical labor is
healthful, that it is essential for the highest development of body
and mind. We further believe that children should be taught to labor
while young, because labor becomes pleasurable only when the habit of
laboring is acquired during childhood and youth. A child should be
taught to be independent, to support itself by agreeable, healthful
labor as early as possible, for many reasons which I will tell you
some other time. I find here on earth that many parents believe that
manual labor is a disgrace. With us, you will notice, it is just the
reverse. We believe that a parent who does not teach a child to labor
while it is young is the child s greatest enemy, for such a child will
be a slave to labor ever after.
We classify labor as productive, unproductive and destructive. When I
speak of labor here, I mean that kind of labor only which is expended
in the pursuit of acquiring the material subsistence; and in the
rearing of offspring I include only the toilsome exertions, not the
sportive exercises. Plowing, sowing, reaping, cooking washing,
planting, digging a needful well, mining iron, building a house,
making a coat, writing a useful book, running an engine, holding and
carrying a baby beyond a certain length of time, etc., are examples of
productive labor. Productive labor, then, as here restricted, is that
kind of labor which adds to the aggregate amount of the community's
material wealth in the form of food, clothing, shelter and luxuries,
or that which is expended in the rearing of offspring. After a
productive day's labor, the world is richer in material wealth than it
was before. The day's labor must have produced something. It must have
augmented not only the labor s individual wealth, but the aggregate
wealth of the world.
Unproductive labor is that kind which neither tends to produce nor
destroy material wealth. No amount of unproductive labor produces food
for a single meal. To be digging wells where there is no need for
water; to carry a brick to and fro from one place to another; to plant
a potato for the sake of planting; to plow a field and not sow and
harvest it; to build a house and not utilize it; to mine coal and not
use it; to gamble, etc., are examples of unproductive labor. No matter
how much the laborer perspires, how long and how toilsome a day he
makes, how diligent and honest he may be, all his efforts and toil
expended in this manner do not add one iota to the aggregate material
wealth of the nation or of the world.
Destructive labor is that kind of labor which actually destroys
wealth, which, we have seen, can be produced only by productive labor.
For examples: A soldier tearing up or otherwise destroying railroads;
a burglar exploding a safe; an army burning a city; a miner mining
iron that is to be manufactured into a gun with which life and
property are to be destroyed; a malicious destruction of a tree or
useful plant, etc., etc.
We can plainly see that if we should all engage in destructive labor,
all the material wealth would soon be destroyed, and the more
industrious we would be in the expenditure of destructive labor, the
less material wealth we would have left. Idleness is a virtue as com
pared with destructive labor.
Perhaps more than three-fourths of our labor here on earth is either
comparatively unproductive or destructive. Nearly all fencing,
banking, mining gold for money, speculating, soldiering, three-fourths
of so-called mercantile business, sectarian preaching and teaching,
all political scheming, manufacturing and selling liquor and tobacco
are unproductive or destructive. Besides these few cases that I have
mentioned there are countless other ways in which [we] expend a vast
amount of unproductive and destructive labor. …
By the foregoing explanation we see that an industrious person is not
necessarily a producer. One may be as industrious in the destruction
of wealth as in the production of it. A millionaire, who labors to
accumulate, by some scheme, the wealth that others have earned, to
augment his individual fortune, is an unproductive or destructive
laborer, not a productive one. He robs some person and. thereby makes
the world worse. His object is not to earn, but to appropriate what
others have already earned or produced. It is not always easy …
to determine whether a certain kind of labor is productive,
unproductive, or destructive. Intelligence, the basis of all activity,
is the only criterion that can determine it.
[N]ot all human exertion … is considered laborious or toilsome.
For instance, the beating of the heart, eating, breathing, voluntary
conversation, a ride or walk for recreation, pursuing a favorite study
or occupation, shopping as you call it, entertaining a welcome friend,
being engaged in a certain kind of fancy work, are not considered even
by you as toil some labor. They have either become delightful
exercises, or they have lost their conscious sensitiveness all
together, like the beating of the heart, etc.
All well organized persons find delight in being always engaged in
some active, physical or mental pursuits, during their waking hours.
Absolute quietude and idleness are very burdensome to them. So, too,
is excessive labor toilsome to them. But by the aid and improvement of
our machinery, by shortening the day of manual labor, by acquiring the
habit of working while young, by receiving a large return for labor,
by laboring in company with pleasant companions, by having all the
necessary and convenient tools, by becoming continually more and more
proficient in our occupation, by appreciating with a keener, esthetic
sense the improved products of an advancing industry, and by laboring
more and more under individual freedom, all exertions tend to pass
from the sphere of toilsome labor into the sphere of delightful,
sportive exercise, and this change will, no doubt, continue until a
complete adjustment is effected.
[O]ur machinery is not so perfect, our tools are not so handy, our
conveniences for labor are very few, our day of manual labor is so
long and toilsome, our returns go largely to the rich idlers or
unproductive labors, our companions are often rival enemies, our
occupation whatever [we] can get to do, our overseer a cruel,
heartless tyrant, our appreciations for accomplishments have been
withered by anxiety and poverty. Nothing but the bare necessity of
acquiring the material subsistence for a meager livelihood spurs [us]
on to our almost unendurable and endless toil, which generally lasts
until the premature grave entombs the remains of our worn-out,
lifeless body. Under our sad social and industrial arrangement, it is
no wonder that [we] dishonor labor, that [we] endeavor by all schemes
to escape that endless tread-mill of toil to which [we] are generally
hitched for life by the tugs of cruelty, want of knowledge and
superstition.
CONTENTS
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