The Industry of the Individual
By John Fisher Murray. The World of London, volume 1, 1843.
The industry of Londoners is truly wonderful; and those who know no better are accustomed to give them credit for it, which they deserve just as much as the industrious man who would pick up a sovereign lying at the end of his great toe. Cockneys are not a whit more industrious than other people; they labour hard in their several vocations, not that they love labour, but because labour is an article in great demand: industry, like gooseberries, will be plentiful wherever it is wanted, and will not come to market unless the cultivation of it will pay.
The peasantry of mountainous regions might be very industriously employed in rolling a big stone up a hill, for the purpose of letting it roll down again; but we see them very often walk about with their hands in their pockets instead. Now, if these mountaineers could each earn six shillings a-day by rolling big stones up the sides of hills, you would not see a man of them idle: argal, the reason they are idle in rolling big stones is, because they get nothing by it; and what holds of rolling big stones, will hold of any thing else to which human industry is applicable, big or little.
The intensity of low-bred ignorance, (we do not mean vulgar ignorance, for that is a different vice,) is more prominently offensive in nothing than in national prejudice. You will hear a man, who may have posted over Europe with the blinds of his carriage up, descant upon the indolence of one people and the industry of another; but that this national industry in the one case is secondarily a cause, and primarily only an effect, and that the national idleness in the other is precisely the reverse, he knows no more than the blind puppy drowned on Wednesday last.
The soul of industry is pay; where pay is not, neither is labour. Abundance of employment, and certainty of adequate remuneration, create industrious habits, which, once created, spontaneously perpetuate themselves, and become part and parcel of the national character; where industry, on the contrary, receives no fair remuneration or encouragement, idleness becomes in time a characteristic of the people, distinguishing them for years, it may be, after deteriorating causes have ceased to act. Geographical position, natural wealth, soil, climate — and, above all, forms of government — determine the amount of industry of a people; the industry of the individual is determined by the amount of wages he can obtain. Individuals may be found who will not work; but no nation ever was intrinsically lazy, nor ever will be.
(From the Internet Archive)
