Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/73

Rh sorts of work. Man amasses wealth to get rid of this uncongenial labor. In short, it is impossible to be occupied with many affairs at once.

I have no rest; night and day I have my occupations, I have scarcely the time to eat food already prepared. If we too must labor for bread, then the universe must of necessity perish. I have plenty of money, and I use it in great enterprises without labor, and yet you want me to go into the fields and torture myself for thirty kopecks a day! I would be regarded as a simpleton. I prefer to work with my money at home.

But if all the world must labor, let those begin who are a hundred times richer than I!

48. These are the pretexts and objections that you make to the law; these are the reasons why you who belong to the upper class would decline to labor for bread. If all of us laborers did the same, would you admit it as a justification when the plea is made by us?

No; but with your absolute power, you would smother us and our reasons together.

But, I ask you, why do you look upon your excuses as legitimate?

Bring together a number of men belonging to the great world, who waste their thoughts on its vanities, and ask them what answer you ought to make to this question.

49. Bread should be neither bought, nor sold, nor used in traffic. You cannot with bread heap up riches, for its value is beyond human