"It appears to us," lie writes, "that the distinctions that have been attempted to be drawn between productive andunproductive labourers, or between the producers of material and immaterial products or between commodities or services,rest on differences existing not in the things themselves, but in the mode in which they attract our attention.In those cases inwhich our attention is principally called, not to the act of occasioning the alteration, but to the result of that act, to the thing(as) altered, economists have termed the person who occasioned that alteration a productive labourer, or the producer of acommodity or material produced.Where on the other hand, our attention is principally called, not to the thing (as) altered,but to the act of occasioning the alteration, economists have termed the person occasioning the alteration an unproductivelabourer, and his exertions, services, or immaterial products.A shoemaker alters leather and thread and wax into a pair ofshoes.A shoe-black alters a dirty pair of shoes into a clean pair.In the first case, our attention is called principally to thething as altered.The shoemaker, therefore, is said to make or produce shoes.In the case of the shoe-black, our attention iscalled principally to the act as performed.He is not said to make or produce the commodity, clean shoes, but to perform theservice of cleaning them.In each case, there is of course an act and a result; but in the one case our attention is calledprincipally to the act; in the other, to the result.""It might have been perhaps more correct," says Dr Twiss, "to have represented the shoe-black as altering blacking and dirtyshoes into clean shoes.If the shoe-black is a private servant, lie is simply an instrument of his master to assist him in theconsumption of blacking, which consumption takes place, not when it is applied to the boot, for a clean boot is of morevalue than a dirty boot, but when the boot is soiled afresh.The master, therefore, really consumes the blacking, and theservant assists him.On the other hand, the shoe-black may keep a stall, as is frequently seen in the streets of Paris, and hisservices may be at the command of the public: in this case he is a trader, and supplies clean shoes in exchange for dirty shoesand money."Dr Twiss, who praises and apparently adopts this view, applies it in a particular case in a manner which, I think, is quiteindefensible.He says (p.177)'
"The first machine of Newcomen (constructed in 1765) required the most unremitting attention on the part of the personwhose business it was to close and open incessantly certain cocks (robinets), by which at one moment the steam wasadmitted into the cylinder, at another, a jet of cold water entered to condense it.It happened on a particular occasion thatwhilst a boy named Humphrey Potter was thus employed, his comrades, who were at play, excited him so much by theircries, that he found himself at last unable to resist the temptation to join them.But the task imposed upon him was onewhich he could not venture to abandon for a single minute.The excitement of the moment, however, kindled in him a sparkof genius, and suggested to him certain relations between the parts of the machine, which he had before not observed.Of thetwo cocks, one required to be opened at the moment when the balance rod, which Newcomen first introduced, completed itsdescending oscillation, and to be closed at the conclusion of its ascending oscillation.The operations of the second cockwere just the reverse.There was thus a necessary dependence between the movements of the balance-rod and the openingand shutting of the two cocks, and it occurred to Potter that the balance-rod might be made to communicate the necessarymotion to the other parts of the machine.He at once attached cords from the handles of the cocks to certain parts of thebalance-rod, and found that the tightening and loosening of these cords, with every ascending and descending oscillation,would produce the same effect that he hitherto produced with his hand.For the first time the steam-engine worked by itselfwithout any further care than that of feeding the furnace with coals.More complicated constructions were soon adopted toreplace the simple contrivance of the child; but the origin of them all was owing to the mere longings of a boy to join hisplayfellows."He adds, "According to Adam Smith's division, this boy would be classed under the head of unproductive labourers." Butaccording to Adam Smith's doctrine this boy must certainly be ranked among productive labourers.He was employed inworking a machine; and was just as much a productive labourer as the draw-boy who pulls the sheds of a loom, or as theweaver who sits and works at the loom.
We are carefully to remember that unproductive as applied to labourers is not a term of reproach or condemnation.Thestandard passage on the subject is this (Smith's Wealth of Nations , p.146):
"The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value,and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject or vendible commodity which endures after that labour is past, andfor which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured.The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both ofjustice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers.They are the servants of thepublic, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people.Their service, how honourable,how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured.
