productive.

I am a porter, I carry packages in my hands. To increase my efficiency
I build me a cart, and smooth a roadway, by which I am able to carry
more and heavier packages with ease. I construct a roadway across the
continent, and with the power which I employ I carry the commerce of
the nation. I build ships and direct them from continent to continent
and handle the commerce of the world. Now there is no place from this
simple carriage in the hand, to the complicated and stupendous system
of transportation, where the tool is not wholly dependent on the vital
intelligent energy.

When the vital principle leaves this body, then hands, eyes and the
whole body is helpless. Withdraw the vital energy from these means by
which man extends his power beyond the body, and all the implements of
agriculture will not produce a harvest, and the wheels of commerce on
land and sea would instantly stop.

There is no place in the most complicated machine where it begins to
produce. The machine may show the greatest ingenuity in its invention
and the perfection of skill in its construction, and the intelligence
necessary to its operation may be reduced to the minimum, yet no where
and at no time can it produce of itself.

When a criminal is arraigned in court the responsibility is placed
upon the person, the intelligent energy, always. It matters not by
what tools the burglary or other criminal act was committed. The man
who handled the tools is held accountable for the results. His tools
may show the greatest ingenuity and the highest skill in their
construction but they do not share his guilt. He is the efficient and
responsible cause. If this were not so justice could be so perverted
that the preservation of the order and the security of society would
be impossible.

Every tool is itself produced, and its maker must be rewarded or paid
once, but there the claim for the tool ends. The laborer who
constructs the machine cannot demand repayment over and over. The
skilled mechanic who produced this pair of lenses must be paid, but he
has no claim for second payment. To secure repayment he must make
another pair. The maker of this pen and this paper must be paid, but
that ends his claim. The maker of the hoe or cart or engine must have
the reward he has earned, but can prefer no second claim.

There is no question when the laborer makes and owns his own tool. The
labor of constructing the tool must be rewarded as well as the