“_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 compared with _destructive labor_. “Perhaps more than three-fourths of _your_ labor here on earth is either comparatively unproductive or destructive. Nearly all your fencing, banking, mining gold for money, speculating, soldiering, three-fourths of your so-called mercantile business, your sectarian preaching and teaching, all your 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 you expend a vast amount of unproductive and destructive labor, which I can not now make you clearly understand, but which you will see hereafter as we compare our social and industrial system with yours. “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 in your system 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.” “Do the Marsites all work only at productive labor?” asked Mr. Uwins.