every link of it swinging loose like a knight's chain mail: then you may have some joy of it afterwards, and pride; and say you knew the cunning of a man's right hand. But I think it is pay that you want, not work; and it is very true that pretty iron-work like that does not pay; but it is pretty, and it might even be entertaining, if you made those leaves at the top of it (which are, as far as I can see, only artichoke, and not very well done) in the likeness of all the beautiful leaves you could find, till you knew them all by heart. "Wasted time and hammer-strokes," say you? "A wise people like the English will have nothing but spikes; and, besides, the spikes are highly needful, so many of the wise people being thieves." Yes, that is so; and, therefore, in calculating the annual cost of keeping your thieves, you must always reckon, not only the cost of the spikes that keep them in, but of the spikes that keep them out. But how if, instead of flat rough spikes, you put triangular polished ones, commonly called bayonets; and instead of the perpendicular bars, put perpendicular men? What is the cost to you then, of your railing, of which you must feed the idle bars daily? Costly enough, if it stays quiet. But how, if it begin to march and countermarch? and apply its spikes horizontally? And now note this that follows; it is of vital importance to you. There are, practically, two absolutely opposite kinds of labour going on among men, for ever. [4] The first, labour supported by Capital, producing nothing. The second, labour unsupported by Capital, producing all things. Take two simple and precise instances on a small scale. A little while since, I was paying a visit in Ireland, and chanced to hear an account of the pleasures of a picnic party, who had gone to see a waterfall. There was of course ample lunch, feasting on the grass, and basketsful of fragments taken up afterwards. Then the company, feeling themselves dull, gave the fragments that remained to the attendant ragged boys, on condition that they should 'pull each other's hair.' Here, you see, is, in the most accurate sense, employment of food, or capital, in the support of entirely unproductive labour. Next, for the second kind. I live at the top of a short but rather steep hill; at the bottom of which, every day, all the year round, but especially in frost, coal-waggons get stranded, being economically provided with the smallest number of horses that can get them along on level ground. The other day, when the road, frozen after thaw, was at the worst, my assistant, the engraver of that bit of iron-work on the 11th page, was coming up here, and found three coal-waggons at a lock, helpless; the drivers, as usual, explaining Political Economy to the horses, by beating them over the heads.