_Robinson._ If we accept we are ruined. _Friday._ Is that certain? Calculate! _Robinson._ It is all calculated. Hunting, crushed out by competition, will be a lost branch of industry for us. _Friday._ What difference does that make, if we have the game? _Robinson._ Theory! It will not be the product of our labor. _Friday._ Yes, it will, since we will have to give vegetables to get it. _Robinson._ Then what shall we make? _Friday._ The four hampers of game cost us six hours' labor. The stranger gives them to us for two baskets of vegetables, which take us but three hours. Thus three hours remain at our disposal. _Robinson._ Say rather that they are taken from our activity. There is our loss. _Labor is wealth_, and if we lose a fourth of our time we are one-fourth poorer. _Friday._ Friend, you make an enormous mistake. The same amount of game and vegetables and three free hours to boot make progress, or there is none in the world. _Robinson._ Mere generalities. What will we do with these three hours? _Friday._ We will do _something else_. _Robinson._ Ah, now I have you. You can specify nothing. It is very easy to say _something else--something else_. _Friday._ We will fish. We will adorn our houses. We will read the Bible. _Robinson._ Utopia! Is it certain that we will do this rather than that? _Friday._ Well, if we have no wants, we will rest. Is rest nothing? _Robinson._ When one rests one dies of hunger. _Friday._ Friend, you are in a vicious circle. I speak of a rest which diminishes neither our gains nor our vegetables. You always forget that by means of our commerce with this stranger, nine hours of labor will give us as much food as twelve now do. _Robinson._ It is easy to see that you were not reared in Europe. Perhaps you have never read the _Moniteur Industriel_? It would have taught you this: "All time saved is a dear loss. Eating is not the important matter, but working. Nothing which we consume counts, if it is not the product of our labor. Do you wish to know whether you are rich? Do not look at your comforts, but at your trouble." This is what the _Moniteur Industriel_ would have taught you. I, who am not a theorist, see but the loss of our hunting. _Friday._ What a strange perversion of ideas. But-- _Robinson._ No _buts_. Besides, there are political reasons for rejecting the interested offers of this perfidious stranger. _Friday._ Political reasons! _Robinson._ Yes. In the first place he makes these offers only because they are for his advantage. _Friday._ So much the better, since they are for ours also. _Robinson._ Then by these exchanges we shall become dependent on him. _Friday._ And he on us. We need his game, he our vegetables, and we will live in good friendship. _Robinson._ Fancy! Do you want I should leave you without an answer? _Friday._ Let us see; I am still waiting a good reason.