Stephen Duck: What an exhausting day at work! I felt like Odysseus today, that\u2019s how long I was toiling in the fields. When I\u2019m out there, \u201cbriny Streams [of] Sweat descends\u201d and \u201cno intermission in [my] Works [I] know.\u201d (Duck, The Thresher\u2019s Labor, 45)<\/p>\n

John Locke: Why, congratulations! All your labor was certainly for good reason, for your labor is your own, and nobody else can claim it.<\/p>\n

Duck: That\u2019s not a very funny joke. I toil away all day long for my terrible landlord. He is always complaining that I don\u2019t work hard enough, and that the neighboring lord\u2019s workers are far more hard-working than I am. He always complains that us field workers have \u201cidled half our Time away.\u201d (Duck, The Thresher\u2019s Labor, 75)<\/p>\n

Locke: But what you do through your own effort belongs to you. After all, if you didn\u2019t cut the wheat and stack the hay, it would lie in the fields to rot, or for wild animals to consume. It is through your labor that the wheat becomes useful. As I like to say, \u201cthe labour of [your] body, and the work of [your] hands, we may say, are properly [yours].\u201d (Locke, Treatise of Civil Government, 2.5.27)<\/p>\n

Duck: That all sounds very nice, but if I didn\u2019t thresh the fields and mill wheat into flour and till the soil, I wouldn\u2019t have a place to live. If I didn\u2019t work for the landlord, I wouldn\u2019t have a house to live in!<\/p>\n

Locke: But once a person \u201chath mixed his labour with\u201d something in labor by removing it from its natural state, he will have made \u201cit his property\u2026for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to.\u201d (Locke, Treatise of Civil Government, 2.5.27)<\/p>\n

Duck: That\u2019s not even a little bit true! I don\u2019t own what I work on. The landlord takes everything.<\/p>\n

Locke: Labor doesn\u2019t need to be physically difficult. I earn money by thinking. Or writing down what I think, anyways.<\/p>\n

Duck: You sound like you have never worked a day of hard labor in your life. And you earn money for those ridiculous ideas you have?<\/p>\n

Locke: Wait a moment there, you do earn something for your work. Doesn\u2019t your work earn you food for your meals and a home for your family?<\/p>\n

Duck: I suppose, at the end of the day, \u201cfrom the Pot the Dumpling\u2019s catch\u2019d in haste,\/And homely by its side the Bacon\u2019s plac\u2019d\/Supper and Sleep by Morn new Strength supply\u201d (Duck, The Thresher\u2019s Labor, 157-160).<\/p>\n

Locke: So maybe your labor isn\u2019t literally your property, but you are not working for nothing.<\/p>\n

Duck: I suppose you are right, that I am not working for nothing. \u2026but my labor is still a lot of hard work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Duck: What an exhausting day at work! I felt like Odysseus today, that\u2019s how long I was toiling in the fields. When I\u2019m out there, \u201cbriny Streams [of] Sweat descends\u201d and \u201cno intermission in [my] Works [I] know.\u201d (Duck, The Thresher\u2019s Labor, 45) John Locke: Why, congratulations! All your labor was certainly for good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,17],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-revision","tag-week3blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paigemorgan.net\/teaching\/engl200d\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}