Principles of Political Economy Author:John Stuart Mill Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: miller, for instance, and the baker—are they to be reckoned among agriculturists or among manufacturers ? Their occupation is in its nature manufacturing ; ... more »the food has finally parted company with the soil before it is handed over to them : this, however, might be said with equal truth of the thresher, the winnower, the makers of butter and cheese ; operations always counted as agricultural, probably because it is the custom for them to be performed by persons resident on the farm, and under the same superintendence as tillage. For many purposes, all these persons, the miller and baker inclusive, must be placed in the same class with ploughmen and reapers. They are all concerned in producing food, and depend for their remuneration on the food produced ; where the one class abounds and flourishes, the others do so too ; they form collectively the ' agricultural interest ;' they render but one service to the community by their united labours, and are paid from one common source. Even the tillers of the soil, again, when the produce is not food, but the materials of what are commonly termed manufactures, belong in many respects to the same division in the economy of society as manufacturers. The cotton planter of Carolina, and the wool grower of Australia, have more interests in common with the spinner and weaver than with the corn- grower. But, on the other hand, the industry which operates immediately upon the soil has, as we shall see hereafter, some properties on which many important consequences depend, and which distinguish it from all the subsequent stages of production, whether carried on by the same person or not; from the industry of the thresher and winnower, as much as from that of the cotton spinner. When I speak, therefore, of agricultural labour, I shall generally...« less