Industry and Idleness

This chapter deals with the supremely important dichotomy of “industry” and “idleness,” which served as the ever-reliable criterion of moral, religious, economic, and even legal judgments throughout the century. For virtually all authors, regardless of their political or religious stances, “industry” was regarded as a sacrosanct virtue, frequently placed in sharp opposition to the universally proscribed vice of “idleness.” “Industry,” which served at once as a moral term denoting voluntary diligence and an economic term referring to productive labor, was to be encouraged and extolled under all circumstances. By contrast, “idleness,” an equally potent compound of moral and economic significations, was invariably condemned, as it was identified as the real cause of social and economic misery individuals suffer. The vast dominion the dichotomy reigned over is traced all the way to the dark recesses of the debtors’ prison, where the industrious and the idle insolvents ought to have been but were not always neatly differentiated.