1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the
production of which invention has no share.
For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no
design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by
first drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into
fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are
then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their
work all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely
timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail.
Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments,
have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; and
every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the
slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so
long been endeavouring to put down.
But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite
invention; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to
say for the beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and not for mere
finish of execution, we are doing good to humanity.
So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary cases,
requires little exertion of any mental faculty; some tact and judgment
in avoiding flaws, and so on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind.
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