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Simple Living and Self-Reliance

46:26 recording · EN · 1 speaker

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Brief overview

Thoreau argues that simple living and a few weeks of honest labor buy more freedom than wealth.

  1. Speed bought with wages is no speed at allThe thirty-mile fare to Fitchburg costs almost a day's wages, so the walker arrives first while the rider is still earning it.
  2. Keep the books and the case makes itselfEvery figure is rendered, from $23.44 of farm income to twenty-seven cents a week for food, so the reader can check the freedom against its price.
  3. Possessions are a trap you drag behind youFurniture, an immigrant's bundle and a deacon's auctioned trumpery all show that the more you have of such things, the poorer you are.
Executive Summary AI
  • Reading Part IV of "Economy" from Walden, Thoreau argues that the hundred modern improvements of his day are an illusion rather than a positive advance, inventions being pretty toys that distract attention from serious things, as with a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas when neither has anything important to communicate.
  • To prove that the swiftest traveler goes afoot, he offers a wager on the thirty miles to Fitchburg: the fare is ninety cents, almost a day's wages, and he remembers when laborers on that very road earned sixty cents a day, so he would walk and arrive before night while his friend was still working to earn the fare.
  • His accounting of the bean field is exact: land that had sold the preceding season for $8.08 an acre, farm outgoes of fourteen dollars seventy-two cents for implements, seed and work, twelve bushels of beans and eighteen bushels of potatoes, a whole farm income of $23.44 and a balance of $8.71 plus four dollars fifty cents of produce consumed and on hand.
  • The full ledger for house, farm, eight months of food ($8.74), clothing ($8.40 minus three quarters) and oil ($2) comes to $61 and nine cents minus three quarters against $36.78 earned, $13.34 of it by day labor, leaving a balance of $25.21 three quarters, very nearly the means with which he started, plus leisure, independence, health and a comfortable house.
  • For more than five years he maintained himself solely by the labor of his hands and found that working about six weeks in a year met all the expenses of living, leaving whole winters and most summers free for study, since the day-laborer's occupation is the most independent of any and needs only thirty or forty days a year.
Key Quote
“I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Key Quote
“i am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men”
— Henry David Thoreau
Key Quote
“Most of the stone a nation hammers goes towards its tomb only. It buries itself alive.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Transcript

0:00 ECONOMY
0:23 PART IV by henry david thoreau economy part four as with our colleges so with a hundred modern
0:33 improvements there is an illusion about them there is not always a positive advance the
0:40 devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them our inventions are wont to be pretty toys which distract our attention from serious things an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.
1:06 As railroads lead to Boston or New York,
1:10 we are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas.
1:17 But Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman,
1:32 but when he was presented and one end of her ear-trumpet was put into his hand,
1:38 had nothing to say.
1:40 As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly we are eager to tunnel under the atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new
1:54 but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping american ear will be that the princess adelaide has the whooping-cough after all the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages he is not an evangelist nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey of corn to mill. One says to me, I wonder that you do not lay up money. You love to travel. You
2:29 might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country. But I am wiser than that.
2:36 I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend,
2:42 suppose we try, who will get there first?
2:46 The distance is thirty miles, the fare ninety cents.
2:50 That is almost a day's wages.
2:53 I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.
2:59 Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night.
3:04 I have traveled at that rate by the week together.
3:09 You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there sometime to-morrow,
3:16 or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season.
3:21 Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day and so if the a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stalks and
4:06 spades long enough, all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time and for nothing.
4:14 But though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts, All aboard! when the
4:20 smoke is blown away and the vapour condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding,
4:27 but the rest are run over, and it will be called and will be a melancholy accident.
4:38 No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably
4:47 have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time.
4:52 This spending of the best part of one's life, earning money in order to enjoy a questionable
4:57 liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went
5:04 to India to make a fortune first
5:06 in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.
5:11 He should have gone up Garrett at once.
5:15 What! exclaim a million Irishmen, starting up from all the shanties in the land.
5:20 Is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?
6:09 Yes, I answer answer comparatively good that is you might have done worse before i finish my house wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method in order to meet my unusual expenses i up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for $8.08 an acre. One farmer said that it
6:17 was, quote, good for nothing but to raise cheaping squirrels on, end quote. I put no manure whatever on this land, not being the owner,
6:29 but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite
6:35 hoe it all at once. I got out several cords of stumps and ploughing, which supplied me with fuel
6:42 for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable,

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