(2 Par. iii. 17.) Further we are told that Solomon set
seventy thousand men to carry burdens on their shoulders, and eighty
thousand to hew stones in the mountains, and three thousand six
hundred to be overseers of the work of the people. (2 Par. ii. 18.)
The history is manifest. Strength and Direction build the Temple:
Strength, or Manual Labour, represented by the hodmen and quarrymen,
and the rest of the "hands:" Direction, or Mental Labour, represented
by the overseers. Yet not by them alone: surely we must count in as
doers of mental labour the designer of the Temple, or at least of its
decorations, that "most wise and skilful man, my father Hiram;" and
still more King Solomon himself and David, the two royal minds that
originated and perfected the idea; and David's generals, Joab and
Banaias, who secured the peace that was necessary as a condition of
the building; and innumerable other men of place and power in the
nation, but for whose thought and prudence the strength of the workman
would have been thrown away like a river poured out in the Libyan
desert. From this example, eked out with a little thought of his own,
the reader may estimate the wisdom and credit of those who tell
factory hands that it is their labour which produces all the wealth of
their employer, and that, in the day when every man shall receive his
due, the employer shall be made a workmen like themselves, and his
wealth shall go to the increase of their common wages.
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