"Why,look here,brother Dowley,don't you see?Your wages are merely higher than ours in NAME,not in FACT.""Hear him!They are the DOUBLE --ye have confessed it yourself.""Yes-yes,I don't deny that at all.But that's got nothing to do with it;the AMOUNT of the wages in mere coins,with meaningless names attached to them to know them by,has got nothing to do with it.The thing is,how much can you BUY with your wages?--that's the idea.While it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed about three dollars and a half a year,and with us only about a dollar and seventy-five --""There --ye're confessing it again,ye're confessing it again!""Confound it,I've never denied it,I tell you!What I say is this.
With us HALF a dollar buys more than a DOLLAR buys with you --and THEREFOREit stands to reason and the commonest kind of common-sense,that our wages are HIGHER than yours."He looked dazed,and said,despairingly:
"Verily,I cannot make it out.Ye've just said ours are the higher,and with the same breath ye take it back.""Oh,great Scott,isn't it possible to get such a simple thing through your head?Now look here --let me illustrate.We pay four cents for a woman's stuff gown,you pay 8.4.0,which is four mills more than DOUBLE.
What do you allow a laboring woman who works on a farm?""Two mills a day."
"Very good;we allow but half as much;we pay her only a tenth of a cent a day;and --""Again ye're conf --"
"Wait!Now,you see,the thing is very simple;this time you'll understand it.For instance,it takes your woman 42days to earn her gown,at 2mills a day --7weeks'work;but ours earns hers in forty days --two days SHORTof 7weeks.Your woman has a gown,and her whole seven weeks wages are gone;ours has a gown,and two days'wages left,to buy something else with.There --NOW you understand it!"He looked --well,he merely looked dubious,it's the most I can say;so did the others.I waited --to let the thing work.Dowley spoke at last --and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet.He said,with a trifle of hesitancy:
"But --but --ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better than one."Shucks!Well,of course,I hated to give it up.So I chanced another flyer:
"Let us suppose a case.Suppose one of your journeymen goes out and buys the following articles:
"1pound of salt;1dozen eggs;1dozen pints of beer;1bushel of wheat;1tow-linen suit;5pounds of beef;5pounds of mutton.
"The lot will cost him 32cents.It takes him 32working days to earn the money --5weeks and 2days.Let him come to us and work 32days at HALF the wages;he can buy all those things for a shade under 141/2cents;they will cost him a shade under 29days'work,and he will have about half a week's wages over.Carry it through the year;he would save nearly a week's wages every two months,YOUR man nothing;thus saving five or six weeks'wages in a year,your man not a cent.NOW I reckon you understand that 'high wages'and 'low wages'are phrases that don't mean anything in the world until you find out which of them will BUY the most!"It was a crusher.
But,alas!it didn't crush.No,I had to give it up.What those people valued was HIGH WAGES;it didn't seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not.They stood for "protection,"and swore by it,which was reasonable enough,because interested parties had gulled them into the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages.I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but 30per cent.,while the cost of living had gone up 100;and that with us,in a shorter time,wages had advanced 40per cent.while the cost of living had gone steadily down.But it didn't do any good.Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs.
Well,I was smarting under a sense of defeat.Undeserved defeat,but what of that?That didn't soften the smart any.And to think of the circumstances!
the first statesman of the age,the capablest man,the best-informed man in the entire world,the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries,sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith!And I could see that those others were sorry for me --which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers scorching.Put yourself in my place;feel as mean as I did,as ashamed as I felt --wouldn't YOU have struck below the belt to get even?Yes,you would;it is simply human nature.Well,that is what I did.I am not trying to justify it;I'm only saying that I was mad,and ANYBODY would have done it.
Well,when I make up my mind to hit a man,I don't plan out a love-tap;no,that isn't my way;as long as I'm going to hit him at all,I'm going to hit him a lifter.And I don't jump at him all of a sudden,and risk making a blundering half-way business of it;no,I get away off yonder to one side,and work up on him gradually,so that he never suspects that I'm going to hit him at all;and by and by,all in a flash,he's flat on his back,and he can't tell for the life of him how it all happened.That is the way I went for brother Dowley.I started to talking lazy and comfortable,as if I was just talking to pass the time;and the oldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of my starting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up:
"Boys,there's a good many curious things about law,and custom,and usage,and all that sort of thing,when you come to look at it;yes,and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement,too.There are written laws --they perish;but there are also unwritten laws --THEYare eternal.Take the unwritten law of wages:it says they've got to advance,little by little,straight through the centuries.And notice how it works.