If the curiosity of our supposed observer be whetted by what he saw on London Bridge, and if the natural impulse to generalize from particulars be deepened in his mind, he may perhaps on his return to America take an opportunity to see what he can see and learn what he can learn within and around one of the mammoth cotton mills in Lowell or Fall River or Cohoes. Should he take his stand for this purpose at one of these points, say Lowell, he will be struck at once by some of the differences between what he saw on the bridge and what he now sees in the mill. He will indeed see as before some commodities brought in and carried out, such as the raw cotton and new machinery and the finished product ready for sale, but in general no other commodities than the cotton in its various stages of manufacture, and those like the machinery and means of transportation directly connected with transforming the cotton into cloth and taking it to market.
But he sees a host of persons both within and without the mill, all busy here and there, and all evidently bound to the establishment by a strong unseen tie of some sort; he sees varying degrees of authority and subordination in these persons from the Treasurer, the apparent head of the manufactory, down to the teamsters in the yard and the common laborers within and without; he will not find the owners of the property present in any capacity, for they are scattered capitalists of Boston and elsewhere, who have combined through an act of incorporation their distinct capitals into a "Company" for manufacturing cotton; besides their Treasurer present, whose act is their act and whose contracts their contracts, he will see an Agent also who acts under the Treasurer and directly upon the Overseers and their assistants in the spinning and weaving and coloring and finishing rooms, and under these Operatives of every grade as skilled and unskilled; and lastly he will observe, that the direct representatives of the owners and all other persons present from highest to lowest are conspiring with a will towards the common end of getting the cotton cloth all made and marketed.
What is it that binds all these persons together? A little tarrying in the Treasurer's office will answer this question for our observer and for us. He will find it to be the second kind of Buying and Selling. At stated times the Treasurer pays the salary of the Agent, and his own. He pays the wages of the Overseers and the wages of all the Operatives and Laborers,--men and women and children. Here he finds a buying and selling on a great scale not of material commodities as before, but of personal services of all the various kinds. Every man and woman and child connected with the factory and doing its work sells an intangible personal service to the "Company" and takes his pay therefor, which last is a simple buying on the part of the unseen employers. Here, then, in this mill is a single specimen of this buying and selling of personal services, which is going on to an immense extent and in every possible direction in each civilized country of the world, and everywhere to an immensely increased volume year by year. Clergymen and lawyers and physicians and teachers and legislators and judges and musicians and actors and artisans of every name and laborers of every grade sell their intangible services to Society, and take their pay back at the market-rate. The aggregate value of all these services sold in every advanced country is probably greater than the aggregate value of the tangible commodities sold there. At any rate, both classes alike, commodities and services, are bought and sold under substantially the same economic principles.