Permit me to here lay down another corner-stone: As cheapness is a boon, of course cheap labor is a boon; if labor, even at a dollar a day, is a blessing, it follows that labor at half a dollar a day is a greater blessing; and if we can only get it to a quarter of a dollar a day, will not mankind be four times as happy as when it is at a dollar a day? And then, oh blessed time! When we get it down to one cent a day shall we not be standing just in the portals of Paradise?
Let all men take heart, for we approach that time. I learned last summer, in the lovely State of Connecticut, that the Messrs. Sprague were hiring able-bodied men to work eleven hours a day, sometimes in water and mud, at rebuilding their great Baltic dam, for eighty-three cents a day, and that thousands more were ready to rush in. I may recall to mind the dark ages, when ignorance prevailed, and men boasted of a land (if there was one) where
All the men were brave and all the women virtuous.
_All_ of that kind! Then there could have been no cheap labor, and the boon which we now know to be the greatest vouchsafed to man could not be enjoyed. There have been times when strong, honest men and strong, honest (and permit me to say clean) women were thought to be the fruition of a perfect and Christian civilization--when cheap cotton was not thought to be the "one thing needful."
The good King Henri of Navarre is said to have hoped for the day when in France the poorest peasant might have a fowl in his pot.
Besotted king! he did not know that in the good time coming, when we shall bring in our one to ten thousand cheap Chinese per week, the white man will be happy indeed who can get a pound of rice or potatoes in his pot. A fowl in his pot! Foolish king!
"Progress"--what a lovely word!--progress has shown all mankind what a glorious thing cheap labor is and must be. How great and happy are the people who preach and practise it! "Progress"--a beautiful word certainly, if we do really understand it. But I remember me of a man--a brewer--who rather late in life had fallen in love with the word "docile." He thought it a beautiful word. One day his partner returned, having failed to collect a doubtful debt. My friend essayed it, but returned red in the face.