by Mark Twain
“Verily this being is made of money! He throweth it away even as it were dirt.”
The blacksmith was a crushed man.
The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I said to Marco and his wife:
“Good folk, here is a little trifle for you”—handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:
“Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall to.”
Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. I don’t know that I ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular effects out of the materials available. The blacksmith—well, he was simply mashed. Land! I wouldn’t have felt what that man was feeling, for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing and bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white bread every Sunday the year round—all for a family of three: the entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two mills and six milrays,) and all of a sudden here comes along a man who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and not only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small sums. Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up and collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that’s been stepped on by a cow.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Sixth Century Political Economy.
HOWEVER, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easy to do—in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn’t ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can’t ever get his full growth. You prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that’s the end of it—he knuckles down. You can’t insult him after that. No, I don’t mean quite that; of course you can insult him, I only mean it’s difficult; and so, unless you’ve got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn’t pay to try. I had the smith’s reverence, now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous and rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some little gimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, but any commoner’s in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three. This was to remain so, as long as England should exist in the earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world—after God—Gutenberg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell.fl
The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take a nap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed the beer-keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters near and dear to the hearts of our sort—business and wages, of course. At a first glance, things appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little tributary kingdom—whose lord was King Bagdemagus—as compared with the state of things in my own region. They had the “protection” system26 in full force here, whereas we were working along down towards free trade, by easy stages, and were now about half way. Before long, Dowley and I were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look:
“In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind,fm carter, shepherd, swineherd?”
“Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent.”
The smith’s face beamed with joy. He said:
“With us they are allowed the double of it! And what may a mechanic get—carpenter, dauber,fn mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright and the like?”
“On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day.”
“Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred! With us any good
mechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out the tailor, but not the others—they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more—yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays a day. I’ve paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week. ’Rah for protection—to Sheol with free-trade!”
And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn’t scare at all. I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth—drive him all in—drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show above ground. Here is the way I started in on him. I asked:
“What do you pay a pound for salt?”
“A hundred milrays.”
“We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton—when you buy it?” That was a neat hit; it made the color come.
“It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say 75 milrays the pound.”
“We pay 33. What do you pay for eggs?”
“Fifty milrays the dozen.”
“We pay 20. What do you pay for beer?”
“It costeth us 8½ milrays the pint.”
“We get it for 4; 25 bottles for a cent. What do you pay for wheat?”
“At the rate of 900 milrays the bushel.”
“We pay 400. What do you pay for a man’s tow-linen suit?”
“Thirteen cents.”
“We pay 6. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?”
“We pay 8. 4. 0.”
“Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents.” I prepared, now, to sock it to him. I said: “Look here, dear friend, what’s become of your high wages you were bragging so about, a few minutes ago?”—and I looked around on the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his ever noticing that he was being tied at all. “What’s become of those noble high wages of yours?—I seem to have knocked the stuffing all out of them, it appears to me.”
But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that is all! he didn’t grasp the situation at all, didn’t know he had walked into a trap, didn’t discover that he was in a trap. I could have shot him, from sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a struggling intellect, he fetched this out:
“Marry, I seem not to understand. It is proved that our wages be double thine; how then may it be that thou’st knocked therefrom the stuffing?—an I miscall not the wonderly word, this being the first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted me to hear it.”
Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with him and were of his mind—if you might call it mind. My position was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified more? However, I must try:
“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 therefore it stands to reason and the commonest kind of common sense, that our wages are higher than you
rs.”
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 4 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 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills a day—7 week’s work; but ours earns hers in forty days—two days short of 7 weeks. 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:fo
“Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes out and buys the following articles:
“1 pound of salt;
1 dozen eggs;
1 dozen pints of beer;
1 bushel of wheat;
1 tow-linen suit;
5 pounds of beef;
5 pounds of mutton.
The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32 working days to earn the money—5 weeks and 2 days. Let him come to us and work 32 days at half the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade under 14½ cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 days’ 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 reason-
Evolution.
able 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 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced 40 per 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 of 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—they are 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. We know what wages are now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that’s the wages of to-day. We know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that’s as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. Good, so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward; we face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I can tell you what people’s wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
“What, goodman, what!”
“Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6.”
“I would I might die now and live then!” interrupted Smug the mason, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye.
“And that isn’t all; they’ll get their board besides—such as it is: it won’t bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later—pay attention, now—a mechanic’s wages will be—mind you, this is law, not guesswork; a mechanic’s wages will then be twenty cents a day!”
There was a general gasp of awed astonishment. Dickon the wheelwright murmured, with raised eyes and hands:
“More than three weeks pay for one day’s work!”
“Riches!—of a truth, yes, riches!” muttered Marco, his breath coming quick and short, with excitement.
“Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and forty years more there’ll be at least one country where the mechanics’s average wage will be two hundred cents a day!”
It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could get his breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coalburner said prayerfully:
“Might I but live to see it!”
“It is the income of an earl!” said Smug.
“An earl, say ye?” said Dowley; “ye could say more than that and speak no lie; there’s no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hath an income like to that. Income of an earl—mf! it’s the income of an angel!”
“Now then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages. In that remote day, that man will earn, with one week’s work, that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of five weeks to earn now. Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, too. Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, and servant shall be for that year?”
“Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, the magistrate. Ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistrate that fixes the wages.”
“Doesn’t ask any of those poor devils to help him fix their wages for them, does he?”
“Hm! That were an idea! The master that’s to pay hi
m the money is the one that’s rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice.”
“Yes—but I thought the other man might have some little trifle at stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures. The masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. These few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shall have who do work. You see? They’re a ‘combine’—a trade union, to coin a new phrase—who band themselves together to force their lowly brother to take what they choose to give. Thirteen hundred years hence—so says the unwritten law—the ‘combine’ will be the other way, and then how these fine people’s
Discrepancy in Noses makes no Difference.
posterity will fume and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade unions! Yes indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the wages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; and then all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a couple of thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing; and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself. Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliation to settle.”
“Do ye believe—”
“That he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes, indeed. And he will be strong and able, then.”
“Brave times, brave times, of a truth!” sneered the prosperous smith.
“Oh,—and there’s another detail. In that day, a master may hire a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time, if he wants to.”
“What?”
“It’s true. Moreover, a magistrate won’t be able to force a man to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man wants to or not.”
“Will there be no law or sense in that day?”
“Both of them, Dowley. In that day a man will be his own property, not the property of magistrate and master. And he can leave town whenever he wants to, if the wages don’t suit him!—and they can’t put him in the pilloryfp for it.”
