Bab Bab 33 · SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY

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--Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright,

Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell.

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” system in full force here,

whereas we were working along down toward 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, 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, 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 seventy-five milrays

the pound.”

“_We_ pay thirty-three. What do you pay for eggs?”

“Fifty milrays the dozen.”

“We pay twenty. What do you pay for beer?”

“It costeth us eight and one-half milrays the pint.”

“We get it for four; twenty-five bottles for a cent.

What do you pay for wheat?”

“At the rate of nine hundred milrays the bushel.”

“We pay four hundred. What do you pay for a man's tow-linen suit?”

“Thirteen cents.”

“We pay six. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the

laborer or the mechanic?”

“We pay eight cents, four mills.”

“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 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 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 42 days to earn

her gown, at 2 mills a day--7 weeks' 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:

“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 14 1/2 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

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 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 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--_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't I might die now and live then!” interrupted Smug, the

wheelwright, 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 mason

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

mechanic'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 coal-burner

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 _fifty_ 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 him 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 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 pillory for it.”

“Perdition catch such an age!” shouted Dowley, in strong indignation.

“An age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors and

respect for authority! The pillory--”

“Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution. I think

the pillory ought to be abolished.”

“A most strange idea. Why?”

“Well, I'll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory for

a capital crime?”

“No.”

“Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a small

offense and then kill him?”

There was no answer. I had scored my first point! For the first

time, the smith wasn't up and ready. The company noticed it.

Good effect.

“You don't answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillory

a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't going

to use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. What

usually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some

little offense that didn't amount to anything in the world? The

mob try to have some fun with him, don't they?”

“Yes.”

“They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces

to see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?”

“Yes.”

“Then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob

and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against

him--and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community,

for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another--stones

and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they?”

“There is no doubt of it.”

“As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he?--jaws broken, teeth

smashed out?--or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off?

--or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?”

“It is true, God knoweth it.”

“And if he is unpopular he can depend on _dying_, right there in

the stocks, can't he?”

“He surely can! One may not deny it.”

“I take it none of _you_ are unpopular--by reason of pride or

insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that

excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? _You_

wouldn't think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?”

Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn't betray

it by any spoken word. As for the others, they spoke out plainly,

and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of the

stocks to know what a man's chance in them was, and they would

never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick

death by hanging.

“Well, to change the subject--for I think I've established my

point that the stocks ought to be abolished. I think some of our

laws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which ought

to deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keep

still and don't report me, _you_ will get the stocks if anybody

informs on you.”

“Ah, but that would serve you but right,” said Dowley, “for you

_must_ inform. So saith the law.”

The others coincided.

“Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there's

one thing which certainly isn't fair. The magistrate fixes a

mechanic's wage at one cent a day, for instance. The law says that

if any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business,

to pay anything _over_ that cent a day, even for a single day, he

shall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he did

it and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. Now

it seems to me unfair, Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us,

that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within

a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil--”

Oh, I tell _you_ it was a smasher! You ought to have seen them to

go to pieces, the whole gang. I had just slipped up on poor

smiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, that

he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow

came crashing down and knocked him all to rags.

A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so

little time to work it up in.

But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little.

I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scare

them to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see they

had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and

to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them

distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and

report--well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover

from the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together.

Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren't any better than

so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought

they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands,

and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end.

But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed

and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage

taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind

treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates.

Appeal to _me_ to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course,

they wanted to, but they couldn't dare.