Chapter XXXIII: Sixth Century Political Economy

by Mark Twain

　　However, I made a dead set at him, and beforethe first third of the dinner was reached, I hadhim happy again. It was easy to do -- in a countryof ranks and castes. You see, in a country wherethey have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man,he is only part of a man, he can't ever get his fullgrowth. You prove your superiority over him instation, 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 insulthim, I only mean it's difficult; and so, unless you'vegot a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn't payto try. I had the smith's reverence now, because Iwas apparently immensely prosperous and rich; Icould have had his adoration if I had had somelittle gimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, butany commoner's in the land, though he were themightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth,and character, and I bankrupt in all three. This wasto remain so, as long as England should exist in theearth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I couldlook into the future and see her erect statues andmonuments to her unspeakable Georges and otherroyal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonoredthe creators of this world -- after God -- Gutenburg,Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell.The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talknot turning upon battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel,he dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take anap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed the beerkeg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavingsin humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted intomatters near and dear to the hearts of our sort -- business and wages, of course. At a first glance, thingsappeared to be exceeding prosperous in this littletributary kingdom -- whose lord was King Bagdemagus-- as compared with the state of things in my ownregion. They had the "protection" system in fullforce here, whereas we were working along downtoward free-trade, by easy stages, and were now abouthalf way. Before long, Dowley and I were doing allthe talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowleywarmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air,and began to put questions which he considered prettyawkward ones for me, and they did have something ofthat look:"In your country, brother, what is the wage of amaster bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?""Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarterof a cent.The smith's face beamed with joy. He said:"With us they are allowed the double of it! Andwhat 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 areall allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they getmore -- yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteenmilrays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week. 'Rah for protection -- to Sheolwith free-trade!"And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn't scare at all. I rigged up mypile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drivehim into the earth -- drive him all in -- drive him intill not even the curve of his skull should show aboveground. 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 andmutton -- when you buy it?" That was a neat hit; itmade the color come."It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say75 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 8 1/2 milrays the pint.""We get it for 4; 25 bottles for a cent. What doyou pay for wheat?""At the rate of 900 milrays the bushel.""We pay 400. What do you pay for a man's towlinen suit?""Thirteen cents.""We pay 6. What do you pay for a stuff gownfor the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?""We pay 8.4.0.""Well, observe the difference: you pay eight centsand four mills, we pay only four cents." I preparednow to sock it to him. l said: "Look here, dearfriend, what's become of your high wages you werebragging so about a few minutes ago?" -- and I lookedaround on the company with placid satisfaction, for Ihad slipped up on him gradually and tied him handand foot, you see, without his ever noticing that hewas being tied at all. "What's become of those noblehigh wages of yours? -- I seem to have knocked thestuffing 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 discoverthat he was in a trap. I could have shot him, fromsheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a struggling intellect he fetched this out:"Marry, I seem not to understand. It is provedthat our wages be double thine; how then may it bethat thou'st knocked therefrom the stuffing? -- anmiscall not the wonderly word, this being the first timeunder grace and providence of God it hath beengranted me to hear it."Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-forstupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows somanifestly sided with him and were of his mind -- ifyou might call it mind. My position was simpleenough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplifiedmore? However, I must try:"Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see?Your wages are merely higher than ours in name, notin fact.""Hear him! They are the double -- ye have confessed it yourself.""Yes-yes, I don't deny that at all. But that's gotnothing to do with it; the amount of the wages inmere coins, with meaningless names attached to themto know them by, has got nothing to do with it. Thething is, how much can you buy with your wages? --that's the idea. While it is true that with you a goodmechanic 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 morethan a dollar buys with you -- and therefore it standsto 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 oursare the higher, and with the same breath ye take itback.""Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such asimple thing through your head? Now look here --let me illustrate. We pay four cents for a woman'sstuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is four mills morethan double. What do you allow a laboring womanwho works on a farm?""Two mills a day.""Very good; we allow but half as much; we payher 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 takesyour woman 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills aday -- 7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers in fortydays -- two days short of 7 weeks. Your woman hasa gown, and her whole seven weeks wages are gone;ours has a gown, and two days' wages left, to buysomething else with. There -- now you understandit!"He looked -- well, he merely looked dubious, it'sthe most I can say; so did the others. I waited -- tolet the thing work. Dowley spoke at last -- and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten awayfrom his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. Hesaid, with a trifle of hesitancy:"But -- but -- ye cannot fail to grant that two millsa day is better than one."Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up. SoI 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 32working days to earn the money -- 5 weeks and 2days. Let him come to us and work 32 days at halfthe wages; he can buy all those things for a shadeunder 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29days' work, and he will have about half a week'swages over. Carry it through the year; he wouldsave nearly a week's wages every two months, yourman nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wages ina year, your man not a cent. Now I reckon youunderstand that 'high wages' and 'low wages' arephrases that don't mean anything in the world untilyou 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'tseem to be a matter of any consequence to themwhether the high wages would buy anything or not.They stood for "protection," and swore by it, whichwas reasonable enough, because interested parties hadgulled them into the notion that it was protection whichhad created their high wages. I proved to them thatin a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but30 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 gonesteadily down. But it didn't do any good. Nothingcould unseat their strange beliefs.Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Undeserved defeat, but what of that? That didn't softenthe smart any. And to think of the circumstances!the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, thebest-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds ofany political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant countryblacksmith! And I could see that those others weresorry for me -- which made me blush till I could smellmy whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place;feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt -- wouldn'tyou have struck below the belt to get even? Yes, youwould; it is simply human nature. Well, that is whatI did. I am not trying to justify it; I'm only sayingthat I was mad, and anybody would have done it.Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, Idon't plan out a love-tap; no, that isn't my way; aslong as I'm going to hit him at all, I'm going to hithim 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 onhim gradually, so that he never suspects that I'm goingto hit him at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he'sflat on his back, and he can't tell for the life of himhow it all happened. That is the way I went forbrother Dowley. I started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; andthe oldest man in the world couldn't have taken thebearings of my starting place and guessed where I wasgoing to fetch up:"Boys, there's a good many curious things aboutlaw, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing,when you come to look at it; yes, and about the driftand progress of human opinion and movement, too.There are written laws -- they perish; but there arealso 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. Andnotice how it works. We know what wages are now,here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and saythat's the wages of to-day. We know what the wageswere a hundred years ago, and what they were twohundred years ago; that's as far back as we can get,but it suffices to give us the law of progress, themeasure and rate of the periodical augmentation; andso, without a document to help us, we can come prettyclose to determining what the wages were three andfour and five hundred years ago. Good, so far. Dowe stop there? No. We stop looking backward; weface around and apply the law to the future. Myfriends, I can tell you what people's wages are goingto be at any date in the future you want to know, forhundreds and hundreds of years.""What, goodman, what!""Yes. In seven hundred years wages will haverisen to six times what they are now, here in yourregion, 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 avariciousglow 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 andfifty years later -- pay attention now -- a mechanic'swages 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 andhands:"More than three weeks' pay for one day's work!""Riches! -- of a truth, yes, riches!" mutteredMarco, his breath coming quick and short, with excitement."Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little bylittle, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end ofthree hundred and forty years more there'll be at leastone country where the mechanic's average wage will betwo hundred cents a day!"It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man ofthem 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 saymore than that and speak no lie; there's no earl in therealm of Bagdemagus that hath an income like tothat. Income of an earl -- mf! it's the income of anangel!""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 takesyou upwards of fifty weeks to earn now. Some otherpretty surprising things are going to happen, too.Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, everyspring, what the particular wage of each kind ofmechanic, laborer, and servant shall be for that year?""Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, the magistrate. Ye may say, ingeneral terms, it is the magistrate that fixes the wages.""Doesn't ask any of those poor devils to help himfix their wages for them, does he?""Hm! That were an idea! The master that's topay him the money is the one that's rightly concernedin that matter, ye will notice ""Yes -- but I thought the other man might havesome little trifle at stake in it, too; and even his wifeand children, poor creatures. The masters are these:nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. Thesefew, who do no work, determine what pay the vasthive 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 lowlybrother to take what they choose to give. Thirteenhundred years hence -- so says the unwritten law -- the'combine' will be the other way, and then how thesefine people's posterity will fume and fret and grit theirteeth over the insolent tyranny of trade unions! Yes,indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange thewages from now clear away down into the nineteenthcentury; and then all of a sudden the wage-earner willconsider that a couple of thousand years or so isenough of this one-sided sort of thing; and he willrise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself.Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrongand 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!" sneeredthe prosperous smith."Oh, -- and there's another detail. In that day, amaster may hire a man for only just one day, or oneweek, or one month at a time, if he wants to.""What?""It's true. Moreover, a magistrate won't be ableto force a man to work for a master a whole year on astretch 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 willbe his own property, not the property of magistrateand master. And he can leave town whenever hewants to, if the wages don't suit him! -- and theycan't put him in the pillory for it.""Perdition catch such an age!" shouted Dowley,in strong indignation. "An age of dogs, an age barrenof 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 thepillory 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 toglorify the pillory a while ago, and shed some pity ona future age that isn't going to use it. I think thepillory ought to be abolished. What usually happenswhen a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some littleoffense 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 laughthemselves to pieces to see him try to dodge one clodand get hit with another?""Yes.""Then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?""Yes.""Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemiesin that mob and here and there a man or a womanwith a secret grudge against him -- and supposeespecially that he is unpopular in the community, forhis pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another --stones and bricks take the place of clods and catspresently, don't they?""There is no doubt of it.""As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he? -- jawsbroken, 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 reasonof pride or insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, orany of those things that excite envy and malice amongthe base scum of a village? You wouldn't think itmuch of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?"Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. Buthe didn't betray it by any spoken word. As for theothers, they spoke out plainly, and with strong feeling.They said they had seen enough of the stocks to knowwhat a man's chance in them was, and they wouldnever consent to enter them if they could compromiseon a quick death by hanging."Well, to change the subject -- for I think I'veestablished 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 deliverme to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keepstill and don't report me, you will get the stocks ifanybody informs on you.""Ah, but that would serve you but right," saidDowley, "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. Themagistrate fixes a mechanic's wage at 1 cent a day,for instance. The law says that if any master shallventure, even under utmost press of business, to payanything 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 shallbe fined and pilloried. Now it seems to me unfair,Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that becauseyou thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within aweek you have paid a cent and fifteen mil --"Oh, I tell you it was a smasher! You ought to haveseen them to go to pieces, the whole gang. I had justslipped up on poor smiling and complacent Dowley sonice and easy and softly, that he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow came crashingdown 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 thething a little. I was expecting to scare them, but Iwasn't expecting to scare them to death. They weremighty near it, though. You see they had been awhole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; andto have that thing staring them in the face, and everyone of them distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger,if I chose to go and report -- well, it was awful, andthey couldn't seem to recover from the shock, theycouldn't seem to pull themselves together. Pale,shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren't any betterthan so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable.Of course, I thought they would appeal to me to keepmum, and then we would shake hands, and take adrink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end.But no; you see I was an unknown person, among acruelly oppressed and suspicious people, a peoplealways accustomed to having advantage taken of theirhelplessness, and never expecting just or kind treatment from any but their own families and very closestintimates. Appeal to me to be gentle, to be fair, tobe generous? Of course, they wanted to, but theycouldn't dare.