342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the final report, with which every great work is properly committed 

 to the judgment of posterity. But there are some lessons to be drawn 

 from the hasty considerations I have presented, which may encourage 

 and comfort us as to the destiny of man and the outcome of human 

 progress. 



What message, then, of hope and cheer does this achievement con- 

 vey to those who would fain believe that love travels hand in hand 

 with light along the rugged pathway of time ? Have the discoveries 

 of science, the triumphs of art, and the progress of civilization, which 

 have made its construction a possibility and a reality, promoted the 

 welfare of mankind and raised the great mass of the people to a higher 

 plane of life ? 



This question can best be answered by comparing the compensa- 

 tion of the labor enrployed in the building of this bridge with the 

 earnings of labor employed upon works of equal magnitude in ages 

 gone by. The money expended for the work of construction proper 

 on the bridge, exclusive of land damages and other expenses, such as 

 interest, not entering into actual cost, is nine million ($9,000,000) dol- 

 lars. This money has been distributed in numberless channels for 

 quarrying, for mining, for smelting, for fabricating the metals, for 

 shaping the materials, and erecting the work, employing every kind 

 and form of human labor. The wages paid at the bridge itself may 

 be taken as the fair standard of the wages paid for the work done 

 elsewhere. These wages are : 



Aterage. 

 Laborers $1 75 per day. 



Blacksmiths 8 50 to $4 00 " 



Carpenters 3 00 to 3 50 " 



Masons and stone-cutters 3 50 to 4 00 " 



Riggers 2 00 to 2 50 " 



Painters 2 00 to 3 50 



Taking all these kinds of labor into account, the wages paid for 

 work on the bridge will thus average $2.50 per day. 



Now, if this work had been done at the time when the Pyra- 

 mids were built, with the skill, appliances, and tools then in use, and 

 if the money available for its execution had been limited to nine mill- 

 ion ($9,000,000) dollars, the laborers employed would have received 

 an average of not more than two cents per day, in money of the same 

 purchasing power as the coin of the present era. In other words, the 

 effect of the discoveries of new methods, tools, and laws of force, has 

 been to raise the wages of labor more than a hundred-fold in the in- 

 terval which has elapsed since the Pyramids were built. I shall not 

 weaken the suggestive force of this statement by any comments upon 

 the astounding evidence of progress, beyond the obvious corollary 

 that such a state of civilization as gave birth to the Pyramids would 

 now be the signal for universal bloodshed, revolution, and anarchy. I 

 do not underestimate the hardships borne by the labor of this century. 



