z 9 8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was not till the beginning of this century that the last trades were 

 emancipated in England. While in North America and New South 

 Wales the transition is plainly traceable, all vestiges of it have disap- 

 peared in the younger colonies. In these, almost from the first, the 

 mechanic is master of the situation. The carpenter who can put up 

 a wooden cottage commands regular work and high wages, while the 

 preacher who builds him a house not made with hands is starved. 

 The anomaly is in perfect consistency with the biological analogy; 

 the brain is everywhere of late development. As the colony grows, 

 wages fall, and the position of professional men becomes more toler- 

 able, but, en revanche, the workman acquires and at length almost 

 monopolizes political power. The premier and cabinet ministers are 

 sometimes former peddlers, gold diggers, coal miners, shepherds, etc. 

 The legislative bodies consist largely of labor representatives. Laws 

 are passed in the interest of labor. Not content with a share of 

 political power out of all proportion to their numbers or importance, 

 the regimented trades, under the command of unscrupulous leaders, 

 deliver a pitched battle against the employers, with the object of 

 gaining practical possession of the agencies of production and distri- 

 bution. They are necessarily defeated. The value of labor and the 

 importance of the mechanic decline with the application of machinery 

 to all industrial processes. Accumulated wealth, subsidizing inven- 

 tions, acquires an increasing ascendency. The industrial system is in 

 no greater danger from the onslaughts of labor than civilized coun- 

 tries from the invasion of barbarians. 



Only the beginnings of the commercial epoch, or age of bronze, 

 are to be found in colonies. In production we witness the same 

 supersession of individual enterprise by the limited liability company. 

 This is also the case in distribution, where many obsolete Old World 

 stages are recapitulated. We may still see the long, slow bullock 

 team, the wearied pack horse (the fur trade in Canada was carried on 

 by " brigades of pack horses "), the hawker, purveyor of news and 

 gossip. We easily trace the evolution of the shop: at first a ship, 

 then landed, with everything inside — groceries, meat, bread, fruit, 

 and vegetables, clothes, crockery, ironmongery, stationery, and to- 

 bacco; the butcher first hives off, then the baker, the grocer; in 

 course of time reintegration takes place, and shops are to be found in 

 the colonial cities which reduplicate Whiteley's in London, where 

 everything may again be had as in the beginning. The processes of 

 exchange likewise recapitulate the past. Barter is long universal, 

 and is still common in colonial villages. Even then a standard is 

 needed. In the Old English period the "currency" consisted of 

 cattle, named by a facetious writer " the current kine of the realm." 

 In Virginia and Maryland tobacco was the circulating medium for a 



