6io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



passengers had rapidly increased, what would have occurred ? Sup- 

 pose the cotton machinery had turned into the market millions of 

 yards of cotton, where hundreds answered before (as is actually the 

 case), and the manufacturers had charged the old prices, what would 

 have happened ? It is obvious that in the first case not one extra 

 traveler would have gone from home, and the much-needed railroads 

 would have been a nuisance ; while, in the second, the manufacturers 

 would have been deluged with their own stock, been compelled to 

 close their factories and howl " Over-production !" Whatever arrests 

 the descent of prices, entails vpo7i society just such a state of affairs as 

 we are passing through. It stops wide distribution, as the owners of 

 such goods are unable to cope with the traders of foreign markets. 

 Protectionists aid in this part of the trouble. It accumulates a heav- 

 ier supply than is demanded in the home-market. It overwhelms 

 factories with their own goods, and drowns the manufacturer in bank- 

 ruptcy, unless he stops work. It turns worthy, as well as unworthy, 

 working-men adrift. It brings on all the horrors so piteously com- 

 plained of. What can avert such consequences ? There are, doubt- 

 less, factors in this problem unnoticed here, but this to me aj)pears 

 to be the main one. Allow wages to descend steadily, as the market 

 demands, instead of holding them up till a crisis is reached. When 

 crises come, they hurl them down like an avalanche far below the 

 true level at which they should rest. Let the machinery of society 

 have free, unimpeded action. Teach laborers to give way to the 

 inevitable, without clogging the wheels by " strikes." They must 

 learn to give in to the decrees of Fate without a murmur. They 

 frighten themselves with a bugbear of starvation from low wages, 

 and bring in a real bear with their acts. " O ye of little faith ! " 

 Will they never learn that eight hours' work at one dollar, with 

 goods at half-price, is far better than four hours' work at the same, 

 with goods at full price? Trades'-unions are waging war against 

 natural law. Wages must come down ! Profits must decrease ! It 

 is absolutely impossible to keep these up and have business pro- 

 ceed. If not satisfied with the pay ofiered by one employer, seek 

 another. Unions, when other than a council of working-men aim- 

 ing at the common good, are positive evils. Society must learn to 

 frown down every interference on their part with the workings of 

 trade, or we will be continually subject to recurrences of business 

 stagnation and violence. They thwart their own purposes and en- 

 tail the very miseries they profess to cure. Labor, like everything 

 else in the market, is worth neither more nor less than supply and 

 demand put upon it. It is sheer madness to battle fact by saying 

 it should be worth more. Imagine an astronomer as insane as this, 

 insisting upon it that the sun ought to revolve around the earth, and 

 therefore refusing to reason upon the fact that the earth revolves 

 around the sun ! Merchants have no right to force each other, by mob 



