364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



apply it to some of the projects of tlie labor-reformers, using all 

 candor and honesty. As I understand it, the trades-unions are 

 conducted, so far as the members find it possible to conduct them, 

 upon a theory exactly opposite to the universally recognized law 

 of success. They make a regulation that no master -workman 

 shall have more than a given number of apprentices. They say 

 that no man shall work before a certain hour in the morning and 

 after a certain hour in the evening. They provide that no man 

 shall work for another who has treated a particular workman 

 in a way not approved by the union. They require that, when 

 one can not get a given price for labor, he shall cease work and 

 remain idle. In some cases they contend that a good and specially 

 effective hand shall have no better wages than an inferior and less 

 effective one ; and practically they strive to place a limit to the 

 power of the community to provide for its support and comfort. 

 The right to do all this I do not intend to discuss, but only its 

 wisdom. Is it in the line of the conditions of success as we know 

 them ? 



What makes a prosperous farmer ? The answer is, industry, 

 knowledge, adaptation of means to ends in such a way that the 

 greatest crops shall be raised from the fewest acres. What makes 

 a prosperous town or village ? Evidently the development and 

 judicious application of its forces to production in all departments. 

 If we see a township with a hundred farms, and each farmer man- 

 aging so that he secures only eight tons of hay from twelve acres, 

 we shall find scraggy and lean cattle, small, inconvenient build- 

 ings, poor fences, and all the signs of unthrift, dilapidation, pov- 

 erty, and decay. There is no doubt about it. Compare such a 

 town with an adjoining one where by intelligence and active 

 industry the farmers get twenty-five tons of hay from twelve 

 acres. In the latter town will be found double the number of 

 cattle, and more than double the number of the conveniences and 

 comforts of life. The difference between two such towns is in 

 what is termed accomplishment. That is to say, one town has 

 shown what the result is from limiting its productions to less than 

 one ton of grass per acre, and the other has shown how the face 

 of things appears where all hands have tried to get two tons of 

 grass per acre. 



Now the same general result would follow were the main pur- 

 suit of the population mechanical instead of agricultural. Start 

 the shoe business in two towns side by side, making the hours 

 of labor six in one and twelve in the other, and in twenty-five 

 years the latter town will be able to buy the former out four or 

 five times. This, because the capital saved in the several years 

 will have been earning all the time, while the other town will 

 have used up all its earnings from year to year, and will stand at 



