186 SCIEXTIFIC EDUCATION OF MECHANICS AND ARTISANS. 



ing penury tban by earned and merited prosperity ; while tbe position, 

 influence, and capacity of usefulness which money confers are worthy 

 of every man's strong desire and honest endeavor. Especially do they 

 suit the ambition of him who may hope to enrich himself by the crea- 

 tion of values, and not by speculating upon them. 



Let us analyze the price of a finished commodity. Here is a lathe, or 

 an air-pump, or a steam-engine, held at a certain price, which, where 

 competition is free, very nearly represents its exact value. That value 

 is composed of three parts : the wages of labor, the wages of skill, and 

 the reimbursement and profit of capital. 



The wages of labor, that is, of mere physical force, or of processes 

 which require no knowledge or discretion, constitute the smallest part 

 of this value. Labor can never earn more than a mere subsistence, nor 

 ought it to earn more. Left to itself, it cannot produce more than 

 enough to sustain a meagre, starveling life. The aborigines of North 

 America had dwelt on this soil for hundreds, perhaps thousands of 

 years, yet had not only accumulated no wealth, but were unable, ex- 

 cept at rare intervals, to secure a satisfying supply for the rudest wants 

 of nature. A New England fiirmer, even with the ownership of his 

 land, if he apply no skill or science to his farm, though he, his wife, and 

 his children toil incessantly, can obtain barely the necessaries, hardly 

 any of the comforts of life. Now, the wages of labor must be measured 

 by its products, and by this measure will generally fall short of the cost 

 of comfortable living. They somewhat exceed this standard in our 

 country at the present moment. The reason is that in the development 

 of our resources, the construction of railways, and the opening of fresh 

 soils, the demand for manual labor keeps a little in advance of the sup- 

 ply. But what mere bone and muscle can earn in an old and settled 

 community, what their earnings tend to become and may very soon 

 become here, may be learned by the wretched pittance of English opera- 

 tives, not sufficient to save their families from a death-rate which shows 

 that poverty is no less destructive than pestilence. 



Moreover, low as these wages are, the tendency in a fully-settled 

 country is to a still farther decline. Though production may increase, 

 the demand for unskilled labor diminishes. The time was when all 

 work was done by hand. Now, machinery driven by steam or water- 

 power supersedes the greater part of hand-labor. All the strong men in 

 the habitable world could not exert the amount of physical power which 

 is at this moment at work in the little island of Great Britain. The 

 substitution of machinery for human strength is still going on. Steam 

 is rei)lacing even the shovel and the pickaxe ; and the time will come 

 when the Briarean steam-engine, with its fireman and feeder, will every- 

 where do the work which a hundred arms do now. The supply of labor 

 thus tending constantly to exceed the demand, its wages must sink 

 very nearly to the starvation point. 



The second part of the price of a manufactured commodity is the 



