224 LAND AND LABOR. 



one half to three ; professional men have reduced their 

 charges by more than one half, and church committees 

 are compelled to reduce the salaries of their pastors. 

 The common coarse domestic cottons that sold for 

 fifty and sixty cents a yard when all were employed, 

 now sell for five and six cents, and woolen goods have 

 fallen one half and three fourths in value. But yet 

 our wives and children can not dress as well as before ; 

 families can not indulge even in the necessaries, omit- 

 ting all luxuries, and no one has abundance. Invest- 

 ments of capital in manufactures, transportation, dis- 

 tribution, and other legitimate enterprises, often prove 

 absolute losses ; many hardly pay expenses, and very 

 few pay even five or six per cent, per annum. What 

 a contrast ! What terrible days are these for America 

 and Americans ! " We may well look upon them with 

 wonder and astonishment ! " and seriously inquire what 

 has brought them upon us ? 



Most certainly the causes which lay at the founda- 

 tion of our present distress are the very opposites of 

 the causes which gave us our great prosperity. We 

 have seen that the very first incident at the beginning 

 of our period of prosperity was the removal of all from 

 idleness to employment ; and the very first incident at 

 the beginning of our distress was the change of multi- 

 tudes from active, well paid employment, into idleness. 

 In each case those great changes have been followed by 

 effects that are inseparable and in strict harmony with 

 fundamental economic laws, well known to every true 

 economic student, and laid down by Adam Smith in 

 the simplest and clearest language, that " it was not 

 by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth 



