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of toil, the greater frugality, or rather the more powerful habit of 

 submitting to a stinted supply of the necessaries and comforts of 

 life, in fine the introduction of European habits into American society 

 with its advantages stimulating their love of gain, enables them im- 

 mediately to distance all competition, and drive their American 

 competitors from the field. This is an inevitable evil which must 

 be patiently borne; theirs are not the preferable habits, but we shall 

 gain something in the improvement of our frugality, and the lapse of 

 a generation will raise the European few to the level of our own 

 position, and the wealth they accumulate will be added to our own 

 stock of capital; but to subject the whole nation to the similar forces 

 from the hundred millions of Europe, who are to draw from, us the 

 wealth their habits will create, will be a national suicide. Too 

 much has been assumed for the superior capacity of the American in 

 his contest with the European; this is to some extent true, but not 

 to the degree presumed. The industrial pursuits of society, like 

 the movements of an army, depend for their force and results upon 

 the capacity of the few who govern, rather than upon the intelligence 

 of the mass. In Europe cultivated mind abounds, and the applica- 

 tion of science to productive employments, is advanced to a point 

 beyond us in America, and there we lose much of the benefit of our 

 more general improvement; and as labor is the origin of all value, 

 wherever the greatest quantity is given by the mass for the privilege 

 of existence, there, obviously, the relative value of its products must 

 be least. There can be no uncertainty of the result in the open 

 market of the world, between nations or communities, one of whom 

 gives fifteen hours of daily labor in exchange for a stinted supply of 

 the necessaries of life, and the other is disposed to refuse more than 

 ten for an abundance; the strife may be protracted by adventitious 

 circumstances, but eventually the ten hour man will be driven from 

 the field by his more laborious competitor; there is an equality in 

 human muscles which will insure the ultimate result. 



In addition to his protracted labor, and his habit of submission to 

 comparative destitution of the necessaries of life, with the absence 

 of all intellectual culture for himself and his children, the European 

 has the advantage of a diminished currency. All values in the civi- 

 lized world are determined by their relation to gold, the universal 

 measure of value, while we have adopted as our currency, the credit 

 of banks, retaining however, and attaching great importance to its 

 character of convertibility, which leaves us subject to all the general 

 laws of a measure of gold with a currency far greater than the gold 



