COMMERCE. 97 



table-cloths, and the napkins — pretty much all the arti- 

 cles on the table are of foreign wood or foreign make. 

 The knives are of steel, manufactured in England from 

 iron dug in Sweden; and the handles are ivory, hunted 

 in the jungles of Ethiopia. You are smoking at this mo- 

 ment a cigar from Cuba, and I am smoking the tobacco 

 of the slopes of Lebanon, in a pipe made at Es-Siout, in 

 Egypt, with a stem of jessamine from Asia, and an am- 

 ber mouth-piece from the shores of the Baltic Sea." 



The Doctor. "Life in an American house is some- 

 thing like this library — a gathering of the labor and in- 

 tellect of all nations and all times. What an atmosphere 

 to live in ! A sweep of your eye carries you through 

 centuries." 



Philip. " But this is not mere luxury after all. These 

 contributions of the world to our comfort are cheaper by 

 far than the same articles could be made here at home. 

 The poor and the rich alike experience the benefits of 

 modern commerce. The grand feature of our age is that 

 the industry of all the world is made, by the power of 

 commerce, to contribute to the comfort of mankind in 

 every separate part of the sphere. The whole world now 

 works for each individual man, to clothe and feed him, 

 and make him happy. There are some who, arguing from 

 the money-making point of view, think it better to forbid 

 the contributions of foreign labor to the inhabitants of 

 each country. They would have England, France, China, 

 Prussia, Persia, America, each exclude the labor of the 

 other from its soil. The policy carried out would pro- 

 tect home labor with a vengeance ! It would make the 

 laborer's clothes, and tea and coffee and sugar, and even 

 his bread, in each country so costly that he must econo- 

 mize more on five dollars a day than he ever used to do 



G 



