282 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ductive industry, but through the chances and stimulus such a 
currency gives to speculation. Capital invested in real pro¬ 
duction, and labor, both suffer from it, but labor most of all, 
for in the ever recurring fluctuations, wages are slowest to rise 
and quickest to fall, and all the mischief of deranged indus¬ 
try touch the very seat of life with laborers. Honest capital- 
ists and laborers are alike interested in urging by all practica¬ 
ble measures the connection of this crying evil. Freedom to 
work, and honest pay for honest work well done, is the univer¬ 
sal maxim of wisdom for genuine thrift. The mischief is that 
thousands are studying and struggling all the time to thrive 
by the opposite rule, reaching on the one hand after the fruits 
of honest work, without rendering honest pay, and on the 
other, reaching after dishonest pay for dishonest work. The 
grand correction for this condition of things, is a more sacred 
regard on all hands to that great command uttered by Jehovah 
at Sinai, some four thousand years ago—“ Thoushalt not steal." 
