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Mark
Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Chapter 33
SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY
HOWEVER, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third of
the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easy to do --
in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a country where they
have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is only part of
a man, he can't ever get his full growth. You prove your superiority
over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that's the end of it
-- he knuckles down. You can't insult him after that. No, I don't
mean quite that; of course you can insult him, I only mean it's difficult;
and so, unless you've got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn't
pay to try. I had the smith's reverence now, because I was apparently
immensely prosperous and rich; I could have had his adoration if I
had had some little gimcrack title of nobility. And not only his,
but any commoner's in the land, though he were the mightiest production
of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt
in all three. This was to remain so, as long as England should exist
in the earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into
the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable
Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored
the creators of this world -- after God -- Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright,
Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell.
The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon
battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness
and went off to take a nap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed the
beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble
privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters near and dear
to the hearts of our sort -- business and wages, of course. At a first
glance, things appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little
tributary kingdom -- whose lord was King Bagdemagus -- as compared
with the state of things in my own region. They had the "protection"
system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward
free-trade, by easy stages, and were now about half way. Before long,
Dowley and I were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening.
Dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began
to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and
they did have something of that look:
"In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff,
master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?"
"Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a
cent.
The smith's face beamed with joy. He said:
I am for protection!
"With us they are allowed the double of it! And what may a
mechanic get -- carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright,
and the like?"
"On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day."
"Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred! With us any good
mechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out the tailor, but not
the others -- they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times
they get more -- yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays
a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week. 'Rah
for protection -- to Sheol with free-trade!"
And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn't
scare at all. I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen
minutes to drive him into the earth -- drive him all in -- drive him
in till not even the curve of his skull should show above ground.
Here is the way I started in on him. I asked:
"What do you pay a pound for salt?"
"A hundred milrays."
"We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton -- when
you buy it?" That was a neat hit; it made the color come.
"It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say 75 milrays
the pound."
"We pay 33. What do you pay for eggs?"
"Fifty milrays the dozen."
"We pay 20. What do you pay for beer?"
"It costeth us 8 1/2 milrays the pint."
"We get it for 4; 25 bottles for a cent. What do you pay for
wheat?"
"At the rate of 900 milrays the bushel."
"We pay 400. What do you pay for a man's tow-linen suit?"
"Thirteen cents."
"We pay 6. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of
the laborer or the mechanic?"
"We pay 8.4.0."
"Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four
mills, we pay only four cents." I prepared now to sock it to
him. l said: "Look here, dear friend, what's become of your high
wages you were bragging so about a few minutes ago?" -- and I
looked around on the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped
up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his
ever noticing that he was being tied at all. "What's become of
those noble high wages of yours? -- I seem to have knocked the stuffing
all out of them, it appears to me."
But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that is
all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he had walked
into a trap, didn't discover that he was in a trap. I could have shot
him, from sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a struggling intellect
he fetched this out:
"Marry, I seem not to understand. It is proved that our wages
be double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefrom
the stuffing? -- an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the
first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted
me to hear it."
Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on
his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with
him and were of his mind -- if you might call it mind. My position
was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified more?
However, I must try:
"Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages
are merely higher than ours in name, not in fact."
"Hear him! They are the double -- ye have confessed it yourself."
"Yes-yes, I don't deny that at all. But that's got nothing
to do with it; the amount of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless
names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with
it. The thing is, how much can you buy with your wages? -- that's
the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed
about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar
and seventy-five -- "
"There -- ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!"
"Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you! What I say
is this. With us half a dollar buys more than a dollar buys with you
-- and therefore it stands to reason and the commonest kind of common-sense,
that our wages are higher than yours."
He looked dazed, and said, despairingly:
"Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye've just said ours are the
higher, and with the same breath ye take it back."
"Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing
through your head? Now look here -- let me illustrate. We pay four
cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is four mills
more than double. What do you allow a laboring woman who works on
a farm?"
"Two mills a day."
"Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth
of a cent a day; and -- "
"Again ye're conf -- "
"Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'll
understand it. For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn her
gown, at 2 mills a day -- 7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers in forty
days -- two days short of 7 weeks. Your woman has a gown, and her
whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and two days' wages
left, to buy something else with. There -- now you understand it!"
He looked -- well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most I can
say; so did the others. I waited -- to let the thing work. Dowley
spoke at last -- and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten
away from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. He said, with
a trifle of hesitancy:
"But -- but -- ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day
is better than one."
Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up. So I chanced another
flyer:
"Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes
out and buys the following articles:
"1 pound of salt;
1 dozen eggs;
1 dozen pints of beer;
1 bushel of wheat;
1 tow-linen suit;
5 pounds of beef;
5 pounds of mutton.
"The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32 working days
to earn the money -- 5 weeks and 2 days. Let him come to us and work
32 days at half the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade
under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 days' work,
and he will have about half a week's wages over. Carry it through
the year; he would save nearly a week's wages every two months, your
man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wages in a year, your
man not a cent. now I reckon you understand that 'high wages' and
'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anything in the world until
you find out which of them will buy the most!"
It was a crusher.
But, alas! it didn't crush. No, I had to give it up. What those
people valued was high wages; it didn't seem to be a matter of any
consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not.
They stood for "protection," and swore by it, which was
reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into
the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages.
I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced
but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that
with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced 40 per cent. while
the cost of living had gone steadily down. But it didn't do any good.
Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs.
Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Undeserved defeat,
but what of that? That didn't soften the smart any. And to think of
the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man,
the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned
head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament
for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an
ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see that those others were
sorry for me -- which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers
scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, as ashamed
as I felt -- wouldn't you have struck below the belt to get even?
Yes, you would; it is simply human nature. Well, that is what I did.
I am not trying to justify it; I'm only saying that I was mad, and
anybody would have done it.
Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don't plan out a love-tap;
no, that isn't my way; as long as I'm going to hit him at all, I'm
going to hit him a lifter. And I don't jump at him all of a sudden,
and risk making a blundering half-way business of it; no, I get away
off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so that he never
suspects that I'm going to hit him at all; and by and by, all in a
flash, he's flat on his back, and he can't tell for the life of him
how it all happened. That is the way I went for brother Dowley. I
started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if I was just talking
to pass the time; and the oldest man in the world couldn't have taken
the bearings of my starting place and guessed where I was going to
fetch up:
"Boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom,
and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it;
yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement,
too. There are written laws -- they perish; but there are also unwritten
laws -- they are eternal. Take the unwritten law of wages: it says
they've got to advance, little by little, straight through the centuries.
And notice how it works. We know what wages are now, here and there
and yonder; we strike an average, and say that's the wages of to-day.
We know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were
two hundred years ago; that's as far back as we can get, but it suffices
to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical
augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty
close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred
years ago. Good, so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward;
we face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I can
tell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in the future
you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years."
"What, goodman, what!"
"Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times
what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed
3 cents a day, and mechanics 6."
"I would't I might die now and live then!" interrupted
Smug, the wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye.
"And that isn't all; they'll get their board besides -- such
as it is: it won't bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later --
pay attention now -- a mechanic's wages will be -- mind you, this
is law, not guesswork; a mechanic's wages will then be twenty cents
a day!"
There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the mason
murmured, with raised eyes and hands:
"More than three weeks' pay for one day's work!"
"Riches! -- of a truth, yes, riches!" muttered Marco,
his breath coming quick and short, with excitement.
"Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little,
as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and forty
years more there'll be at least one country where the mechanic's average
wage will be two hundred cents a day!"
It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could get his
breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coal-burner said prayerfully:
"Might I but live to see it!"
"It is the income of an earl!" said Smug.
"An earl, say ye?" said Dowley; "ye could say more
than that and speak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus
that hath an income like to that. Income of an earl -- mf! it's the
income of an angel!"
"Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages.
In that remote day, that man will earn, with one week's work, that
bill of goods which it takes you upwards of fifty weeks to earn now.
Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, too. Brother
Dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, what the particular
wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, and servant shall be for that
year?"
"Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most
of all, the magistrate. Ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistrate
that fixes the wages."
"Doesn't ask any of those poor devils to help him fix their
wages for them, does he?"
"Hm! That were an idea! The master that's to pay him the money
is the one that's rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice
"
"Yes -- but I thought the other man might have some little
trifle at stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures.
The masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally.
These few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shall
have who do work. You see? They're a 'combine' -- a trade union, to
coin a new phrase -- who band themselves together to force their lowly
brother to take what they choose to give. Thirteen hundred years hence
-- so says the unwritten law -- the 'combine' will be the other way,
and then how these fine people's posterity will fume and fret and
grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade unions! Yes, indeed!
the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the wages from now clear away
down into the nineteenth century; and then all of a sudden the wage-earner
will consider that a couple of thousand years or so is enough of this
one-sided sort of thing; and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing
his wages himself. Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong
and humiliation to settle."
"Do ye believe -- "
"That he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes, indeed.
And he will be strong and able, then."
"Brave times, brave times, of a truth!" sneered the prosperous
smith.
"Oh, -- and there's another detail. In that day, a master may
hire a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time,
if he wants to."
"What?"
"It's true. Moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a
man to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man
wants to or not."
"Will there be nolaw or sense in that day?"
"Both of them, Dowley. In that day a man will be his own property,
not the property of magistrate and master. And he can leave town whenever
he wants to, if the wages don't suit him! -- and they can't put him
in the pillory for it."
"Perdition catch such an age!" shouted Dowley, in strong
indignation. "An age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for
superiors and respect for authority! The pillory -- "
"Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution.
I think the pillory ought to be abolished."
"A most strange idea. Why?"
"Well, I'll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory
for a capital crime?"
"No."
"Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a
small offense and then kill him?"
There was no answer. I had scored my first point! For the first
time, the smith wasn't up and ready. The company noticed it. Good
effect.
"You don't answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillory
a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't going to
use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. What usually happens
when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some little offense that
didn't amount to anything in the world? The mob try to have some fun
with him, don't they?"
"Yes."
"They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces
to see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?"
"Yes."
"Then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that
mob and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against
him -- and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community,
for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another -- stones
and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they?"
"There is no doubt of it."
"As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he? -- jaws broken,
teeth smashed out? -- or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut
off? -- or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?"
"It is true, God knoweth it."
"And if he is unpopular he can depend on dying, right there
in the stocks, can't he?"
"He surely can! One may not deny it."
"I take it none of you are unpopular -- by reason of pride
or insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that
excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? you wouldn't
think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?"
Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn't betray
it by any spoken word. As for the others, they spoke out plainly,
and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of the stocks
to know what a man's chance in them was, and they would never consent
to enter them if they could compromise on a quick death by hanging.
"Well, to change the subject -- for I think I've established
my point that the stocks ought to be abolished. I think some of our
laws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which ought
to deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keep still
and don't report me, you will get the stocks if anybody informs on
you."
"Ah, but that would serve you but right," said Dowley,
"for you must inform. So saith the law."
The others coincided.
"Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there's
one thing which certainly isn't fair. The magistrate fixes a mechanic's
wage at 1 cent a day, for instance. The law says that if any master
shall venture, even under utmost press of business, to pay anything
over that cent a day, even for a single day, he shall be both fined
and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he did it and doesn't inform,
they also shall be fined and pilloried. Now it seems to me unfair,
Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly
confessed, a while ago, that within a week you have paid a cent and
fifteen mil -- "
Oh, I tell you it was a smasher! You ought to have seen them to
go to pieces, the whole gang. I had just slipped up on poor smiling
and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, that he never suspected
anything was going to happen till the blow came crashing down and
knocked him all to rags.
A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so
little time to work it up in.
But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little. I
was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scare them
to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see they had been
a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and to have that
thing staring them in the face, and every one of them distinctly at
the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and report -- well,
it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover from the shock, they
couldn't seem to pull themselves together. Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful?
Why, they weren't any better than so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable.
Of course, I thought they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then
we would shake hands, and take a drink all round, and laugh it off,
and there an end. But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a
cruelly oppressed and suspicious people, a people always accustomed
to having advantage taken of their helplessness, and never expecting
just or kind treatment from any but their own families and very closest
intimates. Appeal to me to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous?
Of course, they wanted to, but they couldn't dare.
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