“Ah! but that of necessity would fluctuate; one year is fruitful, another unfruitful.”
“But the averaging process would preserve the equilibrium,” replied the doctor; “and gold! you forget how that fluctuates. Why, the discovery of a cheap method of extracting the gold from quartz and gold-bearing sands, liable to happen any day, through our constantly-increasing knowledge of chemistry, and your gold would become ten times as plentiful as it is now. You see that is not the scientific basis. The scientific basis should be the products of industry: the wealth of the nation.”
“My dear friend,” said Kendrick, “this question of a proper circulating medium has bothered philosophers from the foundation of the world, and we shall not be likely to settle it in ten minutes on a street corner.” Kendrick had good reasons for being puzzled. As a banker he was getting into deep water; but no alarm had been sounded yet. As he took the doctor’s arm and walked toward the new bridge, the doctor said:
“Nothing tends more directly to the demoralization of the people than a fluctuating currency. It upsets all our ideas of probity. A man buys, for example, a quantity of cotton to-day for a thousand dollars, payable in three months. In three months gold has ‘gone up,’ as they say, and instead of paying one thousand, he has to pay eleven or twelve hundred. You see the result is disgust, distrust, and loss of nice moral balance. A state of things making an inflated currency possible, creates our stock and gold gamblers—makes men see little harm in influencing Congress to favor great monopolies that oppress and rob the people. From this, only one step to corrupting Congressmen with shares in enterprises which they have then a direct interest in favoring. Now what must be the effect of this on the laboring people, who are beginning to see where they stand? I tell you they are everywhere being roused to desperation. Go into any of the labor organizations here, and listen to what is openly said. If you don’t come away with a vivid impression that this deep muttering foretells a coming storm, all I can say is, you can’t read the signs of the times.”
“I’ve thought of all this, doctor, but what can we do? Leave off banking and all other business, and go to building social palaces? I think I’ll wait and see how this one works after a few years. How do you know these workingmen will be better satisfied? They want luxury and idleness. That’s what they want.”
“Well, Kendrick, you might sympathize with them a little in that. But that’s all rot. The workman will be well pleased when he has a good home, which he can purchase with his rent; when he has real luxuries for himself and family; when he sees his children being nobly educated; and above all, when he knows he will have a pleasant home for his old age, or if he dies before that, that his wife and children will be well provided for. To not believe that, is to believe in the natural depravity of the human heart.”
“Well, I swear, the longer I live the more doubts I have on that point,” said Kendrick, rather ambiguously.
But while men talked and speculated, they watched with eager interest the development of Frauenstein’s great project. Stevens, the doctor, and all the chiefs of the operations, declared that their men worked with a devotion unparalleled. The social lunch became the rule, and the men ceased carrying their tin-kettles almost without exception. Too Soon had as much as he could manage among the brickmakers, and so the doctor put up another temporary building, about half-way between the site of the palace and the woods, and a similar lunch provision to that for Stevens’ men, was established for the others. Too Soon, however, could not be outdone, or even rivaled, by any one the doctor could find. The Chinaman became a favorite with the men and with the idle boys, that were at first a pest around the building, attracted by the unusual state of things, or by the chance of getting something to eat, in exchange for taking a turn at chopping Too Soon’s cold meat and vegetables, for he was an economist by the transmitted instinct of generations. He saved his gravy and dripping, and produced a hash every other day, which became famous for its excellence.
Too Soon was wonderfully neat and methodical. He would not do the slightest thing for the boys until his work was all done; but when they had helped him clear the tables, wash the dishes, lock them away in the pantry, and sweep out the place, he would entertain them by the most wonderful jugglery or slight-of-hand feats. He spun tops up inclined planes, and strings, made paper butterflies, that, under the influence of his fan, acted for all the world like live ones endowed with reason; and Young America soon learned that it was in its very swaddling-clothes in the art of kite-flying. Too Soon was now a hero, and the boys fully atoned for their former meanness to him, when he was a forlorn wretch in their streets. They would do anything so that he could get his work done. Sometimes they actually crowded him away from his wash-tub, and rubbed out the napkins and table-cloths themselves. The way he dampened his clothes, preparatory to ironing them, was great fun. To this end he used to fill his mouth with water, and, by some trick they never could imitate, send it out over the linen in a fine mist. One or two of them partly learned the secret, and astonished Biddy at home by what they knew about clothes-dampening.
Times were good in Oakdale. The only trouble was with certain great manufacturers, whose men would desert and go over the river to work even for less wages, because it was “jolly” there, as they said. Men came from neighboring towns and besieged the doctor for work, or, failing, took the place of deserters in the window-sash and blind factory of Ely & Gerrish; and so hundreds of families moved into the town. Ely & Gerrish, however, did not lose many of their workmen, for they had provided some years ago a “workmen’s home,” a very superior tenement-house, which had been constantly full of tenants; but some other firms had to stop business.