“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!”