The only things cheap in the States are native oysters, and English or French books that have been translated (?) into American.
If expenses are enormous in the United States, I must hasten to add that it is chiefly the foreign visitor who suffers in purse. The American can afford to pay high prices, because his receipts are far larger than they would be in Europe. Situations bringing in forty or fifty pounds are unknown in America. Bank clerks and shopmen command salaries of from £200 to £400 a year. A railway-car conductor gets £160 as wages.
In the grades above, in the professions, the fees, compared with those earned in Europe, are also in the proportion of the dollar to the shilling or franc. A newspaper article, which would be paid in France 250 francs (and no French paper, except the Figaro, pays so much for an article) is often paid 250 dollars in America. A doctor is paid from five to ten dollars a visit. I am, of course, not speaking of specialists and fashionable doctors; their charges are fabulous. I know barristers who make from twenty to thirty and forty thousand pounds.
Everyone is well paid in the United States, except the Vice-President.
If I have spoken of the high cost of living, it is to state a fact, and not to make a complaint. I went to America as a lecturer, not as a tourist. Jonathan paid me well; and when Cabby asked me for a dollar and a half to take me to a lecture-hall, I said, like M. Joseph Prudhomme, "It is expensive, but I can afford it," and I paid without grumbling.
CHAPTER XLI.
Conclusion.—Reply to the American Question.—Social Condition of Europe and America.—European Debt and American Surplus.—The Americans are not so Happy as the French.—What Jonathan has Accomplished.—A Wish.
