A young merchant wants a dozen shirts. He pays 10s. each for them. He meets a friend who only gave 8s. for his. He goes to the 8s. shop and saves 2s. This is clear profit, and he spends it in cigars, or champagne, or in some other luxury; and the poor seamstress lives on toast and tea.
But although I say that sobriety and thrift, if adopted by all the workers, would result in lower wages, you are not to suppose that I advise you all to be drunkards and spendthrifts.
No. The proper thing is to do away with competition. At present the employers, in the scramble to undersell each other, actually fine you for your virtue and self-denial by lowering your wages, just as the landlords fine a tenant for improving his land or enlarging his house or extending his business—fine him by raising his rent.
And now we may, I think, come to the question of imprudent marriages.
The idea seems to be that a man should not marry until he is "in a position to keep a wife." And it is a very common thing for employers, and other well-to-do persons, to tell working men that they "have no right to bring children into the world until they are able to provide for them."
Now let us clear the ground a little before we begin to deal with this question on its economic side—that is, as it affects wages.
It is bad for men and women to marry too young. It is bad for two reasons. Firstly, because the body is not mature; and secondly, because the mind is not settled. That is to say, an over-early marriage has a bad effect on the health; and since young people must, in the nature of things, change very much as they grow older, an over-early marriage is often unhappy.
I think a woman would be wise not to marry before she is about four-and-twenty; and I think it is better that the husband should be from five to ten years older than the wife.
Then it is very bad for a woman to have many children; and not only is it bad for her health, but it destroys nearly all the pleasure of her life, so that she is an enfeebled and weary drudge through her best years, and is old before her time.
That much conceded, I ask you, Mr. John Smith, what do you think of the request that you shall work hard, live spare, and give up a man's right to love, to a home, to children, in order that you may be able to "make a living"? Such a living is not worth working for. It would be a manlier and a happier lot to die.