“I see,” said that clear-headed woman, “what excellent persons these iron men are. They do not hire their men for as little as they can, but pay them more than they want.”
“Exactly so,” I replied; “the general rule I admit to be that a man pays as little as he can for labor; but under the protective system, the tariff increases the price of the manufactured article, so that the manufacturer is enabled to sell his goods for that higher price, and the workman thus gets the benefit of it.”
This argument seemed to have great weight with her, as it gave her new light on things, for she said it was contrary to experience; but I explained to her that unless some flaw could be found in the syllogism, the conclusion was irresistible, all experience to the contrary notwithstanding. I then showed her how entirely disinterested the manufacturers were; that all their efforts were solely for the benefit of the workmen; that, personally, the tariff made no difference to them; that they never besought Congress to lay high tariffs; that no one ever knew of the iron men, or the sugar men, or the copper men, besieging the legislators at Washington to impose duties upon articles they made; that it was the workmen who always did it.
I do not know exactly how long it was that we waited to receive our fortune from those cocoons, but one day a postal card came to hand from the parties to whom I had sent my wealth, stating that they had received so many cocoons they could not tell which mine were. Inasmuch as mine were the only ones that had ever been shipped from the town wherein I reside, it occurred to me that this remark might be considered in the nature of a joke. Then there 230 followed another voluminous correspondence. I appealed to Adams Express Company, who said they would send out a “tracer”; I did not like to betray my ignorance by showing that I did not know what a tracer was, but, frankly, I should not have known one had I met it on the street. But with the infinite knowledge of affairs that Mrs. W. has, that remarkable woman signified to me that a tracer was something that goes up and down and to and fro upon the face of the earth, like a roaring lion, seeking something, and not generally finding it. It is an immense consolation, however, to railroad men and others; for it appears that after a “tracer” has been “sent out,” nothing more can, by any possibility, be done by anybody. Whether or not the tracer had anything to do with the final result I never knew. But about six months after I had transmitted my cocoons to that large silk manufacturing house that paid such large wages to American workmen for the purpose of fostering American industry, I received a note sending a balance-sheet, and enclosing a check for eighty-eight cents.
When I received this portentous paper, I observed to Mrs. W.: “My dear, how much do you suppose we got for our cocoons?” “About seventy-five cents,” was the reply. The mind that woman has for detail is simply wonderful.
The check I have had framed, and hung up in the parlor, but when I balanced the books, I still found the profit large, thus:
| Dr. | W. in Acc’t with Silk Worms. | Cr. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1887. | 1888. | ||||
| Jan. 1, | Cash p’d lumber | $2 00 | Feb. | By acc’t sales | $0 88 |
| Cash p’d carpenter | 25 | By amt. experience gained | 500 00 | ||
| Sept. 1, | Cash p’d express | 50 | |||
| Nov. | Cash p’d express | 1 00 | |||
| 1888. | |||||
| Feb. | Cash p’d postage | 20 | |||
| Profit | 496 93 | ||||
| $500 88 | $500 88 | ||||
D. Thew Wright.