They paid in 1865 for the teaching of each one of those children those thirty-six branches, so necessary to salvation, the sum of $21.16; in 1875 the sum of $35.23. That is, they voluntarily and gladly paid somebody sixty-six per cent. more for their work in 1875 than in 1865, and all the while those merchants pretend they are making no money. Do they expect us to believe that?
If they want to make money, why not at once bring in more cheap labor? The Chinese are ready to come, and the negroes, even if Ireland can spare no more of her enlightened people. And then what a boon this class of people would be to our aspiring statesman. For the sum of two dollars they are entitled to vote, and then any man who feels a desire to be a governor or an M.C. can, by paying this paltry pittance, secure the votes of a grateful constituency. Is it not, therefore, our supreme duty to bring in this class of voters as rapidly as possible? We need population and we need voters. England has a population of 389 to the square mile and we in Massachusetts have only 211! Should we not hide our faces with shame while such an inferiority lasts?
There are people now who are getting up a scare about the wonderful growth of the Holy Catholic Church, claiming that that church demands of all its members (as it does) allegiance first to the Church, and then second to the government where its subjects happen to be. I do not think much of this now that Antonelli is dead; but there may be something in it. I question whether Massachusetts can any longer put forth pretensions to being a Puritan or a Unitarian or religious State of any sort unless it be a Catholic one. Go with me to the U.S. census report of 1870:
| The whole population of Massachusetts in 1870 was | 1,457,351 | |
| Of these were born in foreign lands | 353,319 | |
| Born of foreign parents in Massachusetts | 626,211 | 979,530 |
Thus, it seems, the population of Massachusetts is already foreign-born and of foreign parents, over two-thirds. What number of these foreign people are Roman Catholics, any other person can guess as well as I can. But it is quite certain that this blessing, such as it is, has reached us incidentally through our cheap labor; that is, it is a sort of superadded bliss, coming as an unexpected reward of unconscious virtue. In the words of Shakespeare, "We are twice blessed." We have got cheap labor and we have got the Catholic church crowning every hill and blooming in every valley.
At any rate it is quite certain that few if any of this class of the Massachusetts people are either Puritans, Unitarians, or Episcopalians; and some of them I strongly suspect are like the good sailor, neither Catholics nor Protestants, but "captains of the fore-top!" In Massachusetts, as I have said, there was in 1870 of this kind of population sixty-six per cent., and all have votes. In the whole United States there was forty-five per cent. of this sort, all of whom have votes. It is known also that New York, and Boston, and Lowell, and Fall River are intrinsically foreign cities. It is known that the majority of voters in those cities have no property which pays taxes; it is known that this class of voters are now well organized, and can and do vote and do elect such men as will please them—men who "will tickle me if I'll tickle you"—that is the sort of statesman we now welcome with effusion; indeed, we seek no other. We mean to deplete all over-grown fortunes; we mean through the taxes to equalize things and make Saturday afternoons pleasant. I have not at hand, just this moment, the figures to tell what good was done in Boston last year to the class called "the poor." But I have them for Cambridge, a small city almost a part of Boston. In that small select and intellectual city the expenditures in direct aid of "the poor," not counting work which was made for them, was in dollars, $80,000, and that does not count a large sum besides given in private charity. This help was given to some 5,400 persons; stating it simply, in the words of political economy, one person in seven or eight of that cultivated and select community was a pauper. Another feature of this new and peculiar social state is this: that the voters who have no property and pay no taxes do not enjoy the possibility of starving, nor do they look with favor upon advice which tells them to "Go West." Why should they go West? They do not know where to go—indeed, they have no money to go with—nor do they know that there would be any work for them there. They choose to stay where they are, and they will vote for people who will help them to stay; and they have five votes to the tax-payer's four, which significant little fact should not be lost sight of!
In our laudable desire for "progress," in our vital wish "to develop our resources," we have produced many results, some interesting ones, quite unexpected. We have got cheap labor and we have got cheap cotton cloth and cheap boots and shoes, and a good deal of all of them. The smart little city of Lowell was begun by the most capable and enterprising of Boston's "solid men"; it was begun upon a theory that men and women in New England ought to be clean, decent, and virtuous. In its beginning nearly all the operatives were of New England birth, descendants of Puritans who were used to decency, cleanliness, and virtue. Then they lived and lodged in houses belonging to the mills, which were regulated—the men in their own boarding houses, the women in theirs. All were expected to be in their houses by or before a certain hour, say ten o'clock at night.
Then every young lady had a green silk parasol for Sunday's use, and she wrote poetry for the "Lowell Offering," if she felt the divine movement. At that early undeveloped time an English gentleman, one Anthony Trollope, visited the nascent city. He lamented the narrow-mindedness of the projectors, and predicted it would not work; that the little Lowell could never compete with such highly developed cities as Manchester and Preston, where they knew the magic of "cheap labor." In other words, Lowell could not be a great success.
That Arcadian simplicity worked for a while, but inevitably the magic of cheap labor made itself felt—it was potent—it came, it saw, it conquered. And now the best information I have convinces me that the squalor, filth, recklessness, and happiness are nearly or quite equal to what they are in the noble cities of Manchester and Glasgow in England. Should Mr. Trollope revisit those scenes of his youth, he would be as much delighted as any Englishman could permit himself to be with anything outside his "Merrie England" at the delectable advances made there.
He would find labor cheap and cotton cheap—as cheap as they are in his beloved Manchester. He would find, as in his beloved Manchester, that they made more than they could sell; which is the secret of cheapness. He would find that in that small elysium, in the year 1874, they made 135,000,000 yards of cotton cloth, which gospel of cotton they were then spreading abroad over all the earth, sending some of it to his beloved Manchester. He would learn also that there was invested there some $20,000,000 of good money of the realm, a large proportion of which paid no dividends; which also is an excellent method of securing cheapness. He would find all "narrow-minded regulations" quite done away with, and the full liberty of the subject enjoyed by all; that people staid "out nights" according to their own sweet wills; that men slept when they pleased and where they pleased, and with whom they pleased—women too for that matter; and that life was as free and pleasant as his good English heart could wish. He would find that the old-fashioned, narrow-minded New England stock had disappeared—not being cheap enough—and their places were fully supplied with a delightful conglomeration of gentlemen and ladies who had fled from poor Ireland, from the Azores, from Germany, from pastoral Acadie; and here and there he would note the pigtail of the frugal Chinese, the avant courier of a better time coming.