The good King Henri of Navarre is said to have hoped for the day when in France the poorest peasant might have a fowl in his pot.
Besotted king! he did not know that in the good time coming, when we shall bring in our one to ten thousand cheap Chinese per week, the white man will be happy indeed who can get a pound of rice or potatoes in his pot. A fowl in his pot! Foolish king!
"Progress"--what a lovely word!--progress has shown all mankind what a glorious thing cheap labor is and must be. How great and happy are the people who preach and practise it! "Progress"--a beautiful word certainly, if we do really understand it. But I remember me of a man--a brewer--who rather late in life had fallen in love with the word "docile." He thought it a beautiful word. One day his partner returned, having failed to collect a doubtful debt. My friend essayed it, but returned red in the face.
"Well," said his partner, "have you got it?"
"Got it! The fellow won"t do a thing. He"s as _docile_ as h.e.l.l!"
_Progress!_ Its meaning once was,
"Intellectual or moral advancement; improvement in knowledge or in virtue."
Now it means _cheap cotton and cheap men and women_. To the enlightened and prosperous English nation belongs the credit of this radical discovery.
To England too belongs the invention or creation of our new G.o.d. She--I am happy to say it--she invented and created the G.o.d we now worship. We call him
TRADE!
The first, last, and only commandment of our new G.o.d is,
"_Buy cheap and sell dear._"
Whatever nation or man worships this G.o.d, and obeys this first and great commandment, is sure of blessedness; for that man or that nation will get more money than other men and other nations, as England has; and will be happy, _as she is_!
Swiftly and surely the belief and worship of the new G.o.d and the new gospel is spreading into all lands. Men _fancy_ they still worship "the Trinity," "Confucius," "Zoroaster," "Mohammed," "Mumbo-jumbo." It is wholly a fancy. Men still _say_, "I believe in G.o.d the Father," etc.
They still say, "Do to others as you would have them do to you," is the first and great commandment. But what they _do_ do, and wish to do, and mean to do, is,
"To buy cheap and sell dear."
We need no missionaries to drive this gospel into heathen minds. It has the charming vitalizing power of going itself. The Chinese have received it, and have immediately taken the whole tea business out of the hands of Messrs. Russell & Co. and Jardine, Matheson & Co.; have quite put an extinguisher upon _their_ money-making. Indeed, do we not know that _almost_ every European, Chinese, and Indian merchant has failed, and the heathen Chinee sits in their seats.
How England came to invent this new gospel is known to many, though not to all. Let me briefly sketch the amazing creation:
A century ago the strength and power of England was based upon her yeomanry. They possessed much land; and upon the lovely rolling fields of that lovely country their stone farm-houses and their small farms were the homes and habitations of millions. From this strong and hardy yeomanry were drawn the bowmen and the pike-men who made the armies of the Edwards and the Henrys invincible; from them came the "jolly tars"
who seized victory for Drake and Nelson.
Then Liverpool was not, and Manchester was not, and _creation_ did not pay tribute to England"s G.o.d.
But a century ago Watt, the keen, canny Scotsman, discovered that _steam_ was a giant, and could he but capture him and harness him into his machine, what work might he not do? He did capture him, and he did harness him to his machine; and now he works on, on, up, down, here, there, not ceasing by night and day, by summer and winter; he tires not, he rests not; for ever and for ever he toils on. He saws, he grinds, he spins, he weaves, he ploughs, he thrashes, he drags, he lifts. Such a giant he is!
_One_ man with the steam machine now does the work which once was done by _ten_, _twenty_, _fifty_! He files, he cuts, he sews, he polishes, he brews, he bakes, he washes, he irons. Is all this nothing?
It is vast--it is a _revolution_! And no man yet sees the end.
Trade now was exaggerated beyond all former measure, and henceforth was to be the G.o.d of England and of the world. "Let us produce, let us buy cheap and sell dear, and so we shall be blessed." England had coal deep down in her bowels. Let her send her sons by thousands into the slime and darkness to dig it out. Let her make steam, and cheap cotton, and infinite iron, and let her make all mankind buy of her. "Let us," she cried, "demand free trade! for _we_ can make cheap and sell dear, and none can rival us."
She did demand free trade. She demanded it in India by seizing a kingdom. She demanded it in China at the cannon"s mouth. She got it.
She said to all peoples, "You may make corn, and cotton, and wool for us, and we will make everything you want cheaper than you can make it for yourselves, and happy you will be. We will make all the ships, will bring your corn, and cotton, and wool to us, and we will carry all our lovely manufactures to you, to the uttermost ends of the earth--at _your_ cost. We will take toll of you both ways; we will make fair profit on _your_ cotton, and on _our_ manufactures, and that will be just and even, and we shall both be happy."
And so it has gone on for a hundred years, and gold has poured into England"s stomach, a flowing stream, until her eyes stick out with fatness; she has even sought Turkish bonds for investment, and has lent much money to the good Khedive of Egypt--_which she can"t get back_!
Let us look at England for a moment, as she is to-day. She has built magnificent temples dedicated to her great G.o.d all over England: at Birmingham and Manchester, at Glasgow and Paisley; at Birkenhead and Liverpool, at Preston and Salford, at Leeds and Nottingham--and where not? England has become a great workshop in which the G.o.d of trade is ministered to.
Her land? Yes, it is beautiful, but her _yeoman have disappeared_--all have been drawn into the maw of the manufacturing monster. Forty millions of people now has England, and only some seven per cent. of them raise the food they eat. And how do the rest get their food? It is quite simple: by selling to other nations the things they make, and bringing back the food which other nations make.
It has been the boast of England that she had a larger population to the square mile--389 human bodies--than any other land except one, and more great cities than any other land but the "far Cathay"--if even she be an exception.
That "inspired idiot" Goldsmith once sang in his pretty, sentimental way,
Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth acc.u.mulates and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them as a breath has made: But a bold peasantry, their country"s pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
"Bold peasantry," "stalwart yeomen," "hard-handed farmers"--what preposterous phrases these seem now when we have the immense advantages of "cheap labor"!
And we here in America--we too? But of us, anon, anon.
Great factories, great halls, great shops, abound--abound and magnify that English land, so that a glamour has come over mankind, and moon-faced idiots in all lands have cried, "Behold the glory of England. Let us do likewise." Those great cities have glorified themselves and have glorified England, and who has cared to look deeper down into the mire? Have we seen these men and women, childhood and age, reeking in squalor and vile with filth in the purlieus of every temple? Have we looked into the slums of Liverpool and Glasgow, of Edinburgh and Newcastle, to see men and women, childhood and age, in all their divinity--or their d.a.m.nation? Is all lovely--is it indeed? Is this "progress"? Is it civilization? Is it Christianity? Of course it is, all three.
I have mentioned the word _revolution_--social revolution. What is it?
Is it at hand? It is quite clear that this amazing power of steam and machinery is doing _something_. It is quite clear that every machine does the work of twenty men, and nineteen of these have got to seek other means of support--they and their wives and their little ones.
It is well known that every man out of work means four mouths bare of food. Who fills them? The rates (taxes) of course, and in London, the last winter I was there, some six years ago, 80,000 paupers and beggars were receiving public aid. "The laws of trade" is to make things right.
I think that is the name of the modern redeemer of men. If work is not there and food is not there, man will flow at his own sweet will, like water seeking its level, until he finds his food and his work somewhere. But if man"s "sweet will" decides not to flow, but to lie down and make his bed in your _pockets_, and feed on the contents in the shape of taxes--what is to come then? Why, he must be depleted, or he will deplete _you_. How to deplete him is a most interesting question? He does not deplete himself, for it is manifest to men that paupers in England and America get children as fast as they can; and the clergy applaud and say, "Be fruitful and multiply." There is no continence among them--none anywhere except in wicked France.
In the "good time coming" in England, the pauper will lie down with the prince, and there will be peace while the pauper devours the prince; or there will be pestilence, which is a sure depleter; or the idle army may be used to deplete the mob. Who can say?
"But there is no danger! Of course not. Why croak?"
What has been will be, under the benign influence of cheap labor and free trade--perhaps! Let me go on with my pleasant tale--do not interrupt--I have the word--by and by you.
At this moment, to-day, this year of our Lord 1877, the merchant princes of London, the manufacturing barons of Manchester are at their wits" ends; for people refuse to buy the products of their mills.
Germany will not have them, and France will not, and America chooses to make her own; and even India, ungrateful that she is, has gone to spinning her own cotton. Mills are being closed in England, furnaces are blown out, wages are reduced, and workmen are threatening to _strike_, or have struck, and are settling down for a comfortable winter upon the _rates_. All right! England has "developed her resources," and trade is free. Let her sing hosannahs, and cry, "Glory be to our G.o.d," for no such beautiful "progress" was ever seen on earth before.
What is to happen to the 300,000 or half million land-owners of England, if outside pig-headed peoples wilfully and maliciously refuse to buy the mill products of England and so to feed the 37,200,000 people of England who have no land upon which to raise their own food?
What is to happen if some fine day the 37,200,000 take it into their foolish heads to say:
"We do not like to starve. We are many, you are few. We will take the land and raise our own food, and you can emigrate if you like, or you can stand out in the cold as we have done. We don"t like it."
It is not quite easy to shoot those people; and if they choose to stay in England, it is not quite easy to _make_ them emigrate--not even if the "laws of trade" tell them they really ought to go.
And besides, it is so easy for 100,000 paupers to emigrate--to take their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds, their camels and their a.s.ses, their beds and their tents, and go forth to seek the promised land--the land flowing with milk and honey. It is so simple, so pleasant, that one is lost in amazement that they do not go--that they wickedly persist in staying where they are paupers, and refuse to obey the law of "supply and demand."
Such conduct is quite unworthy of enlightened Britons who "never will be slaves."
It is too bad--it really is--and political economy ought to be preached at them severely. Why is it too that outside barbarians refuse to buy the divine productions of England? Some think we may do well to take a look at this part of the problem before _we_ go on with our plans for introducing more cheap labor into our own happy land.
A century ago, as has been said, England discovered the wonderful way of applying the _steam giant_ to the creation of manufactured goods, and for three-quarters of the century she has had a practical monopoly; has turned the golden streams of the whole world to enrich herself; has preached free trade; has said, "Buy cheap and sell dear," and has set her G.o.d on a high throne. But slowly and haltingly other and stupider nations have caught the tricks of the new Cultus; have caught little steam giants, and have set them to work to turn their mills and grind their grists. Germany and the United States are two of these dull nations who have done a stroke of work in this way. France has really been too stupid to do much at it--has indeed gone back to a tariff after having tasted of the new gospel, and now obstinately refuses to live by it--_will_ pay her debts, and will _not_ enjoy unlimited pauperism.