In Making, However, A Just Calculation It Must Be
Borne In Mind That Clothing Is Dearer Than In England, And That
Much More Of It Is Necessary.
The wages nevertheless are high, and
will enable the laborer to save money, if only he can get them
paid.
The complaint that wages are held back, and not even
ultimately paid, is very common. There is no fixed rule for
satisfying all such claims once a week, and thus debts to laborers
are contracted, and when contracted are ignored. With us there is
a feeling that it is pitiful, mean almost beyond expression, to
wrong a laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to
tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we
speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of
insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there
in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the
domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will
not willingly take either goods or labor without payment; and it
may be hard to prove that he who takes the latter is more dishonest
than he who takes the former; but with us there is a prejudice in
favor of one's washerwoman by which the Western mind is not
weakened. "They certainly have to be smart to get it," a gentleman
said to me whom I had taxed on the subject. "You see, on the
frontier a man is bound to be smart. If he aint smart, he'd better
go back East, perhaps as far as Europe; he'll do there." I had got
my answer, and my friend had turned the question; but the fact was
admitted by him, as it had been by many others.
Why this should be so is a question to answer which thoroughly
would require a volume in itself. As to the driving, why should
men submit to it, seeing that labor is abundant, and that in all
newly-settled countries the laborer is the true hero of the age?
In answer to this is to be alleged the fact that hired labor is
chiefly done by fresh comers, by Irish and Germans, who have not as
yet among them any combination sufficient to protect them from such
usage. The men over them are new as masters, masters who are rough
themselves, who themselves have been roughly driven, and who have
not learned to be gracious to those below them. It is a part of
their contract that very hard work shall be exacted, and the
driving resolves itself into this: that the master, looking after
his own interest, is constantly accusing his laborer of a breach of
his part of the contract. The men no doubt do become used to it,
and slacken probably in their endeavors when the tongue of the
master or foreman is not heard. But as to that matter of non-
payment of wages, the men must live; and here, as elsewhere, the
master who omits to pay once will hardly find laborers in future.
The matter would remedy itself elsewhere, and does it not do so
here? This of course is so, and it is not to be understood that
labor as a rule is defrauded of its hire. But the relation of the
master and the man admit of such fraud here much more frequently
than in England. In England the laborer who did not get his wages
on the Saturday, could not go on for the next week. To him, under
such circumstances, the world would be coming to an end. But in
the Western States the laborer does not live so completely from
hand to mouth. He is rarely paid by the week, is accustomed to
give some credit, and, till hard pressed by bad circumstances,
generally has something by him. They do save money, and are thus
fattened up to a state which admits of victimization. I cannot owe
money to the little village cobbler who mends my shoes, because he
demands and receives his payment when his job is done. But to my
friend in Regent Street I extend my custom on a different system;
and when I make my start for continental life I have with him a
matter of unsettled business to a considerable extent. The
American laborer is in the condition of the Regent Street
bootmaker, excepting in this respect, that he gives his credit
under compulsion. "But does not the law set him right? Is there
no law against debtors?" The laws against debtors are plain enough
as they are written down, but seem to be anything but plain when
called into action. They are perfectly understood, and operations
are carried on with the express purpose of evading them. If you
proceed against a man, you find that his property is in the hands
of some one else. You work in fact for Jones, who lives in the
street next to you; but when you quarrel with Jones about your
wages, you find that according to law you have been working for
Smith, in another State. In all countries such dodges are probably
practicable. But men will or will not have recourse to such dodges
according to the light in which they are regarded by the community.
In the Western States such dodges do not appear to be regarded as
disgraceful. "It behoves a frontier man to be smart, sir."
Honesty is the best policy. That is a doctrine which has been
widely preached, and which has recommended itself to many minds as
being one of absolute truth. It is not very ennobling in its
sentiment, seeing that it advocates a special virtue, not on the
ground that that virtue is in itself a thing beautiful, but on
account of the immediate reward which will be its consequence.
Smith is enjoined not to cheat Jones, because he will, in the long
run, make more money by dealing with Jones on the square.
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