This means that he
pays two days' (twenty hours') labor for his bushel of wheat and 80
days' (800 hours') labor for his ox. The ox rates better than a
butchers' "beast," as the English say. In the meantime,
THE CHILDREN OF THE LABORER
have sailed across the ocean and settled in a land where the fields
yield steady harvests and where the genius of the inventor has exceeded
with its results the wonders of the Arabian Nights. In this land of
freedom and plenty the day laborer gets $1.50 a day. He pays 90 cents to
$1.30 for a bushel of wheat, and if he desire such food, he can pay $80
for a monster ox weighing 1600 pounds. He thus pays less than a day's
labor of ten hours for his bushel of wheat, and about fifty-three days'
(530 hours') labor for his ox. He does not need this high grade of
meat, however, as few English laborers ever buy from even the round of
such beef, and no ordinary American householder in city or country gets
as good once a year.
PROGRESS IN FIVE HUNDRED YEARS.
We thus see the condition of the laboring man rise, in five hundred
years, from 112 hours' labor for sixty pounds of wheat to about six or
seven hours' work, and from 1372 hours' labor for 400 pounds of beef to
267 hours' labor for the same weight of better food!
But the atheist will say that the laborer of the olden time _did not
work_, and got along by hook or crook; that, as it was a miracle if he
lived with such wages, anyway, he had every inducement to become a
vagabond.
Pages:
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292