I do
not like to see wages going downward, but there are exceptions, and I
am almost disposed to feel glad that the searchers after "genteel"
employment are now very much like the birds during a long frost. The
enormous lounging class who earn nothing do not offer an agreeable
subject for contemplation, and their parasites are horrible--there is
no other word. Yet we may gather a little consolation when we think
that the tendency is to raise the earnings of those who do something
or produce something. It is not good to know that a dustman makes more
money than hundreds of hard-worked and well-educated men, for this is
a grotesque state of things brought about by imbecile Government
officials. Neither do I quite like to know that a lady whose education
occupied nine years of her life is offered less wages than a good
housemaid. But I do assuredly like to hear how the higher class of
manual labourers flourish; they are the salt of the earth, and I
rejoice that they are no longer held down and regarded as in some way
inferior to men who do nothing for two hundred pounds a year, except
try to look as if they had two thousand pounds. The quiet man who does
the delicate work on the monster engines of a great ocean steamer is
worthy of his hire, costly as his hire may be.
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