But this result does not exhaust the question.  The standard of life is very different among working men in the States and in Great Britain, and the almost inexhaustible statistics of the report, already so often quoted, enable us to gauge this difference with accuracy.  It has been proved, by a recent investigation, whose details we need not follow, that the expenditure of working men’s families, of similar size, in Massachusetts and in Great Britain, stand to each other in the ratio of 15 to 10.  By introducing this new factor into our calculations, we find that a man who spends L60 per annum in England would spend L90, instead of L77, per annum in the States, paying American prices for subsistence, and living up to American standards.  In other words, he would be a gainer to the extent of only L9 per annum by living and working in the United States.  Finally, if we presume that 48 or 50 per cent., rather than 62 per cent., measures the higher wages of Massachusetts, the same man’s increased wages would be L90 instead of L99, and he would-neither lose nor gain in money by becoming an American citizen, and adopting American habits.

That these conclusions agree with those rough and ready practical illustrations which, without being scientific, are generally trustworthy, let the following story evidence.

Some years ago, a skillful moulder, in my then firm’s employ, left us for the States, where he permanently settled.  After a long absence, he returned for a few weeks’ holiday, when I asked him whether he earned higher wages and found life more agreeable in America than in England.  “Well, as to money” was his reply, “I think, taking all things into consideration, I did about as well in the old shop as I do now; but, socially speaking, I am somebody there, while here I am only a moulder.”  Social advantage, indeed, probably measures almost all the difference between the position of a skilled factory operative in the States and in England.

Let me not seem, however, to undervalue that difference.  Statistics, after all, do not dominate human nature; on the contrary, human nature determines the statistician’s figures.  Every artisan emigrant to America gains opportunities of advancement of which his European fellows know nothing.  If he have brains, the way to success is open there, while it is practically barred to anything short of genius for men of his class in Europe.  Our Australian colonies, where unskilled labor can earn 7s. 6d. a day, and live for a trifle, are, indeed, a paradise for the mere wage-earner, who can scarcely help becoming also a wage-saver; but America is the country which, with wage conditions such as I have attempted to portray, still offers the best possible opportunities of success, and even of great careers, to clever working men, and especially to clever mechanics.  That man, however, is not worthy of a home in the great republic, who does not appreciate the higher social levels at which native labor desires to live, who is not anxious to make the most of the advantages which democratic institutions offer him, who does not, in short, ardently desire to become a “good American.”