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.
On his eye, his judgment of materials, his nerve,
and his dexterity of hand depend precious lives.
For three thousand miles those vast masses of machinery
must force a huge hull through huge seas; the mighty
and shapely fabrics of metal must work with the ease
of a child’s toy locomotive, and they must bear
a strain that is never relaxed though all the most
tremendous forces of Nature may threaten. What
a charge for a man! His earnings could hardly
be raised high enough if we consider the momentous
nature of the duty he fulfils; he is an aristocrat
of labour, and we do not know that there is not something
grotesque in measuring and arguing over the money-payment
made to him. Then there are the specially skilled
hands who in their monkish seclusion work at the instruments
wherewith scientific wonders are wrought. The
rewards of their toil would have seemed fabulous to
such men as Harrison the watchmaker; but they also
form an aristocracy, and they win the aristocrat’s
guerdon without practising his idleness. The
mathematician who makes the calculations for a machine
is not so well paid as the man who finishes it; the
observatory calculator who calculates the time of
occulation for a planet cannot earn so much as the
one who grinds a reflector. In all our life the
same tendency is to be seen: the work of the
hand outdoes in value the work of the brain.
XII.
THE HOPELESS POOR.
By fits and starts the public wake up and own with
much clamour that there is a great deal of poverty
in our midst. While each new fit lasts the enthusiasm
of good people is quite impressive in its intensity;
all the old hackneyed signatures appear by scores in
the newspapers, and “Pro Bono Publico,”
“Audi Alteram Partem,” “X.Y.Z.,”
“Paterfamilias,” “An Inquirer,”
have their theories quite pat and ready. Picturesque
writers pile horror on horror, and strive, with the
delightful emulation of their class, to outdo each
other; far-fetched accounts of oppression, robbery,
injustice, are framed, and the more drastic reformers
invariably conclude that “Somebody” must
be hanged. We never find out which “Somebody”
we should suspend from the dismal tree; but none the
less the virtuous reformers go on claiming victims
for the sacrifice, while, as each discoverer solemnly
proclaims his bloodthirsty remedy, he looks round
for applause, and seems to say, “Did you ever
hear of stern and audacious statesmanship like mine?
Was there ever such a practical man?”