Carlyle's laugh, and other surprisesHigginson, Thomas Wentworth
History
Carlyle's laugh, and other surprises
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
American literature -- History and criticism; Authors, American
“The great manufacturer [he says] who guides the operations
of a factory of a hundred thousand spindles, in which fifteen
hundred men, women, and children earn their daily bread,
himself works on a narrow margin of one fourth of a cent on
each yard of cloth. If he shall not have applied truth to every
branch of construction and of the operation of that factory, it
will fail and become worthless; and then with toilsome labor a
hundred and fifty thousand women might try to clothe themselves
and you, who are now clothed by the service of fifteen hundred
only.
“Such is the disparity in the use of time, brought into
beneficent action by modern manufacturing processes.
“The banker who deals in credit by millions upon millions
must possess truth of insight, truth of judgment, truth of
character. Probity and integrity constitute his capital, for
the very reason that the little margin which he seeks to gain
for his own service is but the smallest fraction of a per cent
upon each transaction. I supervise directly or indirectly the
insurance upon four hundred million dollars’ worth of factory
property. The products of these factories, machine-shops, and
other works must be worth six hundred million dollars a year.
It isn’t worth fifty cents on each hundred dollars to guarantee
their notes or obligations, while ninety-nine and one half per
cent of all the sales they make will be promptly paid when
due.”[19]
He elsewhere turns from viewing the factory system with business eyes
alone to the consideration of it from the point of view of the laborer.
There is no want of sympathy, we soon find, in this man of inventions and
statistics. He thus goes on:—
“The very manner in which this great seething, toiling, crowded
mass of laboring men and women bear the hardships of life leads
one to faith in humanity and itself gives confidence in the
future. If it were not that there is a Divine order even in
the hardships which seem so severe, and that even the least
religious, in the technical sense, have faith in each other,
the anarchist and nihilist might be a cause of dread.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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