Humorous stories; Mistaken identity -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Now the deductions which I am going to append to these figures may
sound extravagant, but they are not. I take them from Miscellaneous
Documents No. 50, second session 45th Congress, and they are official
and trustworthy. To-day, the work of those 2,000,000 cotton-ginners is
done by 2,000 men; that of the 6,000,000 stocking-knitters is done by
3,000 boys; that of the 2,000,000 thread-spinners is done by 1,000
girls; that of the 500,000 screw makers is done by 500 girls; that of
the 400,000 reapers, binders, etc., is done by 4,000 boys; that of the
1,000,000 corn-shellers is done by 7,500 men; that of the 40,000
weavers is done by 1,200 men; and that of the 1,000 stitchers of shoe
soles is done by 6 men. To bunch the figures, 17,900 persons to-day do
the above-work, whereas fifty years ago it would have taken thirteen
millions of persons to do it. Now then, how many of that ignorant
race—our fathers and grandfathers—with their ignorant methods, would it
take to do our work to-day? It would take forty thousand millions—a
hundred times the swarming population of China—twenty times the present
population of the globe. You look around you and you see a nation of
sixty millions—apparently; but secreted in their hands and brains, and
invisible to your eyes, is the true population of this Republic, and it
numbers forty billions! It is the stupendous creation of those humble
unlettered, un-college-bred inventors—all honor to their name.
“How grand that is!” said Tracy, as he wended homeward. “What a
civilization it is, and what prodigious results these are! and brought
about almost wholly by common men; not by Oxford-trained aristocrats,
but men who stand shoulder to shoulder in the humble ranks of life and
earn the bread that they eat. Again, I’m glad I came. I have found a
country at last where one may start fair, and breast to breast with his
fellow man, rise by his own efforts, and be something in the world and
be proud of that something; not be something created by an ancestor
three hundred years ago.”
CHAPTER XI.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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