93. The weakness of a true wages class is in the fact that they have no other chance. Obviously, however, _a man is well off in this world in proportion to the chances which he can command_. The advantage of education is that it multiplies a man’s chances. _Our_ noncapitalists have another chance on the land, and the chance is near and easy to grasp and use. It is not necessary that all or any number should use it. Every one who uses it leaves more room behind, lessens the supply and competition of labor, and helps his class as a class. The other chance which the laborer possesses is also a _good_ one, and consequently sets the minimum of unskilled wages high. Here we have the reason for high wages in a new country. 94. The relation of things was distinctly visible in the early colonial days. Winthrop tells how the General Court in Massachusetts Bay tried to fix the wages of artisans by law. It is obvious that artisans were in great demand to build houses, and that they would not work at their trades unless the wages would buy as good or better living than the farmers could get out of the ground, for these artisans could go and take up land and be farmers too. The only effect of the law was that the artisans “went West” to the valley of the Connecticut, and the law became a dead letter. The same equilibration between the gains from the new land and the wages of artisans and laborers has been kept up ever since. 95. In 1884 an attempt was made to unite the Eastern and Western Iron Associations for common effort in behalf of higher wages. The union could not be formed because the Eastern and Western Associations _never had had the same rate of wages_. The latter, being farther west, where the supply of labor is smaller and the land nearer, have obtained higher wages. It may be well to anticipate a little right here in order to point out that this difference in wages has not prevented the growth of the industry in the West, and has not made competition in a common market impossible.[18] The fact is of the first importance to controvert the current assumption of the protectionists. They say that an industry cannot be carried on in one place if the wages there are higher than must be paid by somebody in the same industry in another place. This proposition has no foundation in fact at all. Farm laborers in Iowa get three times the wages of farm laborers in England. The products of the former pay 5,000 miles transportation, and then drive out the products of the latter. Wages are only one element, and often they are far from being the most important element, in the economy of production. _The wages which are paid to the men who make an article have nothing to do with the price or value of that article._ This proposition, I know, has a startling effect on the people who hold to the monkish notions of political economy, but it is only a special case of the theorem that “_Labor which is past has no effect on