“Why, he said that lots of men in the cities got two or three thousand dollars a year for their work, while he never yet had got over five hundred dollars for his. I questioned him a little, and found that he didn’t take any account of his house rent and fuel free, or of all the farm produce that his family ate. He thought the few hundred dollars he had to the good at the end of the year, after paying for his groceries and dry goods, was all he got for his labor.” “Speaking of these unconsidered crops,” said the planter, “I fancy it would astonish us if we could have the figures on them. It is said, for example, that more than a million turkeys are eaten in New York City alone every winter. Now, if we count all the other great cities and all the little ones, and all the towns and all the country homes where turkeys are eaten, it will be very hard to guess how many millions of these fowls are raised and sold and eaten in this country every year.” “It’s hard on the turkeys,” moralized Will Moreraud. “Well, I don’t know,” answered Phil. “I remember reading a story by James K. Paulding called ‘A Reverie in the Woods.’ He tells how he fell half asleep and heard all the animals and birds and fishes holding a sort of congress to denounce man for his cruelties to them. After a while the earthworm got so excited over the matter that he wriggled himself into the brook. Thereupon the trout, who had also been one of the complainants against man’s cruelty, snapped up the worm, and swallowed him. Seeing this, the cat grabbed the trout, and the fox caught the cat, and the eagle caught the fox, and the hawk made luncheon on the dove, and so on through the whole list. I imagine that that is nature’s way. Everything that lives, lives at the expense of something else that lives. It is all a struggle for existence, with the survival of the fittest as the outcome. And as a man, or even a commonplace boy like me, is fitter to live than a turkey, I think the slaughter of those innocents is all right enough.” “You are entirely right, Phil,” said Ed. “A pound of boy is certainly worth fifty or fifty thousand pounds of turkey, because one boy can do more for the world than all the turkeys that were ever hatched. And when a boy eats turkey he converts it into boy, and it helps him to grow into a man.” “Precisely!” said Irv Strong. “It cost the worthless lives of many pigs, turkeys, chickens, sheep, and cattle to make George Washington. But surely one George Washington was worth more than all the pigs, turkeys, chickens, sheep, and beef-cattle that were killed in all this country between the day he was born and the day of his death. But pardon us,” added Irv, turning to the planter, “you were going to say something more when we interrupted.”