But how is it possible to fix the wages of every man? To fix wages is to fix prices, and a government to do this intelligently, would necessarily have to have the wisdom generally attributed to an infinite Being. It would have to supervise and fix the conditions of every exchange of commodities and the value of every conceivable thing. Many things can be accomplished by law, employeers may be held responsible for injuries to the employed. The mines can be ventilated. Children can be rescued from the deformities of toil--burdens taken from the backs of wives and mothers--houses made wholesome, food healthful--that is to say, the weak can be protected from the strong, the honest from the vicious, honest contracts can be enforced, and many rights protected. The men who have simply strength, muscle, endurance, compete not only with other men of strength, but with the inventions of genius. What would doctors say if physicians of iron could be invented with curious cogs and wheels, so that when a certain button was touched the proper prescription would be written? How would lawyers feel if a lawyer could be invented in such a way that questions of law, being put in a kind of hopper and a crank being turned, decisions of the highest court could be prophesied without failure? And how would the ministers feel if somebody should invent a clergyman of wood that would to all intents and purposes answer the purpose? Invention has filled the world with the competitors not only of laborers, but of mechanics--mechanics of the highest skill. To-day the ordinary laborer is for the most part a cog in a wheel. He works with the tireless--he feeds the insatiable. When the monster stops, the man is out of employment, out of bread; He has not saved anything. The machine that he fed was not feeding him, was not working for him--the invention was not for his benefit. The other day I heard a man say that it was almost impossible for thousands of good mechanics to get employment, and that, in his judgment, the Government ought to furnish work for the people. A few minutes after, I heard another say that he was selling a patent for cutting out clothes, that one of his machines could do the work of twenty tailors, and that only the week before he had sold two to a great house in New York, and that over forty cutters had been discharged.