The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-16

as well as flower the social status OF those |
who are now socially low enough" and ''lead
to state of pauperism, dependence,
and crime" If these allegations are
strictly true, the American ports cannot too
soon be closed against the Asiatics. But it is
possible for iron -moulders as we'll as editors, to
fall into mistakes, and to grossly magnify what
they imagine to be their immediate interests
while they lose sight of their own substantial
welfare and that of their neighbors. The
true pecuniary interest of every laborer, as
we'll as Of every other citizen, is to get the
largest possible supply of the necessities,
comforts, and conveniences of life in ex-
change for his exertions or the interest on
his capital. Whether the nominal money
value of his wages is large or small
is matter of little moment
compared with the purchasing power of his
income. When thousand-dollar bill of Con-
tinental money could barely buy breakfast,
it had no more real value than a twenty-five
cent note of fractional currency at the pre-
sent day. Although the most remarkable of
these fluctuations in the purchasing power of
money are caused by departures from a specie
basis and the over-issue of paper promises,
they are also frequently produced by unusual
or unnatural scarcity of the articles most
craved by man. A famine speedily increases
the price of -four, prolonged strike in the
anthracite districts of Pennsylvania inva-
riably enhances the market value of coal, and
cotton rapidly advanced after cotton planting
was abandoned on many Southern planta-
tions. Abundant production quickly brings
down prices, and cheapness of the articles
which workingmen or any class must pur-
chase is in numberless cases a greater boon
than nominal increase of income, salary, or
wages, accompanied with corresponding in
crease of the cost of rents, dry goods, and
groceries. If the iron-moulders were salts
fie6 that the Chinese would never meddle
with hot or cold iron or iron-moulding in
this country, they could wish no better for
tune than to retain their present wages uhh'
| Cinnamon we're bv tho'- '''"ors amongst us
,--,,.uIug the cost of houses. clothing,
and food; and if a sufficient number
of Celestia!s should come among us to sensi-
bly, reduce the cost of the necessaries of life,
the iron. .moulders could we'll afford to reduce
their scale of prices for labor, and to have
the cost of iron mouldings diminished, and
still be gamers by the round transaction in
stead of being in the slightest danger of re-
lapsing into poverty or barbarism. Every
thing that the Cinnamon can do in this
country to diminish the cost of production
will practically increase the income
of each individual citizen by in
cressing it's purchasing power, and if
portion of the existing laboring force lose
their present positions, the country is wide
enough to furnish abundant new fields for
their energies. Such temporary calamities
have repeatedly happened, and in the nature
of things must frequently happen hereafter,
without inficting permanent injury; and
many thousands of the most successful men
i'll America to-day owe their fortune to indus
trial disruptions similar to those which may
possibly be produced in a comparatively few
instances by Chinese immigration. If the
nation sedulously seeks ''the greatest good
of the greatest number" it matters little
how many private applicants may be upset
Americans are proverbially skilful in accom-
modatiDg themselves to novel circumstances,
and it Will be singular if they cannot manage
to get honey from the Chinese bees without
suffering seriously from their stings.