The herald., 1896-03-30
THE PLOWMAN AND GAMBLER
THE ONE PRODUCES WHILE THE OTHER
CONSUMES
30 Long as Industry Rests on Primary Pur-
suits We Shall Fioursh-Sp ,cula,lon
Feeds on the Profits of Labor-psrhaps the
Burden May Prove Too Heavy
copyright, 1896, by John Clark Ridpath.l

II.
In the modern scheme os work it is
the'plowman who plods and the gam
bier who sweats. The common opinion
has it otherwise. III popular belief the
plowman is the sweater and the gambler
the cool member of society, but it is not
80. The man of tho fields and orchards
goes leisurely about his affairs and fumes
but little, while the rusher, the pusher
and the plunger get humid and drip
with excess Of heat.
Between blowing and gambling
stretches Il long line Of industrial sta
tons, each marked with its own register
of heat and corresponding register of
productiveness. The further we proceed
the hotter is the condition. The whole
world of men are occupied somewhere
along the line, and the industrial tenn
perature, which is the measure OF the
nervous combustion, rises with every
advance, from pulverizing the soil to
pulverizing the stock exchange.
That elegant form of political lying
called statistics gives us to understand
that large part of mankind is still in
touch with the soil. In the United
States we are told that over 40 per cent
of the people are engaged i'll some form
Of that primary production called agri-
culture. The remaining 60 per cent are
distributed along the industrial lines
that begin in the corntield and end at
Monte Carlo
As general fact the occupants Of
each station along these lines are striv-
fo ntf fain fl,o sfafic,, i11ct bny-Ord
The aggregate of the movement consti-
tutes what may be called the struggle of
the industrial world. Our 40 per cent of
producers, using the soil as the basis of
their endeavor, are not satisfied with it,
but wish to get away to the station
where things are made without the as
sistance of nature---that is, to the shops
and the factories. Another large division
of original producers strive to reach the
trading stations TO such it appears
much moro desirable to handle the
products Of industry, to turn them over
from one owner TO another, charging a
profit for tho act, than to create the
products whether of tho field or the
shop.
From these motives and motions the
great worlds OF manufacture and trade
are people, but neither trade nor manu-
facture satisfies those who are engaged
in it. They long to escape from the pur
suits in which they are occupied and to
follow some other pursuit beyond. The
question of transportation and traffic
across land and sea arises, and thousands
rush on to solve it. Modern civilization
presents spectacle The lines Of COM
munication and commerce have become
plexus over all the world, a vast web
which no genius can well understand or
unravel. Ihe threads of tho web reach
to every important spot on the earth.
They extend across all seas. They pene-
trate to the interior of barbarian conti-
nents. They take hold of the remotest
islands. They touch the, shores of fro
zen oceans and lose themselves in noun
tain SHOWS and in inaccessible jungles.
Along these lines the human tide flows
Lack and forth.
But the process does not end here.
The elaborate contrivance of commerce,
having just behind it the elaborate con-
trivance of manufacture, demands Or at
least suggests another series of stations
at which the ambitious hope to arrive.
IUSSG dIb tUuSbIuCt6u OuU VI tuO dktu-
cies Of exchange. They are banks, clear
ing houses, custom houses, bourses and
all that elaborate machinery by which
the counting and accounting of COM
merce is effected. Many there be who
go in at these doorways. What an ambi-
tion there is to be a barker, broker,
dealer in stocks and securities, a con-
troller of the indioes of value, direct
or and handler of that unknowable ma
chine called money!
just beyond this region rises the ex-
change. First it is produce exchange
and then a stock exchange. The first
has it's foundation on warehouses, ele-
vators and cargoes. The other is built
on bonds and possibilities expressed on
paper The two are located near togeth-
er, and the surviving competitors, who
started far back in the wheatfields and
have run with swift strides the inter-
vening course, rush in and crowd around
the pit. Here they begin again the tre-
mendous contest Of man with man for
the possession Of the indices, not the CO.
efficients of value.
1t is just at this point that the thing
called speculation springs and flourshes.
To deal in the cOefficients OF value is to
deal in value itself. That is, it is to
trado-that is, it is to exchange one
value for another. But to deal in the
jndices Of value is to deal in something
intangible-a something very hard to
define a something which in the jargon
Of the place is called margin, but
which could never be discovered by any
test of science or the senses. Here it is
that the winds blow high and the hu-
man temperature rises to 212 degrees It.
The noticeable fact in all this bust
ness is that the children of the world
cannot keep up with the campaign. The
children are all in the first camps. They
make vocal the fields. They enliven the
shops. They are seen sometimes playing
behind the counters. They appear in
shoals in villages and the humber
streets where the simpler forms of in
dustry arc the basis of life. But they
begin to thin out and disappear on the
public SQUARE and in the commercial es-