The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1896-03-14
Pl0WM AN AND GAMBLER
lhe One Produces; the Other
Consumes.
EMPLOYMENT AND POPULATION.

So Long as Industry Rests on Primary
Pursuits We Shall neutrality-suspicious.
Feeds on the Profits Of Labor-Perhaps
the Burden May Provo Too Heavy.
Copyright. 1896, by John Clark Ridpath.l
II. SD
In the modern scheme of work it is
the plowman who plods and the gam
bier who sweats. The common opinion
has 1t otherwise. In popular belief the
plowman is the sweater and the gambler
the cool member Of society, but it is not
so. The man Of the fields and orchards
goes leisure1y 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 a long line of industrial sta
tions, each marked with its W 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 con bustion, 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 a 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 in some form
Of that primary production called agri-
culture. The remaining 60 per cent are
distributed along the industrial lines
that begin in the cornfeld and end at
Monte Carlo.
AS a general fact the occupants Of
each station along these lines are striv-
ing to attain the station just beyond.
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 e%ndeavor, 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 more desirable to handle the
products Of industry, to turn them over
from n owner to another, charging a
profit for the act, than to create the
products, whether of the field Or the
shop.
From these motives and motions the
~Hnn{ x,~~11c 80 --l A..Jz
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 a spectacle. The lines of COM
munication and IN have become
a plexus over all the world, a vast web
which no genius can we'll understand or
unravel. The threads of the web reach
to every important spot on the earth.
They extend across all seas. They pene-
trate to the interior of barbarian cont.
nents. They take hold Of the remotest
ioAOluS. Hwy touSu luO S1lOICS u 1IO-
zen oceans and lose themselves in noun
tain and in inaccessible jungles.
Along these lines the human tide flows
back and forth.
But the process does not end here.
The elaborate continuance of commerce,
having just behind it the elaborate con-
%trivance Of manufacture, demands OR at
1ooct cnr0octs on0fhor corinc of ctu%,oos
at which the ambitious hope to arrive.
These are constructed ont of the agen-
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-
ton there is to be a banker, a broker,
a dealer in stocks and securities, a con-
troller of the indices Of value, a direct
or and handler of that unknowable ma
chine called money!
Just beyond this region rises the ex-
change. First it is a produce exchange
and then a stock exchange. The first
has its foundation IN 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 wheatfelds and
have run with swift strides the inter-
vening course, rush in and crowd around
the pit. Here they begin again the ire
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 f1ourishes.
To deal in the coefficients of value is to
deal in value itself. That is, it is to
trade-that is, it is to exchange mi
value for another. But to deal in the
indices of value is to deal in something
intangible-a something very hard to
define, a som ething which in the jargon
Of the place is called a 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 F.
The noticeable fact in all this bust
ness is that the children of the world
cannot keep up with the campaign. The