.

Taking all these kinds of labor into account, the wages paid for work
on the Bridge will thus average $2.50 per day.

Now, if this work had been done at the time when the Pyramids were
built, with the skill, appliances and tools then in use, and if the
money available for its execution had been limited to nine million
($9,000,000) dollars, the laborers employed would have received an
average of not more than two cents per day, in money of the same
purchasing power as the coin of the present era. In other words, the
effect of the discoveries of new methods, tools and laws of force, has
been to raise the wages of labor more than an hundred fold, in the
interval which has elapsed since the Pyramids were built. I shall not
weaken the suggestive force of this statement by any comments upon
its astounding evidence of progress, beyond the obvious corollary that
such a state of civilization as gave birth to the Pyramids would now
be the signal for universal bloodshed, revolution and anarchy. I do
not underestimate the hardships borne by the labor of our time. They
are, indeed, grievous, and to lighten them is, as it should be, the
chief concern of statesmanship. But this comparison proves that
through forty centuries these hardships have been steadily diminished;
that all the achievements of science, all the discoveries of art, all
the inventions of genius, all the progress of civilization, tend by a
higher and immutable law to the steady and certain amelioration of the
condition of society. It shows that, notwithstanding the apparent
growth of great fortunes, due to an era of unparalleled development,
the distribution of the fruits of labor is approaching from age to age
to more equitable conditions, and must, at last, reach the plane of
absolute justice between man and man.

But this is not the only lesson to be drawn from such a comparison.
The Pyramids were built by the sacrifices of the living for the dead.
They served no useful purpose, except to make odious to future
generations the tyranny which degrades humanity to the level of the
brute. In this age of the world such a waste of effort would not be
tolerated. To-day the expenditures of communities are directed to
useful purposes. Except upon works designed for defence in time of
war, the wealth of society is now mainly expended in opening channels
of communication for the free play of commerce, and the communion of
the human race. An analysis of the distribution