more
secure.

These higher results will be accompanied, however, by others of
sufficient importance to be considered. When we _hire_, or, what is,
for this inquiry, the same thing, _buy_ that commodity called, _labor_,
what do we expect to get? Is it merely the physical force, the animal
life contained in a given quantity of muscle and bone? In ordinary cases
we expect these, but in all cases we expect something more. We sometimes
buy, and at a very high cost, too, what has, as a product, the least
conceivable amount of manual labor in it,--a professional opinion, for
example; but we never buy physical strength merely, nor physical
strength at all, unless it is directed by some intellectual force. The
descending stream has power to drive machinery, and the arm of the idiot
has force for some mechanical service, but they equally lack the
directing mind. We are not so unwise as to purchase the power of the
stream, or the force of the idiot's arm; but we pay for its application
in the thing produced, and we often pay more for the skill that has
directed the power than for the power itself. The river that now moves
the machinery of a factory in which many scores of men and women find
their daily labor, and earn their daily bread, was employed a hundred
years ago in driving a single set of mill-stones; and thus a man and boy
were induced to divide their time lazily between the grist in the hopper
and the fish under the dam. The river's power has not changed; but the
inventive, creative genius of man has been applied to it, and new and
astonishing results are produced. With man himself this change has been
even greater. In proportion to the population of the country, we are
daily dispensing with manual labor, and yet we are daily increasing the
national production. There is more mind directing the machinery
propelled by the forces of nature, and more mind directing the machinery
of the human body. The result is, that a given product is furnished by
less outlay of physical force. Formerly, with the old spinning-wheel and
hand-loom, we put a great deal of bone and muscle into a yard of cloth;
now we put in very little. We have substituted mind for physical force,
and the question is, which is the more economical? Or, in other words,
is it of any consequence to the employer whether the laborer is ignorant
or intelligent?

Before we discuss this point abstractly, let us notice the conduct of
men. Is any one willing to give an i