Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/46

43 actual value, is not a strange thing. I wish this might not prove true. But the misery of the poor does not end with their wretched houses and exorbitant rent. Having neither capital nor store-room t they must purchase articles of daily need in the smallest quantities. They buy, therefore, at the greatest disadvantage, and yet at the dearest rates. I am told it is not a rare thing for them to buy inferior qualities of flour at six cents a pound, or $11.88 a barrel, while another man buys a month's supply at a time for $4 or $5 a barrel. This may be an extreme case, but I know that in some places in this city, an inferior article is now retailed to them at #7.92 the barrel. So it is with all lands of food; they are bought in the smallest quantities, and at a rate which a rich man would think ruinous. Is not the poor man, too, most often cheated in the weight and the measure? So it is whispered. "He has no mends," says the sharper; "others have broken him to fragments, I will grind him to powder!" And the grinding comes.

Such being the case, the poor man finds it difficult to get a cent beforehand. I know rich men tell us that capital is at the mercy of labour. That may be prophecy; it is not history; not fact. Uneducated labour, brute force without skill, is wholly at the mercy of capital. The capitalist can control the market for labour, which is all the poor man has to part with. The poor cannot combine as the rich. True, a mistake is sometimes made, and the demand for labour is greater than tho supply, and the poor man's wages are increased. This result was doubtless God's design, but was it man's intention P The condition of the poor has hitherto been bettered, not so much by the design of the strong, as by God making their wrath and cupidity serve the weak.

Under such circumstances, what marvel that the poor man becomes unthrifty, reckless and desperate? I know how common it is to complain of the extravagance of the poof. Often there is reason for the complaint. It is a wrong thing, and immoral, for. a man with a dependent family to spend all his earnings, if it be possible to live with less. I think many young men are much to be blamed, for squandering all their wages to please a dainty palate, or to dress as fine as a richer man, making only the heart of their