Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/284

274 ſome years may have been more, and others leſs plentiful, there has always been proviſion enough for ourſelves, and a quantity to ſpare for exportation. And although the crops of laſt year were generally good, never was the farmer better paid for the part he can ſpare commerce, as the publiſhed price currents abundantly teſtify. The lands he poſſeſſes are alſo continually riſing in value with the increaſe of population; and, on the whole, he is enabled to give ſuch good wages to thoſe who work for him, that all who are acquainted with the old world muſt agree, that in no part of it are the labouring poor ſo generally well fed, well clothed, well lodged, and well paid, as in the United States of America.

If we enter the cities, we find that, ſince the revolution, the owners of houſes and lots of ground have had their intereſt vaſtly augmented in value; rents have riſen to an aſtoniſhing height, and thence encouragement to increaſe building, which gives employment to an abundance of workmen, as does alſo the increaſed luxury and ſplendour of living of the inhabitants thus made richer. Theſe workmen all demand and obtain much higher wages than any other part of the world would afford them, and are paid in ready money. This rank of people therefore do not, or ought not, to complain of hard times; and they make a very conſiderable part of the city inhabitants.

At the diſtance I live from our American fiſheries, I cannot ſpeak of them with any degree of certainty; but I have not heard that the labour of the valuable race of men employed in them is worſe paid, or that they meet with leſs ſucceſs, than before the revolution. The whale-men indeed have been deprived of one market for their oil; but another, I hear, is opening for them,