The jeweler would probably desire
the permanence of the social order which created most wealthy people who
could afford to buy his wares. The farmer's industry, if we consider it
closely, is the most democratic of any in its application to society.
The produce of the farm, in its final distribution, is divided into
portions more or less equal and conditioned in quantity by the digestive
powers of an individual. The wealthiest millionaire cannot eat more
bread, butter, meat, vegetables, or fruit than the manual laborer would
eat if the latter could afford to get such things. In fact he would eat
rather less, because the manual worker has a much better appetite,
indeed requires more food. It appears to be the interest of the farmer
to support any urban movement whose object it is to see that every
worker in the towns is remunerated so that he, his wife, and his
children can procure as much food as they require. Any underpaid worker
in the towns is a wrong to the farmer--a willing customer who yet cannot
buy. If there is, let us say, a sum of fifteen hundred pounds a week to
be paid away in a town, it is to the interest of farmers that that sum
should be paid to a thousand men at the rate of thirty shillings a week
rather than to fifty men at thirty pounds a week.
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