wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that’s as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. Good, so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward; we face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I can tell you what people’s wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
“What, goodman, what!”
“Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed three cents a day, and mechanics six.”
“I would’t I might die now and live then!” interrupted Smug, the wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye.
“And that isn’t all; they’ll get their board besides—such as it is: it won’t bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later—pay attention now—a mechanic’s wages will be—mind you, this is law, not guesswork; a mechanic’s wages will then be twenty cents a day!”
There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the mason murmured, with raised eyes and hands:
“More than three weeks’ pay for one day’s work!”
“Riches!—of a truth, yes, riches!” muttered Marco, his breath coming quick and short, with excitement.
“Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and forty years more there’ll be at least one country where the mechanic’s average wage will be two hundred cents a day!”