"And, being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say there is no vice but beggary."
Mr. B. did not believe in slavery. He despised the institution with
every drop of his blood, and was an advocate of universal freedom. He
held all the ideas of Mr. A. in supreme contempt, and frequently spent
whole evenings in denouncing the inhumanity and injustice of the whole
business. He even went so far as to contend that many of A.'s slaves had
more intelligence than A. himself, and that, whether they had
intelligence or not, they had the right to be free. He insisted that Mr.
A.'s philanthropy was a sham; that he never bought a human being for the
purpose of bettering that being's condition; that he went into the
business simply to make money for himself; and that his talk about his
slaves committing less crime than when they were free was simply to
justify the crime committed by himself in enslaving his fellow-men.
Mr. B. was a manufacturer, and he employeed some five or six thousand
men. He used to say that these men were not forced to work for him; that
they were at perfect liberty to accept or reject the terms; that, so far
as he was concerned, he would just as soon commit larceny or robbery as
to force a man to work for him. "Every laborer under my roof," he used
to say, "is as free to choose as I am."
Mr B. believed in absolutely free trade; thought it an outrage to
interfere with the free interplay of forces; said that every man should
buy, or at least have the privilege of buying, where he could buy
cheapest, and should have the privilege of selling where he could get
the most. He insisted that a man who has labor to sell has the right to
sell it to the best advantage, and that the purchaser has the right to
buy it at the lowest price. He did not enslave men--he hired them. Some
said that he took advantage of their necessities; but he answered
that he created no necessities, that he was not responsible for their
condition, that he did not make them poor, that he found them poor and
gave them work, and gave them the same wages that he could employ others
for. He insisted that he was absolutely just to all; he did not give one
man more than another, and he never refused to employ a man on account
of the man's religion or politics; all that he did was simply to employ
that man if the man wished to be employed, and give him the wages, no
more and no less, that some other man of like capacity was willing to
work for.
Mr. B. also said that the price of the article manufactured by him
fixed the wages of the persons employed, and that he, Mr. B., was not
responsible for the price of the article he manufactured; consequently
he was not responsible for the wages of the workmen. He agreed to pay
them a certain price, he taking the risk of selling his articles, and he
paid them regularly just on the day he agreed to pay them, and if they
were not satisfied with the wages, they were at perfect liberty to
leave. One of his private sayings was: "The poor ye have always with
you." And from this he argued that some men were made poor so that
others could be generous. "Take poverty and suffering from the world,"
he said, "and you destroy sympathy and generosity."
Mr. B. made a large amount of money. Many of his workmen complained
that their wages did not allow them to live in comfort. Many had large
families, and therefore but little to eat. Some of them lived in crowded
rooms. Many of the children were carried off by disease; but Mr. B. took
the ground that all these people had the right to go, that he did not
force them to remain, that if they were not healthy it was not his
fault, and that whenever it pleased Providence to remove a child, or one
of the parents, he, Mr. B., was not responsible.
Mr. B. insisted that many of his workmen were extravagant; that they
bought things that they did not need; that they wasted in beer and
tobacco, money that they should save for funerals; that many of them
visited places of amusement when they should have been thinking about
death, and that others bought toys to please the children when
they hardly had bread enough to eat. He felt that he was in no way
accountable for this extravagance, nor for the fact that their wages did
not give them the necessaries of life, because he not only gave them the
same wages that other manufacturers gave, but the same wages that other
workmen were willing to work for.
Mr. B. said,--and he always said this as though it ended the
argument,--and he generally stood up to say it: "The great law of supply
and demand is of divine origin; it is the only law that will work in
all possible or conceivable cases; and this law fixes the price of all
labor, and from it there is no appeal. If people are not satisfied
with the operation of the law, then let them make a new world for
themselves."
Some of Mr. B.'s friends reported that on several occasions, forgetting
what he had said on others, he did declare that his confidence was
somewhat weakened in the law of supply and demand; but this was only
when there seemed to be an over-production of the things he was engaged
in manufacturing, and at such times he seemed to doubt the absolute
equity of the great law.
Mr. B. made even a larger fortune than Mr. A., because when his workmen
got old he did not have to care for them, when they were sick he paid no
doctors, and when their children died he bought no coffins. In this way
he was relieved of a large part of the expenses that had to be borne by
Mr. A. When his workmen became too old, they were sent to the poorhouse;
when they were sick, they were assisted by charitable societies; and
when they died, they were buried by pity.
In a few years Mr. B. was the owner of many millions. He also considered
himself as one of God's stewards; felt that Providence had given him the
intelligence to combine interests, to carry out great schemes, and
that he was specially raised up to give employment to many thousands
of people. He often regretted that he could do no more for his laborers
without lessening his own profits, or, rather, without lessening his
fund for the blessing of mankind--the blessing to begin immediately
after his death. He was so anxious to be the providence of posterity
that he was sometimes almost heartless in his dealings with
contemporaries. He felt that it was necessary for him to be economical,
to save every dollar that he could, because in this way he could
increase the fund that was finally to bless mankind. He also felt that
in this way he could lay the foundations of a permanent fame--that
he could build, through his executors, an asylum to be called the "B.
Asylum," that he could fill a building with books to be called the
"B. Library," and that he could also build and endow an institution of
learning to be called the "B. College," and that, in addition, a
large amount of money could be given for the purpose of civilizing the
citizens of less fortunate countries, to the end that they might become
imbued with that spirit of combination and manufacture that results in
putting large fortunes in the hands of those who have been selected by
Providence, on account of their talents, to make a better distribution
of wealth than those who earned it could have done.
Mr. B. spent many thousands of dollars to procure such legislation as
would protect him from foreign competition. He did not believe the law
of supply and demand would work when interfered with by manufacturers
living in other countries.
Mr. B., like Mr. A., was a man of judgment. He had what is called a
level head, was not easily turned aside from his purpose, and felt that
he was in accord with the general sentiment of his time. By his own
exertions he rose from poverty to wealth. He was born in a hut and died
in a palace. He was a patron of art and enriched his walls with the
works of the masters. He insisted that others could and should follow
his example. For those who failed or refused he had no sympathy. He
accounted for their poverty and wretchedness by saying: "These paupers
have only themselves to blame." He died without ever having lost a
dollar. His funeral was magnificent, and clergymen vied with each other
in laudations of the dead. Over his dust rises a monument of marble with
the words: