the centuries. And notice how it works. We know what wages are
now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that's
the wages of to-day. We know what the 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 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6."

"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!"

It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could get
his breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coal-burner
said prayerfully:

"Might I but live to see it!"

"It is the income of an earl!" said Smug.

"An earl, say ye?" said Dowley; "ye could say more than that and
speak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hath
an income like to that. Income of an earl--mf! it's the income
of an angel!"

"Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages.
In that remote day, that man will earn, with _one_ week's work,
that bill of goods