e, brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages are
merely higher than ours in _name_, not in _fact_."

"Hear him! They are the _double_--ye have confessed it yourself."

"Yes-yes, I don't deny that at all. But that's got nothing to do
with it; the _amount_ of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless
names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do
with it. The thing is, how much can you _buy_ with your wages?
--that's the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanic
is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only
about a dollar and seventy-five--"

"There--ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!"

"Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you! What I say is
this. With us _half_ a dollar buys more than a _dollar_ buys
with you--and THEREFORE it stands to reason and the commonest
kind of common-sense, that our wages are _higher_ than yours."

He looked dazed, and said, despairingly:

"Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye've just said ours are the
higher, and with the same breath ye take it back."

"Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing
through your head? Now look here--let me illustrate. We pay
four cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is
four mills more than _double_. What do you allow a laboring
woman who works on a farm?"

"Two mills a day."

"Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth
of a cent a day; and--"

"Again ye're conf--"

"Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'll
understand it. For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn
her gown, at 2 mills a day--7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers
in forty days--two days _short_ of 7 weeks. Your woman has a gown,
and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and
two days' wages left, to buy something else with. There--_now_
you understand it!"

He looked--well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most I can say;
so did the others. I waited--to let the thing work. Dowley spoke
at last--and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away
from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. He said, with
a trifle of hesitancy:

"But--but--ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better
than one."

Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up. So I chanced
another flyer:

"Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes out
and buys the following articles:

"1 poun