or the same number of hours each day; and when,
also, the products of each operative can be counted in number, weighed
by the pound, or measured by the yard or cubic foot, then it is
perfectly practicable to determine, with arithmetical exactness, the
productions of one individual and class as compared with those of
another individual and class.

So, where there are different kinds of labor, some simple, others
complicated, and of course requiring different degrees of intelligence
and skill, it is easy to observe what class of persons rise from a lower
to a higher grade of employment.

This, too, is not to be forgotten, that in a manufacturing or mechanical
establishment, or among a set of hands engaged in filling up a valley or
cutting down a hill, where scores of people are working together, the
absurd and adventitious distinctions of society do not intrude. The
capitalist and his agents are looking for the greatest amount of labor
or the largest income in money from their investments, and they do not
promote a dunce to a station where he will destroy raw material or
slacken industry because of his name, or birth, or family connections.
The obscurest and humblest person has a fair field for competition. That
he proves himself capable of earning more money for his employers is a
testimonial better than a diploma from all the colleges.

Now many of the most intelligent and valuable men in the community, in
compliance with Mr. Mann's request, examined their books for a series of
years, and ascertained both the quality and the amount of work performed
by persons in their employment, and the result of the investigation is a
most astonishing superiority in productive power on the part of the
educated over the uneducated laborer. The hand is found to be another
hand when guided by an intelligent mind. Processes are performed not
only more rapidly, but better, when faculties which have been exercised
in early life furnish their assistance. Individuals who, without the aid
of knowledge, would have been condemned to perpetual inferiority of
condition, and subjected to all the evils of want and poverty, rise to
competence and independence by the uplifting power of education. In
great establishments, and among large bodies of laboring men, where all
services are rated according to their pecuniary value; where there are
no extrinsic circumstances to bind a man down to a fixed position after
he has shown a capacity to rise above