AND ON THE CONTINENT.
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VII. Let us now interrogate practical men. Among them pre-dominates by no means the same unanimity as at present exists intheoretical circles. On one side stand the English and Americans ;on the other, many of the Germans .
Chief amongst them, the best known is Brassey , who, in his“ Work and Wages,” has gathered together the experiences of hisfather—the greatest railway contractor in the world. Brassey ’sconclusion I have spoken of in another place (36). It was a mis-take, he says, that the higher wages of England meant an eco-nomical disadvantage; rather was the price of a defined piece ofwork in England by no means higher, in many cases certainlylower, than in the remainder of Europe , which exhibited a farlower standard of living of the workers. In a similar mannerLowthian Bell, a distinguished ironmaster in England, declares, inhis “ Manufacture of Iron and Steel,” that the weekly earnings ofthe workers engaged at the English furnaces were certainly con-siderably higher than on the Continent, in spite of which a loweramount of wages was paid per ton of pig-iron in Cleveland than inGermany . The same result holds good, according to Schoenhof, incomparing the American production of pig-iron with theEuropean (37).
Generally, the two Americans—Edward Atkinson and J. Schoen-hof- support as decidedly as possible the opinion of Brassey .Both are men of business. Atkinson is engaged practically in thecotton trade of Massachusetts (38). Both declare that economicalprogress, which is at the present day progress from Isolated toCentralised Industry, from hand to machine work, necessarilybrought in its train a continuous elevation of the status of theworkers. The high weekly wages which countries the most eco-nomically developed exhibited were in no wise a disadvantage forthem in the competition of nations. They were nothing more thana sign of technically-developed trade conditions—especially of thetriumph of centralised establishments over antiquated methods ofproduction. In spite of the higher weekly wages of the workers,in consequence of better machinery and of greater capacity for