where the man holds the field because his intelligence is indispensable, it is his intelligence that is paid for. If it is indispensable, it is also well remunerated in proportion to the time and capital which must be spent in preparing for the task, while great physical vigor, if necessary, helps to make a natural monopoly. This is why the modern laborer constantly turns to demand the help of machinery wherever it can possibly be applied, and the notion is finding especial illustration just now in the case of the stokers in modern steamships of high speed. Either machinery must be applied where machinery hardly seems applicable at all, or the men who bring the requisite intelligence to bear under very hard conditions, together with the mere mechanical energy whose market value is that of a few pounds of the coal they handle, will obtain a remuneration indefinitely greater than that of the general class or workmen to which they belong, or with which they have hitherto been classed.
Whether this view of the matter can be maintained as absolutely correct or not, it certainly has enough truth in it to show that the current assertions about the hapless position of the man who "has only his labor to sell" rest upon very superficial and hasty knowledge of the case.
On the one hand, then, it is true that that man is unfortunate who, in the world of steam and machinery, can do nothing which steam and machinery cannot do; but, on the other hand, it is true also that steam and machinery are a grand emancipation for the man who will raise himself above them and learn to use them by his intelligence.
If I apprehend this matter aright, then it is only another case of a general principle which I have already tried to expound: that every new power is a new chance,
