should he influenced by, and be made to accommodate to these habits of its labourers. It irresistibly affects the whole industrial character of the people. You may see it in the habits and manners of the free white mechanics and trades-*people. All of these must have dealings or be in competition with slaves, and so have their standard of excellence made low, and become accustomed to, until they are content with slight, false, unsound workmanship. You notice in all classes, vagueness in ideas of cost and value, and injudicious and unnecessary expenditure of labour by a thoughtless manner of setting about work.[1] For instance, I noticed a rivet loose in my umbrella, as I was going out from my hotel during a shower, and stepped into an adjoining shop to have it repaired.
"I can't do it in less than half an hour, sir, and it will be worth a quarter," said the locksmith, replying to inquiries.
"I shouldn't think it need take you so long—it is merely a rivet to be tightened."
"I shall have to take it all to pieces, and it will take me all of half an hour."
"I don't think you need take it to pieces."
"Yes, I shall—there's no other way to do it."
"Then, as I can't well wait so long, I will not trouble you with it;" and I went back to the hotel, and with the fire-poker did the work myself, in less than a minute, as well as he could have done it in a week, and went on my way, saving half an hour and quarter of a dollar, like a "Yankee."
Virginians laugh at us for such things: but it is because they are indifferent to these fractions, or, as they say, above regarding them, that they cannot do their own business with the rest of the world; and all their commerce, as they are
- ↑ A ship's officer told me that he had noticed that it took just about three times as long to have the same repairs made in Norfolk that it did in New York.
