written law of wages: it says they've got to advance,
little by little, straight through the centuries. And
notice how it works. We know what wages are now,
here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say
that's the wages of to-day. We know what the wages
were a hundred years ago, and what they were two
hundred years ago; that's as far back as we can get,
but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the
measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and
so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty
close to determining what the wages were three and
four and five hundred years ago. Good, so far. Do
we stop there? No. We stop looking backward; we
face around and apply the law to the future. My
friends, I can tell you what people's wages are going