for a few more than are at hand. The reason for this is to be found in
the difficulty of transferring labour from the place at which it
exists to that at which it is needed; and it is to that we have to
attribute the fact that the tendency to depression in the wages of all
labour is so very great when there is even a very small excess of
supply, and the tendency to elevation so great when there is even a
very small excess of demand. Men starve in Ireland for want of
employment, and yet the distance between them and the people who here
earn a dollar a day, is one that could be overcome at the expense of
fifteen or twenty dollars. Wages may be high in one part of the Union
and low in another, and yet thousands must remain to work at low ones,
because of the difficulty of transporting themselves, their wives, and
their families, to the places at which their services are needed.
Every such man tends to keep down the wages, of _all other men who
have labour to sell_, and therefore every man is interested in having
all other men fully employed, and to have the demand grow faster than
the supply. This is the best state of things for all, capitalists and
labourers; whereas, to have the supply in excess of the demand is
injurious to all, employers and employed. All profit by increase in
the competition for the purchase of labour, and all suffer from
increased competition for the sale of it.

We had occasion, but a little while since, to visit a factory in which
were employed two hundred females of various ages, from fourteen to
twenty, who were earning, on an average, three dollars per week,
making a total of six hundred dollars per week, or thirty thousand
dollars a year; or as much as would, buy five hundred thousand yards
of cotton cloth. Now supposing these two hundred females to represent
one hundred families, it would follow that their labour produced five
thousand yards of cloth per family, being probably three times as much