My position was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified more? However, I must try:

“Why, look here, brother Dowley, don’t you see? Your wages are merely higher than ours in name, not in fact .”

“Hear him! They are the double — ye have confessed it yourself.”

“Yes-yes, I don’t deny that at all. But that’s got nothing to do with it; the amount of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with it. The thing is, how much can you buy with your wages? — that’s the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar and seventy-five — ”