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That deep-seated stony hardness of heart which defies all the efforts of human cultivators is often broken small by the hand of God. It appears that Lydia, through natural temperament or association with Christians, or both together, had attained some measure of spiritual susceptibility, for she confessed the truth and attended the prayer-meeting by the river side; but the seed of the word which had sprung on the surface of her life had not yet struck its root so deep as to withstand persecution if it should arise. She is described as a woman who sold purple and worshipped God: she had an honest business and a true religion, and were not these enough? No; the next fact of her history was the cardinal point of her life, "whose heart the Lord opened that she attended to the things that were spoken of Paul." The seed from that skilful sower's hand went in and took possession, but it entered at an opening made by the power of God. Whether the rock was rent by the dew of the Spirit dropping silently, or by some stroke of Providence falling on her person or her material interests, we know not. If ordinary providential methods were employed, we know not, of the many instruments that lie close to the Ruler's hand, which he was pleased to use in that particular case. Perhaps the child of this honest and religious woman died, and her bosom, bereft of its treasure, rent with aching. Perhaps, on the day that Paul was there, she came to the meeting for the first time in widow's weeds, and the stroke that tore her other self away had left a wide avenue open into her heart. Perhaps, for small instruments do great execution when they are wielded by an almighty arm, an adverse turn of trade had left the hitherto affluent matron dependent on a neighbour's bounty for daily bread. Were other dealers, less scrupulously honourable than herself, underselling her in the market? Was her foreman unsteady? for, being a woman, she must needs depend much on hired helpers. Or did a living husband grieve her more than a dead one could? By some such instrument, or by another diverse from them all, or without any visible agent, the Lord opened Lydia's heart, and the word of life entered in power. Henceforth she was not her own; Christ dwelt in her heart by faith, and her life was devoted to the Lord her Redeemer. Deep in that broken heart the seed is rooted, and now no temptation, however intense and long-continued, shall be able to blanch its green blade or blast its filling ear. Lord, increase our faith. When trouble comes, whether under the ordinary procedure of God's government or more directly from his hand, whether in the form of bodily suffering or spiritual convictions, possess your soul in patience and wait for the end of the Lord. "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby" (Heb.
Wyeth said, 'All this availeth me nothing, so long as I read books in which I find that by going only about four thousand miles overland, from the shore of our Atlantic to the shore of the Pacific, after we have there entrapped and killed the beavers and otters, we shall be able, after building vessels for the purpose, to carry our most valuable peltry to China and Cochin China, our sealskins to Japan, and our superfluous grain to various Asiatic ports, and lumber to the Spanish settlements on the Pacific; and to become rich by underworking and underselling the people of Hindustan; and, to crown all, to extend far and wide the traffic in oil, by killing tame whales on the spot, instead of sailing around the stormy region of Cape Horn.
The big concerns come in and undersell him in his local market, and that is the only market he has; if he cannot make a profit there, he is killed. They can make a profit all through the rest of the Union, while they are underselling him in his locality, and recouping themselves by what they can earn elsewhere.
A favorite method by which the great corporations crushed out the competition of the smaller ones and of the "individual dealers" was by underselling them a method made possible by nothing but the selfishness of the purchasing consumers who loudly complained of it. These could have stood by their neighbor, the "small dealer," if they had wanted to, and no underselling could, have been done.
And then, to furnish a leaven of truth to this mass of lies, he detailed, with such a relish as only an Irishman can feel in a happy incongruity, that the French, having no market in old France for deerskins, the chief commodity of barter that the Indians possessed, disposed of them to ships of the British colonies, from New York and elsewhere, lured thus to New Orleans, in exchange for English cloths and other British manufactures, which the French then surreptitiously furnished to the Indians of the British alliance, underselling them on every hand.
But the American publisher who brings out such a reprint is equally undefended in his property; when he shall have produced his book, his rival in the next street may immediately reprint it from him, and destroy the value of his property by underselling him.
Reader, the mode of dealing with the abominable "coper" traffic referred to by these men has at last happily been adopted, and the final blow has been dealt by the simple expedient of underselling the floating grog-shops in the article of tobacco.
In that case the State provides maintenance for the weaker members in order that their presence as competitors for work may not injure the stronger members. But if the public workmen produce anything of value, by what means can it be kept from competing with and underselling the goods produced under ordinary commercial conditions?
No compunction or consideration for his fellow-worker will keep him from underselling and overreaching them; he acquires a thorough mastery of all the dishonourable tricks of trade which are difficult to restrain by law; the superior calculating intellect, which is a national heritage, is used unsparingly to enable him to take advantage of every weakness, folly, and vice of the society in which he lives.
Another obvious application of the same principle will enable us to explain, and to bring within the dominion of strict science, the rivality of one exporting nation and another, or what is called, in the language of the mercantile system, underselling: a subject which political economists have taken little trouble to elucidate, from the habit before alluded to of disregarding almost entirely, in their purely scientific inquiries, those circumstances which affect the trade of a country by operating immediately upon the exports.
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