Most of the remarks which I have already made in speaking of servants
and masters, may be applied to masters and workmen. As the gradations
of the social scale come to be less observed, whilst the great sink the
humble rise, and as poverty as well as opulence ceases to be hereditary,
the distance both in reality and in opinion, which heretofore separated
the workman from the master, is lessened every day. The workman
conceives a more lofty opinion of his rights, of his future, of himself;
he is filled with new ambition and with new desires, he is harassed by
new wants. Every instant he views with longing eyes the profits of his
employer; and in order to share them, he strives to dispose of his labor
at a higher rate, and he generally succeeds at length in the attempt.
In democratic countries, as well as elsewhere, most of the branches
of productive industry are carried on at a small cost, by men little
removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they
employ. These manufacturing speculators are extremely numerous; their
interests differ; they cannot therefore easily concert or combine their
exertions. On the other hand the workmen have almost always some sure
resources, which enable them to refuse to work when they cannot get
what they conceive to be the fair price of their labor. In the constant
struggle for wages which is going on between these two classes, their
strength is divided, and success alternates from one to the other. It
is even probable that in the end the interest of the working class must
prevail; for the high wages which they have already obtained make
them every day less dependent on their masters; and as they grow more
independent, they have greater facilities for obtaining a further
increase of wages.
I shall take for example that branch of productive industry which is
still at the present day the most generally followed in France, and in
almost all the countries of the world--I mean the cultivation of the
soil. In France most of those who labor for hire in agriculture, are
themselves owners of certain plots of ground, which just enable them
to subsist without working for anyone else. When these laborers come to
offer their services to a neighboring landowner or farmer, if he refuses
them a certain rate of wages, they retire to their own small property
and await another opportunity.
I think that, upon the whole, it may be asserted that a slow and gradual
rise of wages is one of the general laws of democratic communities. In
proportion as social conditions become more equal, wages rise; and as
wages are higher, social conditions become more equal. But a great and
gloomy exception occurs in our own time. I have shown in a preceding
chapter that aristocracy, expelled from political society, has
taken refuge in certain departments of productive industry, and has
established its sway there under another form; this powerfully affects
the rate of wages. As a large capital is required to embark in the great
manufacturing speculations to which I allude, the number of persons who
enter upon them is exceedingly limited: as their number is small, they
can easily concert together, and fix the rate of wages as they please.
Their workmen on the contrary are exceedingly numerous, and the number
of them is always increasing; for, from time to time, an extraordinary
run of business takes place, during which wages are inordinately high,
and they attract the surrounding population to the factories. But, when
once men have embraced that line of life, we have already seen that they
cannot quit it again, because they soon contract habits of body and mind
which unfit them for any other sort of toil. These men have generally
but little education and industry, with but few resources; they stand
therefore almost at the mercy of the master. When competition, or other
fortuitous circumstances, lessen his profits, he can reduce the wages of
his workmen almost at pleasure, and make from them what he loses by the
chances of business. Should the workmen strike, the master, who is a
rich man, can very well wait without being ruined until necessity brings
them back to him; but they must work day by day or they die, for their
only property is in their hands. They have long been impoverished by
oppression, and the poorer they become the more easily may they be
oppressed: they can never escape from this fatal circle of cause
and consequence. It is not then surprising that wages, after having
sometimes suddenly risen, are permanently lowered in this branch of
industry; whereas in other callings the price of labor, which generally
increases but little, is nevertheless constantly augmented.
This state of dependence and wretchedness, in which a part of the
manufacturing population of our time lives, forms an exception to the
general rule, contrary to the state of all the rest of the community;
but, for this very reason, no circumstance is more important or more
deserving of the especial consideration of the legislator; for when the
whole of society is in motion, it is difficult to keep any one class
stationary; and when the greater number of men are opening new paths to
fortune, it is no less difficult to make the few support in peace their
wants and their desires.