(i) Lastly, we must note the influence o_Principles of Political Economy

as these events affect the Supply of laborers. For example, in 1348, a

terrible plague, called the Black Death, invaded England and swept

away more than one-half of its population. "Even when the first burst

of panic was over, the sudden rise of wages consequent on the enormous

diminution in the supply of free labor, though accompanied by a

corresponding rise in the price of food, rudely disturbed the course

of industrial employments; harvests rotted on the ground, and fields

were left untilled, not merely from scarcity of hands, but from the

strife which now for the first time revealed itself between Capital

and Labor" (Green). The landowners of the country districts, and the

craftsmen of the towns, not understanding the law of Wages as an

invariable resultant of the Demand and Supply of laborers, were

scandalized by what seemed to them the extravagant demands of the new

labor-class. Parliament equally ignorant with the People of the

natural economic law, enacted as follows: "_Every man or woman of

whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and within the age

of threescore years, and not having of his own whereof he may live,

nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself,

and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the employer who

shall require him to do so, and shall take only the wages which were

accustomed to be taken in the neighborhood where he is bound to serve

two years before the plague began._" Afterwards, the runaway laborer

was ordered by Parliamentary enactment to be branded in the forehead

by a hot iron, and the harboring of the country serfs in the towns, in

which under their civic rules a serf keeping himself a year and a day

was thereafter free, was rigorously forbidden. These acts of

Parliament, and many more of the same kind, were powerless to keep

down wages to the old standard, but were powerful to keep up ill-blood

and social discontent. They prepared the way for agitators like John

Ball, for the poet-agitator Piers Ploughman, and for the great Peasant

Revolt of 1381. John Ball's famous rhyme condensed the scorn for the

nobles, the longing for just rule, and the resentment at oppression,

of the peasants of that time and of all times:--

"When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman?"

A hundred years after the Black Death the wages of a common English

laborer--we have the highest authority for the statement--commanded

twice the amount of the necessaries of life which could have been

obtained for the wages paid under Edward III.

3. Having now seen fully the varied action of Supply and Demand upon

the Value of personal services in their three kinds, we come at length

to the most important general point in this chapter, namely, that in

the second class of Services, those purchased in connection with the

use of _Capital_, WAGES ARE ALL THE TIME ENLARGING RELATIVELY TO

PROFITS. We have seen clearly already, that Cost of Labor and Cost of

Capital are the only onerous elements in the cost of Commodities;

because, while Natural Agents are all the time assisting and assisting

more and more effectively in such production, they work without

weariness or decay and without fee or reward. The reward of laborers

is Wages, and the reward of capitalists is Profits; and we are now to

demonstrate, that the part of their joint products falling to laborers

as wages is all the while increasing as compared with the remaining

part falling to capitalists as profits. This truth is of the deepest

significance, and of the most cheering character; because men are more

important in the universe than things; and because the number of men

who sell their services as laborers is vastly greater than the number

of men who sell their services as capitalists.

It is another indisputable and exhilarating truth for the masses of

mankind, that the Value of each item or article of those products

created by the joint action of laborers and capitalists is ever

becoming less and less as measured by any relatively fixed standard as

Money; so that, while wages as thus measured becomes a larger and

larger aggregate as compared with the aggregate of profits, and is

shared of course by a much larger number of people, those commodities

looked at as a collection of items for which the wages of these many

is usually expended for their own comforts, are becoming all the time

cheaper and cheaper to everybody, owing to the ever-enlarging and

wholly gratuitous action of natural forces.

For the sake of simplicity in the argument on this great point, we

will first look at what the facts are through recent illustrations

gathered by other parties for a wholly different purpose, and then

give in detail the economical grounds for these patent and universal

facts. Take for example, from Poor's Railroad Manual for 1889 a table

showing in a graphic way the steady reduction in freight charges per

ton per mile from 1865 to 1888 of seven representative Eastern trunk

railroad lines, namely, the Pennsylvania, Fort Wayne and Chicago, New

York Central, Michigan Central, Lake Shore, Boston and Albany, and

Lake Erie and Western; and of six leading Western roads, namely, the

Illinois Central, St. Paul, Burlington and Quincy, Chicago and

Northwestern, Rock Island, and Chicago and Alton. The following are

the figures:--

RATE CHARGES PER TON PER MILE (IN CENTS).

+------+----------+----------++------+----------+----------+

| Year.| Eastern. | Western. || Year.| Eastern. | Western. |

+------+----------+----------++------+----------+----------+

| 1865 | 2.900 | 3.642 || 1877 | .971 | 1.664 |

| 1866 | 2.503 | 3.459 || 1878 | .898 | 1.476 |

| 1867 | 2.305 | 3.175 || 1879 | .764 | 1.279 |

| 1868 | 2.132 | 3.151 || 1880 | .869 | 1.389 |

| 1869 | 1.860 | 3.026 || 1881 | .763 | 1.405 |

| 1870 | 1.593 | 2.423 || 1882 | .756 | 1.364 |

| 1871 | 1.478 | 2.509 || 1883 | .829 | 1.310 |

| 1872 | 1.504 | 2.324 || 1884 | .740 | 1.220 |

| 1873 | 1.476 | 2.188 || 1885 | .636 | 1.158 |

| 1874 | 1.332 | 2.160 || 1886 | .711 | 1.111 |

| 1875 | 1.161 | 1.979 || 1887 | .718 | 1.014 |

| 1876 | .985 | 1.877 || 1888 | .609 | .934 |

+------+----------+----------++------+----------+----------+

This reduction of rates in the case of the group of Eastern roads has

amounted to 79 _per centum_, and in the Western group to 73 _per

centum_, in the twenty-four years. Not less remarkable than the extent

of this decline in freight charges per mile is its uniformity. Both

groups show a wonderful steadiness in the progress of rate reductions.

Starting at quite different points as to territorial development, they

have yet travelled at a nearly equal pace in the same direction. This

shows the operation of causes at once steady and universal. Statistics

can never of themselves yield us _causes_; but they guide the way to

them; at any rate, they prevent any radical misinterpretation of them.

The great and overshadowing cause here of the cheaper freights per

ton, as everywhere else of cheaper rates at the junction of efforts

by capitalists and laborers, is of course the perpetual and augmenting

and ever-gratuitous assistance of natural forces at every point.

While the rates of freight per ton have decreased more than

three-quarters in less than one-quarter of a century in the case of

these 13 railroads on the whole average, the entire cost of the

operation of these roads in this interval of time has not been

diminished to any appreciable extent, as also stated by the same

Manual. The main item in all the operation-expenses of railroads is

the wages paid to the laborers of all grades; and the laborers are

quite as well paid now on these 13 roads as they were in 1865, proper

allowances being made for the changed and changing standards in the

national Money. If, on a broad view, railroad employees of all grades

have lost nothing as such in their wages in this interval; and the

general public, including these laborers and also the capitalists

concerned, have greatly gained, how can we account for the immensely

lessened freight-charges while the whole operation-expenses continue

substantially as before?

There is only one rational account to be given of this. And it is

trustworthy. All known facts jump with it, and nothing substantial can

be urged against it. The gains to the masses including the capitalists

and the laborers _have come out of the capitalists as such_. This is

apparent as well as real. Cost of Labor and Cost of Capital is the

whole cost. If the whole cost of moving one ton of freight from Boston

to Chicago is 3/4 less than it was 1/4 of a century ago, the cost of

the labor being the same at the two points of time, then the

conclusion is inevitable, that the _cost of the capital_ at the second

point is less than it was at the first point. With this conclusion all

facts agree. All the laborers connected with a railroad from highest

to lowest must be paid at any rate, or else the trains will certainly

cease to move, whether the stockholders receive any dividend or not on

their capital invested. The original _stock_--the capital that built

the roads--of many if not of most the railroads in the country, has

been annihilated, a new indebtedness in another form called _bonds_

having taken the place of it. Even the nominal dividends of

dividend-paying roads have declined in the interval from 10 or 8 to 5

or 4 _per centum_ in the general, that is, 50 _per centum_. It is

perfectly evident on every hand, that there is something in the nature

and progress of things, that makes for wages as contrasted with

profits: wages hold on and relatively enlarge, profits decline or go

out altogether.

Fortunately we are not left to generalities here, however plain and

certain these may be. One of the 13 railroads specified above, the

Illinois Central, made a remarkable exhibit in its own annual Report

of 1887, showing the cost of its locomotive service for each year of

the thirty years preceding. This cost per mile run had fallen from

26.52 cents in 1857 to 13.93 cents in 1886. This reduction had been

effected wholly on the _Capital_ side of the account, by inventions

and improvements of all sorts in the _machinery_ of locomotion; while

the wages of the engineers and firemen had risen in the period from

4.51 cents to 5.52 cents per mile run. The cost of the labor had risen

both relatively and absolutely while the cost of the capital had

declined both absolutely and relatively. In 1857 the engineers and

firemen had received as wages 17% of the entire cost of the locomotive

service, but in 1886 they had received 39% of that total cost. The

table is as follows:--

I. C. R. R. CO.

PERFORMANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES. RELATION OF WAGES TO TOTAL COST PER MILE

RUN.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

| Cost of wages | Total cost|| | Cost of wages |Total cost

Years.| of engineers | per ||Years.| of engineers | per

|and firemen per | mile run. || | and firemen per |mile run.

| mile run. | || | mile run. |

------+----------------+-----------++------+-----------------+----------

| Cents. | Cents. || | Cents. | Cents.

1857 |Gold. { 4.51 | 26.22 || 1872 |Currency. { 5.77 | 21.76

1858 | { 3.97 | 19.81 || 1873 | { 5.84 | 21.10

1859 | { 3.81 | 20.78 || 1874 | { 6.02 | 19.57

1860 | { 3.96 | 20.17 || 1875 | { 6.03 | 19.57

1861 | { 3.84 | 18.92 || 1876 | { 5.79 | 18.81

1862 |Currency.{ 3.85 | 17.42 || 1877 | { 5.54 | 17.21

1863 | { 3.93 | 22.28 || 1878 | { 5.46 | 15.29

1864 | { 5.56 | 33.52 || 1879 |Gold. { 5.41 | 14.15

1865 | { 5.65 | 37.44 || 1880 | { 5.41 | 14.95

1866 | { 5.78 | 32.67 || 1881 | { 5.54 | 16.58

1867 | { 6.18 | 29.62 || 1882 | { 5.09 | 15.82

1868 | { 6.11 | 27.57 || 1883 | { 5.35 | 15.57

1869 | { 5.88 | 25.49 || 1884 | { 5.28 | 14.45

1870 | { 5.95 | 25.15 || 1885 | { 5.49 | 15.02

1871 | { 5.72 | 21.50 || 1886 | { 5.52 | 13.93

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1857 the engineers and firemen received 17-201/1000 per cent. of

total cost.

In 1865 the engineers and firemen received 15-91/1000 per cent. of

total cost.

In 1867 the engineers and firemen received 20-865/1000 per cent. of

total cost.

In 1886 the engineers and firemen received 39-627/1000 per cent. of

total cost.

These illustrations from the railroads are plainly indicative of a

general truth of the utmost importance in Political Economy, namely,

_that all increase of Capital and all inventions and improvements in

its practical application, while it redounds to the benefit of

capitalists as a class, redounds in a still higher degree to the

benefit of laborers as a class_. Let us now attend for a moment to the

convincing Proof of this truth in two phases of such proof, and also

to a cheering conclusion that follows it.

(a) As any country grows older in time and richer through abstinence,

and as the whole world thus grows older and richer, the tendency

there and everywhere towards a general decline in the rate _per

centum_ for the use of capital becomes patent and universal. The rate

of interest on money loaned, and the rate of profits on capital used,

tend all the while to go down as and because capital accumulates. No

one will dispute this as a simple fact of history. And no economist

will dispute, that this is just what we might expect beforehand as a

corollary from the admitted proposition, that, other things being

equal, an increased Supply of anything means a lessened Value for any

specific part of it. Three centuries ago in England the legal rate of

interest was 10%, while now the current rate is about 4% in that

country, and has been considerably lower than that in Holland,

although in both countries and everywhere else there are temporary

interruptions and reactions in the constant tendency now being

considered. During the first years of mining operations in California,

from 8% to 15% per month with security of real estate was paid for the

use of money, which enormous rates long ago declined to rates not much

higher than those paid in the States along the Mississippi River, and

in these also the rates are all the while approximating those current

in the older Eastern States, whose own rates too are slowly declining.

But, while there is a less rate of profit or interest on each 100

invested, there are many more hundreds capitalized; consequently,

there is an absolute gain to capitalists as a class, at once in the

aggregate amount of the capital and in the aggregate sum of the

profits from it, since no capitalist would have a motive to capitalize

further under the smaller rates of profit, unless the aggregate of

profits under the new conditions were greater than under the old

condition of higher rates; and, as much of this accumulating capital

in order to become productive must now be offered to laborers in the

form of wages, we might almost pronounce beforehand, that it would

prove both an absolute and also a _relative_ gain to laborers as a

class. And so it is.

(b) Let us take to figures. An hypothesis or supposed case, whenever

it may easily become an overt fact, may be reasoned from just as

logically and securely as the overt fact itself. Let $100,000,000,

while the rate of profit is 6%, and $500,000,000, when the rate has

fallen to 4%, be expended in payment of simple wages. So far forth as

that one element of cost goes, the value of the products to be divided

yearly between capitalists and laborers will become respectively

$106,000,000 and $520,000,000. In the first case, $6,000,000 is

profits and $100,000,000 is wages; in the second case, $20,000,000 is

profits and $500,000,000 is wages. Here is an absolute gain to the

capitalists, since profits have gone up from $6,000,000 to

$20,000,000, and so are more than _three_ times as great as before.

But wages have gone up both absolutely and relatively to the rise of

profits. They have risen from $100,000,000 to $500,000,000, and are

_five_ times as great as before. Profits have risen as in the ratio

1:3+, but wages in the ratio of 1:5. This arithmetical example is put

for the sake of illustration merely, but the principle of it holds

good in every case, in which the rate _per centum_ goes down in

consequence of the increase of capital in business; and, therefore,

the advantages of ever-enlarging Capital are even greater to laborers

as a class than to the capitalists themselves. Most assuredly, if the

capitalists take less out of each hundred of the swelling hundreds now

than before, the laborers must take more out of each hundred than

before. Profits and Wages are reciprocally the _leavings_ of each

other, because the aggregate products created by the joint agency of

Capitalist and Laborer are wholly to be divided between the two. There

can be no other _claimant_ even.

and consequently in Social Life; for it proves beyond the possibility

of a cavil, the Value of personal services tends constantly to rise,

not only as compared with the Value of the material commodities which

by the aid of capital they help to create (a truth we have seen

before), but also as compared with the Value of the use of its

co-partner capital itself; and therefore, that there is inwrought into

the very substance of things in this world a tendency towards an

equality of economical condition among men. God has ordered it, and

men cannot radically alter it. Self-interest is indeed the mainspring

of movement in the economic world; but the beauty of it and the wonder

of it is, that no man can labor intelligently and productively under

the influence of self-interest without at the same time benefiting the

masses of men. His fair exchanges benefit the parties of the other

part as much as they benefit himself. His very savings productively

employed are poor men's livings. Only under the blessed freedom of

universal Buying and Selling, subject only to the taxation of a good

Government for public purposes purely, can these broad benefits

power of individual greed and corporate privilege and governmental

perversion to thwart the beneficent though complicated workings of

these laws of Capital and Labor towards the common weal and universal

progress of mankind is shortlived and soon punished.

4. How comes it about, then, if these laws of mutual inter-dependence

between capitalists and laborers are so well-placed and Providentially

balanced, that there always have been and are still so many

misunderstandings and ill-feelings and actual collisions between

employers and skilled laborers, whose interests are at bottom one and

whose relations ought to be so cordial? This is the last topic in our

Chapter on Personal Services. Here we must look around narrowly and

tread carefully. But there is a path. We can find it if we will. It

leads through many short-comings in men's characters and through much

ignorance of plain economical truths and past unreasoning jealousies

and aggregated action on the part of both classes, and over the

needful distinctions between impulsive selfishness and a true

self-interest back to the same old laws of God laid down at once in

the constitution of things and in the constitution of men.

Labor-troubles are almost as old as Civilization. The Greek poet

Euripides in his play of the "Supplicants" both indicates facts as

they were then, and points out a future hope in which we may share,

that these middle classes by a better harmony preordained and mutually

beneficial may yet "save the State":--

"In each State

Are marked three classes: of the public good

The rich are listless, all their thoughts to more

Aspiring; they that struggle with their wants,

Short of the means of life, are clamorous, rude,

To envy much addicted, 'gainst the rich

Aiming their bitter shafts, and led away

By the false glosses of their wily leaders.

'Twixt these extremes there are who save the State,

Guardians of order, and their country's laws."

At Rome and in the Roman Empire, instead of the usual voluntary union

of capitalists and laborers for the mutual advantage of each other,

the laborer was owned by the capitalist, and the true relations

between the two were thoroughly disguised and wretchedly distorted.

Business in all its branches came to be carried on by means of slaves;

the lands were tilled by slaves; slaves became the artisans of the

country; the money-lenders and bankers of the centre scattered

branch-banks in the towns under the direction of their slaves and

freedmen; the Company that leased on speculation the Customs-Taxes

from the State had their slaves and freedmen levy these taxes at each

custom-house; the contractor for buildings bought architect-slaves;

and the merchant imported his goods in ships of his own manned by his

slaves or freedmen, and then sold the same at wholesale or retail by

the same means. In this way a gigantic system of unnatural traffic was

built up and extended. In this way the very name "laborer" became

tainted by the vile system of slavery of which he was a part, and the

distinction itself between capitalist and laborer was obliterated.

"Roman mercantile transactions fully kept pace with the contemporary

development of political power, and were no less grand of their kind."

"The Roman _denarius_ followed up closely the Roman legions." "It is

very possible that, compared with the suffering of the Roman slaves,

the sum of all negro suffering is but a drop" (Mommsen).

We want now to examine critically the CAUSES of these constantly

recurring labor-troubles, the true economical REMEDIES for them, and

in connection with these the futility of the remedies popularly

recommended for low Wages and the disputes between employers and

employed of the second class.

(1) There is an extremely common misapprehension on the part of both

labor-givers and labor-takers as to the real _nature_ of the

transaction between them. Both parties forget, or rather neither party

is ever fully instructed, that it is a case of pure Buying and

Selling. There is never any _obligation_ of the moral sort between

buyers and sellers. The relation itself is purely economical. Moral

considerations indeed cover this relation from above, just as they

cover all other relations between man and man in human Society; and

any two individuals standing over against one another as buyer and

seller, also stand over against each other in higher and broader

relations as man and man; but it works confusion and mischief as

between both, whenever relations differing in their nature and

operation and reward are not separated from each other in the mind of

each relator, and whenever each does not act in the particular

relation according to the nature and rules of that relation alone.

When A hires B to work in his factory, this new relation is economical

not moral; there were moral relations between the two before this

relation was knit, and will be again after this has been broken, and

indeed are while this continues; but the economical relation is one

thing, and the others a very different thing; they are so different,

that they cannot be blended in mind or motive to any advantage to

either individual or to either set of relations; and any degree of

confusion as between the relations has always wrought mischief as

between the individuals, because instead of seeing either set of

relations in its own clear light, they now see both in a commingled

twilight.

What is the economical relation? This. A desires the personal service

of B in his factory purely for his pecuniary benefit, and assumes his

own ability to make all the calculations requisite for determining how

much he can (profitably to himself) offer B for his service; and B,

who knows all about his own skill, how it was acquired and how much it

has cost, wants to sell his service to A for the sake of the pecuniary

return or wages. There is no obligation resting upon either. Man to

man, each in his own right. There is no benevolence in the heart of

either, so far as this matter goes. Benevolence is now an

impertinence. It is a question of honest gain in broad daylight.

Benevolence is blessed in its own sphere, but there is no call for it

here and now. If it comes in an unbidden guest, it comes in to mar and

to distort. It is an incongruity. "_I never knew a Jew converted but

it spoilt him_," was the word of one deeply versed in human nature and

in Christian experience. Conversion is good, and its field is broad;

but the Jew _as such_ is incongruous with it. Good is benevolence and

wide its field, but Buying and Selling does not need it. Its own

motives are independent of it, and sufficient without it.

A clouded understanding of this vital distinction has always played

its part in Labor-troubles. Buyers and Sellers of personal services

are always on a plane of perfect equality as such exchangers, and no

one can be more independent than either of them except the hermit in

his cell. Which must look out for the interest of the other beyond the

terms implied in the trade itself? Which is the superior party? Which

should take off his hat, the other remaining covered? The truth is,

and all experience and all analysis brings us up abreast of it, that

the two parties to a trade of any kind stand on a footing of absolute

equality towards each other then and there in the economical relation

about to be knit, and any conception in the mind of either that he has

the other "at his mercy" in either the good or bad sense of that

phrase, disturbs and destroys the proper conditions and balances of

the exchange in hand; and, what is more to the point, it implies that

each party has _not_ all he can do to fulfil in the letter and in the

spirit what is always implied in the terms of a trade deliberately

entered upon by two parties. When B agrees to work for A at skilled

labor in his factory for a year at $15 per week, he makes a good deal

of a contract; and virtually pledges to A not only the motions of his

hands for that period of time, but also the vigorous attention of his

mind to that service and to the general interests of his employer so

far as these come under his own eye and supervision. Nor is this all:

he virtually pledges himself to B to coöperate with the least possible

friction in all plans for betterment in his division of the work, and

to cordially coalesce with all other employees for the general ends of

the business without too much of self-assertion and without too little

of courtesy to others. To fulfil this contract in all its spirit

rounds up the circle of B's economical obligations to A. He will

practically have all he can do, so far as A is concerned, and in

consistency with all his various duties to others, to make good to him

at all points his simple business pledges. Benevolence, the interests

of a common citizenship, and the reciprocal ties of religion, lie

wholly outside.

A will practically have all he can do, so far as B is concerned, to

fulfil in the letter and in the spirit his economical obligations to

him, without troubling himself to see whether B is going to vote the

same party ticket that he himself votes, and without confounding

either B's poverty or prosperity with his own obligation to be polite

to him at all times and to pay him promptly his weekly stipend. So

long as B renders in letter and in spirit what he has agreed to

render, and A returns in the same way what he has promised to return,

the less either thinks and talks and acts about the other in all the

other relations of life, the better hope of good success to both in

this relation. Church relations and social relations and political

relations are all of consequence in themselves; but when any of these

begin to get mixed up with labor-relations, there is soon a muss and a

mess. Incongruous things, things no way vitally connected with that,

often come in to disturb and destroy a simple matter of mutual

renderings.

(a) The first practical remedy for difficulties arising under this

first head, is a clearer separation in the mind of both parties to a

trade of what really belongs to Buying and Selling from what belongs

to all other departments of activity. More common sense is needed at

this point, more simple analysis, more daylight, more personal

independence, more introspection as to motives, more power in making

distinctions, and a more practical separation of what is clear and

fixed from what is complex and obscure in human relations. Metaphysics

may yet lie in cloud-land, Ethics may not yet have drawn its outer and

interior lines so strong and deep as it will, Sociology also is a vast

field of complexities, but truth to tell Economics has no mysteries to

speak of. I buy and sell for my own advantage, which proves in the

nature of things to be for the equal advantage of my compeer. It is my

business and my compeer's business and every other man's business who

buys and sells, to pick that action out in its motive and result from

the great mass of dubious actions, and to set it up in its own light,

to rejoice in it as the clearest thing in social action, to claim it

as God's own plan so far forth for our comfort and progress, and then

to see to it that no preposterous hand mixes it up with perplexities

or theologies or other abominations--muddying with a tentative pole

the stream of our clear brook! In this country at least, in its

ignorance of common things and common science, the pulpit often

fulminates against the gains of exchange as "materialism," and mixes

up buying and selling with "worldliness," and only half permits its

deluded hearers the privileges of the market, and illustrates again in

modern times such teaching as is denounced to St. Timothy,--"_some

swerving turned aside to vain babbling, desiring to be teachers of the

Law, understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm_."

"Let every shoemaker stick to his last." Those who have looked into

it with any care have found, that Exchange in all its natural

outgoings is not answerable to these pulpit charges, nor is contrary

to the letter or spirit of the biblical precepts, but on the other

hand is in full harmony with the claims of Conscience and with all the

inbreathings and aspirations of Christianity.

(b) The second practical remedy for the labor-difficulties arising

from the want of thorough understanding by both parties of the real

nature of hired renderings of the second class, is fair _common

honesty_. More of an easily accessible intelligence, more of

penetration and separation as to social relations in general, meets

the first point; but quite as needful as this simple intellectual

process, is the still simpler moral habit of doing just what one has

agreed to do, without evasions and without diminutions. Labor

difficulties take their origin more often, perhaps, in some clouded

moral action of one of the parties, than in a clouded mental

apprehension. Men are too conscious as men of their own temptations,

to be lax in their pledged renderings and of their own shortcomings at

this point, not to be suspicious of each other as buyers and sellers,

for fear the party of the other part is about to withdraw something

either in quantity or quality of what he has promised to render; there

is almost always something or other to give color to such a suspicion,

and it grows by what it feeds on; frank explanations are not had at

the outset, and a good understanding is not come to, as it doubtless

might be in nine cases out of ten; and the little cloud, at first no

bigger than a man's hand, by and by becomes black and threatening, and

bursts at last in a strike or lock-out of large proportions. An open

honesty that is such and seems such, that is not beyond the aim and

reach of common men, that is taught in scores of forms in "Poor

Richard's Almanack," and that each man ever likes to meet with and so

ought ever to put forth, is in fact a preventive of conflicts between

laborers and employers, and would if properly manifested have

prevented multitudes of such actual conflicts. Here is the main,

almost the sole, point of contact between strict Ethics and the

Economics. What buyers and sellers, that is to say, the whole

practical world, needs, is not disquisitions on Morals from Press or

Pulpit, but an inner ear to hear the true click of Conscience, and the

quick and open answer in honest action.

(2) A second general cause of the Labor-troubles of the past and

present has been a strong tendency to neglect the special

_preparation_ for their peculiar functions by both capitalists and

laborers. A successful employer of laborers year in and year out to

their advantage and his own is always one who has been _trained_ to

that function by special preparations. He is a living man with all the

limitations of living men: he has to deal with many living men with

all their imperfections: he has to deal also, and constantly, with

what is in its own nature dead, namely, Capital, always either a

commodity or a claim: to animate and invigorate these dead forms of

value, to put them into vital connection with living men who shall

enhance their value, and thus to become a leader to living men as

towards swelling interests, demands unusual native gifts and a special

long-continued training. When one looks from without upon such an

establishment as this in full action, it seems automatic, it seems as

if almost anybody with a clear head could continue to direct it; and

when this "captain of industry" departs this life, perhaps his son or

some previous subordinate, without the proper gifts and at least

without the peculiar training, assumes the post of direction. For a

little everything seems to go on as before. As sure as fate, however,

a friction will soon develop here, and a misunderstanding there,

there will be whisperings among the men, some breath of suspicion will

be likely to cloud the borrowing-power, opening difficulties of any

kind such as loss of credit or a weakening of the usual markets are

apt to throw a new operator more or less off his base, and gathering

labor-troubles of any sort commonly find such a man unprepared for

lack of suitable training and experience to ward them off or to make

timely concessions to the men or to minimize the evil results when

these become inevitable.

Also labor-troubles are quite as likely to arise from the want of

character and training and considerateness of the employees towards

the capitalists. The relations are reciprocal and they are also in

their very nature delicate. One poor workman however good his

disposition, one unfaithful overseer no matter how great his possible

skill, may mar the current product in such a way as to lose it the

market and cost the establishment the present profit. The strength of

a chain is the strength of its weakest link. It is a matter of immense

difficulty at any time, and emphatically so at the present time to

organize a working force in factory from top to bottom so as to have

it go forward as a unit as towards the marketing of the product,

without bad workmanship at some point and unskilful supervision at

another; because the laborers as a rule have not given themselves time

to learn thoroughly their special parts, because they are not content

to remain steady at one thing and at one place, and because they do

not practically recognize even if they perceive it that their own

permanent interests are exactly coincident with the permanent

interests of their employers. Just now in this country the public Law

robs the manufacturers (at their own behest) of their best markets at

home and abroad, makes it difficult or impossible for them through

wanton taxation of their raw materials to create a good quality of

goods for any market, and so multiplies frictions and failures and

losses along the whole line of production. The lack of what may be

called Apprenticeship on the part of skilled laborers, the consequent

difficulty of rising from one gradation of effort to a higher and

better-paid one, the restlessness of native laborers under such

disabilities, the rapid admixture of foreigners, the lack of coherence

throughout in point of intelligence and apparent identity of

interests, together with the instability and haphazardness of the

resources and personal training of the employers as a class, gives

birth to Labor-troubles which are at the same time Capital-troubles,

to read the daily record of which makes one sick at heart.

(a) The only possible and practicable remedy for this state of things,

so far as the employers are concerned, is in a more conservative

attitude of capitalists as a class about passing over their resources

to the hands of men who have not proven their ability to handle them

wisely by a full course of training in the management of practical

affairs. By a wretched policy in this country at present Capital is

prohibited from building and from buying ships, with which to navigate

the oceans; from selling domestic manufactures in foreign markets; and

also from a profitable agriculture, which may sell its products abroad

and take its pay back. Consequently Capital, eager in its own nature

to be invested to a profit somehow somewhere, has rushed without due

circumspection into the hands of domestic operators, who have not been

half fitted for their task, who have knitted relations with laborers

without being able to secure their permanent respect or to control

their services, and who have lost to their owners in multitudes of

cases the entire capital intrusted to them. If capitalists had had

during the last quarter of a century one-half of their natural and

proper chance to invest their money to a profit, there would not have

been such a reckless investment through incompetent hands in building

mills and foundries in this interval of time, and such wholesale

losses in connection with them. When capital comes to be at liberty to

turn right or left according to its own will in view of a prospective

profit, factory companies and projectors cannot draw resources from

the public for their operations, without demonstrating to the owners

the trained and tried capacity of the practical operators, who will

buy the materials and hire the laborers and market the products.

(b) The practical remedy for the inexperience and instability and

unskilfulness of laborers as tending towards labor-troubles of all

kinds and degrees, is only to be found in a want of market for such

services. In a natural and wholesome state of things, such as would

exist in the United States were it not for national laws tampering

with Trade and with Money, the questions asked an applicant for

skilled work by any labor-taker would be, "_What have you learned to

do? How long and for what pay do you want to do it? What do you want

to reach next, when the present job is done?_" When employment turns

on good answers to such questions as these, and when the questions

themselves are put in good faith, there will be an end of Strikes and

Lockouts. Untrained and restless hands will get nothing to do in mills

and factories. Apprenticeship in its various forms will come back into

vogue, and will probably be made a part of the course in public

schools. The division and gradation of laborers will be carried out

further than it ever yet has been. Laborers will then be _organized_

in the best sense of that word, and to the best advantage of

capitalists. The permanent Supply of skilled laborers will be

constantly adjusting itself to a permanent and increasing Demand for

them. And it requires no millennium for such a state of things to

come in. It requires nothing but an ordinary and enlightened and

beneficent selfishness on the part of capitalists to adjust itself to

the ordinary selfishness of laborers sure to become enlightened and

beneficent to the best and ever-growing interests of both parties.

This is not the spoken word of Morality, still less is it the divine

word of Religion, it is only the common programme of a common-sense

Political Economy.

(3) The third and last general cause of misunderstandings and

embittered disputes as between laborers and capitalists is partly

economical and partly moral, and consequently the remedy for it is

partly moral and partly economical. The Past projects itself down into

the Present partly with blessings and partly with curses. In the old

times under Slavery and Feudalism the laborer always came forward to

his task with a taint upon him. Sometimes the taint attached to his

birth, and at all times it attached to his calling. Slavery in all its

forms always makes manual labor degrading. The courtly Cicero

_apologizes_ in a letter to his friend for his open sorrow over the

death of his favorite slave; and in several passages of his treatise

on Morals he follows his Greek teachers, Plato and Aristotle, and

declaims in a pitiful way against the noble rights of laborers. "_All

artisans are engaged in a degrading profession._" Again, "_there can

be nothing ingenuous in a workshop_." When trade and commerce are

carried on on a small scale, "_they are to be regarded as

disgraceful_"; when on a large scale, "_they must not be greatly

condemned--non admodum vituperanda_!" (I, 42.)

Serfdom once existed in England, and threw its shade over free

laborers there long after itself had disappeared. A class of indented

servants pervaded all the New England Colonies, and a clause of the

New England Confederation of 1643 provided for their forced rendition

from Colony to Colony, and passed over almost verbally into the

Constitution of the United States of 1787 as applicable to the slaves

of the South. In this way in all parts of this country manual laborers

came to be more or less off color, and this has continued in a

continually lessened degree till this time. When those who work with

their hands are looked down upon by those who do not, two sets of

feelings are apt to be engendered equally unfortunate to the two

classes that entertain them. The non-manual workers, the employers,

are more or less puffed up with pride and a sense of superiority

(there are beautiful exceptions) as towards their laborers, and the

latter in their turn are apt to develop alongside an unmanly servility

and an apparent deference, a sort of secret breasting up of hostility

and defiance, which is sure to manifest itself when labor troubles

come on even when it has not helped to brood these troubles into life.

The parties then are not well placed as towards each other to

negotiate and to compromise and to coalesce in a future harmony. The

party of the first part is too proud to yield to their inferiors, and

the party of the second part is too bitter to be sweetened. Who is

sufficient for these things? And what is the remedy for them?

(a) So far as employers are concerned, their natural though

unreasonable and provoking arrogance may well be reduced by the

economical reflection, that the laborers are exactly as necessary to

production as the capitalists are, that the two stand on a precise

level so far as the product goes, that each is one blade of the shears

and the other the other and that it takes both blades to cut anything,

that while the laborers are sellers in the open market the capitalists

are likewise sellers and that the same ultimate purchaser furnishes

the market for both sets of sellers, that as sellers they are only

equal in position, that buying and selling is a levelling as well as

an uplifting process the world over, and that as such co-equal

partners in one indivisible operation all haughtiness on one side and

all undue humility on the other is nothing but obstacle as towards the

common end; and also by the moral and social reflection, that their

laborers are just such men as themselves in motive and action, that

the two are very likely to exchange places with each other before very

long, that riches are extremely liable to take to themselves wings and

fly away, that Christianity is no respecter of persons, that humanity

deems nothing human alien from itself, that morality puts the golden

rule upon the fore-front of its precepts, and that whatever may unite

any body of men in a legitimate purpose of achievement along any line

of human action multiplies the power of each individual and exalts his

standing and responsibility as such individual and thus reduplicates

the reward of his individual action.

(b) So far as the employees are concerned, in any temporary sense of

dependence or even of injustice, there is open to them the economical

reflection (and it will do them good to bring it home) that their best

route to the respect and favor and feeling of equality of their

employers is through the excellence of the service they render them

and the courtesy (not servility) with which they render it, that as

every capitalist becomes such by means of abstinence they may

themselves by saving become capitalists, that there is nothing in the

nature of their work or its relations to capital to cause them to hang

down their heads, that handsome is that handsome does, that the

opportune offer of the present capital to work on gives them a chance

to exhibit their skill and to earn a living, that the capitalists are

just as dependent on them as they upon those, and that as single

sellers of a valuable personal service they daily confront on a

footing of equality the sellers of a valuable product so created; and

there is open to them also the moral and social reflection fortified

by constant observation and experience, that no matter where a man

begins it is the end that crowns his work, that life to all is a

series of stepping-stones, that manly qualities are appreciated

everywhere, that character tells in the lowest position however high

and low are reckoned, that the poor gain and hold friends quite as

well as the rich, that there was a certain poor wise man that saved

the city by his wisdom and gained a lasting record in consequence,

that the poor and the rich are constantly changing places in this

world, and that there is no respect of persons with God.

We may see now what we are to think of some popular remedies

constantly recommended for low Wages. A brief discussion of what is

false will give us a stronger hold of what is true. The chapter will

close with relevant reference to three current remedies.

1. It is being dinned into the ears of the present generation, that

Government has large functions in the ongoings of business, that it

ought sometimes to interfere to better the rate of Wages, at least to

designate a minimum below which they shall not go, and that Government

should hold itself ready to undertake directly to carry on certain

branches of business under certain circumstances. This scheme goes

under the high-sounding name of _Nationalism_. Richard T. Ely,

Professor of Political Economy in Johns Hopkins University, is one of

the most prominent representatives at present of this school of

thought. In his Introduction to Political Economy just published

(1889), he lays down this principle: "_When for any class of business

it becomes necessary to abandon the principle of freedom in the

establishment of enterprises, this business should be entirely turned

over to Government, either local, state, or federal, according to the

nature of the undertaking._" He begins his book by attempting to

hammer in the "lesson" that as Civilization improves, coöperation

takes the place of individualism. The golden age of individualism, he

says, is among the wild tribes of Australia. They never coöperate with

each other in their economic efforts, or in anything else. No one

expects anything from his neighbor, and every one does unto others as

he thinks they would do to him. The life there is one prolonged scene

of selfishness and fear. But as civilization comes in, he says,

individualism goes out, and coöperation takes its place. The fine old

Bentham principle of _laissez faire_, which most English thinkers for

a century past have regarded as established forever in the nature of

man and in God's plans of providence and government, is gently tossed

by Dr. Ely into the wilds of Australian barbarism.

There are some propositions that are _certainly_ true, and one of them

is, that no man can write like that, who ever analyzed into their

elements either Economics or Politics, who ever gained a clear

conception of the sphere of either science in its relation to the

other, or who ever saw distinctly the relations of either to the

nature of Man. The sole motive in Buying and Selling is the gain of

the individual, each for and by himself. That always was the motive,

is now, and always will be. No complications of modern business, no

complexities of credit, no combinations of capitalists or laborers,

ever altered or ever can alter one particle the motives of men in

buying and selling. In a natural and progressive state of things,

Individualism, instead of going out, comes more and more into play,

through the Division of Labor and the falling of all sorts of services

more and more into specialties. To talk glibly, as Professor Ely does,

about Government taking up easily and carrying on in a better way and

to better ends branches of pure business as they are dropped or

forced from the hands of Individuals, is ignorance at once and alike

of the real nature of Government and of Business. Let us look at a few

of the native incongruities and logical fallacies of this

nationalistic position.

(1) What is human Government? Is there anything substantive and

continuous in its _personnel_ and purposes, as there is in the

government of God? Is government anything more, can it be anything

more, than a transient Committee of the citizens charged and changed

to do in certain few particulars the changing will of a Majority?

Government is indeed a necessity, as men are, to restrain the lawless,

and to shape the ends of the law-abiding; but it has to be

administered, if at all, by precisely the same kind of men as the rest

are, chosen for brief periods, their duties sharply prescribed by

constitution or custom, and impeachments or other punishments provided

for them when they transgress. One President of the United States and

one Judge of its Supreme Court have already been solemnly impeached by

the sovereign people themselves.

Government, then, is an _Agent_, and nothing more. Even nationalists

will not contend for the divine right of kings. And the duties of

every decent government on earth are _political_ in their character.

The agents are chosen and dismissed with a direct reference to that

kind of action. Politics has a sphere wholly distinct from Economics.

The true and only end of politics is the greatest good of the greatest

number, so far as that end can be mediated by governmental agents of

the people. Individualism as such does indeed sink out of sight under

a true Politics, and the inalienable rights of one are maintained for

the sake of and in consistency with the greater rights of all. But

Economics is all individuals from beginning to end. "_It takes two to

make a bargain._" Only two. Each of the two has his own motive,

estimates for himself, gives and takes for himself, and enjoys alone

his own gain. All this is involved in the very idea of _Property_,

which is derived from _proprius_, and which means _one's own_. How

illogical, then, and incongruous, to suppose, that a set of limited

human agents briefly trained to purely _political_ action, and liable

to be turned out of office by every change in party administration,

can be competent at the same time and in addition to perform

_economical_ functions for the people!

Notice, too, that governmental agents in all good countries are

already _overburdened_ with their mere political duties. Work is

behindhand in every portfolio, on every court calendar, and in every

legislative body, in Christendom. How absurd it is, therefore, to talk

about throwing upon shoulders, already overburdened, additional loads

of a different kind, for which shoulders and heads are wholly

unfitted!

Why not, then, inquires our nationalist innovator, organize new

bureaus to undertake in their behalf the buying and selling of the

people? Ah! Who pays the taxes needful for the support of the present

_political_ bureaus? And who would have to pay the taxes needful for

the support of the new _economical_ bureaus? Besides not having any

substantive existence of its own Government has not one cent of money,

except what the people voluntarily pay in taxes out of their own

personal gains, in order to maintain their own agents to do certain

political things for them, which they cannot do as well for themselves

directly; and when it comes to the cold question for the people

themselves to answer, whether they will organize a new set of hired

men to do their trading for them, and pay them for doing this out of

aggregate gains certainly to be vastly diminished by the process, our

nationalistic leaders will perhaps find out that the people have

common sense, whether the said leaders have it or not.

But the damning difficulty with this governmental business association

is, after all, in the inevitable _lack of motive_ on the part of the

hired men doing the buying and selling. It is an honor to human

nature, that hired men never have and never can have the zeal and

enterprise of principals and owners to forecast and to perform and to

lay up; because it shows that man is a rational animal, made in the

image of his Maker, always acting under the pressure of personal

motives, and always estimating what is his own more highly than what

belongs to another. Business motives act in their fulness only on the

individual, whose is the effort and whose is the return. Any policy

whatever on the part of Government, which lessens the number and the

eagerness of individual operators in favor of great artificial

combinations resting in the shadow of the Law, lessens of necessity

the gains of exchanges, and the progress of the nation, because it

lessens of necessity the press of motive on the many to work and save.

Government, accordingly, is quite too far off in every respect from

the business, that is to say, from the buying and selling of the

people, to undertake any branch of it when "it becomes necessary to

abandon the principle of freedom in the establishment of enterprises."

It will then be high time to "abandon" the "enterprises" themselves.

If the "principle of freedom" cannot compass the "establishment of

enterprises," is it likely that the "principle" of secondary and

irresponsible agents can do it? To show the people how to make their

bargains, how to buy and sell and save and spend, is a function

government is not fitted for, was not established to perform, and

never undertook without making a botch of it.

In the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States there is a

careful and complete and elegant enumeration of the purposes, which

the body of the instrument was designed to attain. These purposes are

six. No one of them contains even a hint of any purpose to enter upon

the "establishment of enterprises," still less of any necessity "to

abandon the principle of freedom." The last of these six purposes is

phrased: "AND TO SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR

POSTERITY." The liberty to buy and sell freely was precisely that

"liberty" of the Colonies which was most threatened and infringed by

the British Government, to vindicate that special "liberty" was the

chief cause of the American Revolution, and "to secure the blessings"

of that and other forms of similar "liberty" was the final purpose of

the Constitution of the United States.

It is true indeed that the Constitution empowers Congress, a creature

of the People, "_to establish Post Offices and Post Roads_"; but the

purpose of this was _political_, and not pecuniary; it was to bind all

the States together in one Union of intelligence and intercourse; it

was to keep the outlying and distant parts in touch with the central

and seaboard; it is not in any sense a "business" enterprise; the

department of the mails is not now and never has been, for any length

of time, self-supporting; and it illustrates through and through in

its "Star route frauds" and other contracts, in its appointment and

removal of postmasters, and in the sickening dependence of primal

Service of the people on partisan and corrupting impulses, many of

them inherent evils of the much-vaunted Nationalism.

But besides all these vital and political objections to the assumption

on the part of government of any direct industrial functions whatever,

there remains two other fundamental objections, of which the first is,

that our national government has received no powers to any such end,

and is emphatically prohibited in the Constitution itself from

exercising them:--"THE POWERS NOT DELEGATED TO THE UNITED STATES BY

THE CONSTITUTION, NOR PROHIBITED BY IT TO THE STATES, ARE RESERVED TO

THE STATES RESPECTIVELY OR TO THE PEOPLE."

(2) The second remaining objection is, that such proposed action of

government could have no tendency at all either to enlarge the

Wages-portion, or to increase the industrial efficiency of the

laborers, or to diminish the number of competitors at any one point of

the wages-scale. As a matter of fact, such governmental action would

have precisely the opposite effect at each of these three vital points

of wages: employers would have less motive to swell the wages-portion,

laborers less motive to improve their capacity, and more motive to

congregate locally. Suppose, that at some given point in the scale of

wages, free and intelligent competition has been had on both sides,

and that the average rate of wages as thus determined proves one

dollar per day for each laborer. Suppose further, that everybody

outside the employers thinks this is quite too little, and that

government accordingly issues a decree that wages at that point must

be thereafter one dollar and a half per day. That decree can have no

tendency at all to enlarge the _wages-portion_ of those particular

employers, because _that_ has already been determined for the next

industrial cycle by the general productiveness of the cycle last past,

and by the last division under free competition between wages and

profits; if, therefore, the decree were carried out, as it never

practically could be, the result would be that only two-thirds of the

laborers previously employed could be employed then at all, and the

remaining third would certainly be worse off than before; and besides

the Division of Labor being necessarily lessened, production would be

less profitable to the employers, and the next wages-portion would

certainly be less than the one before, and thus the outcome of the

_remedy_ would be worse than the _disease_. Now let alone the

artificial interference of government, and all natural accessions to

Capital at that point, all investment of profits in an enlarged

business, all saving from expenditure for the sake of further

production, tend strongly of their own accord to enlarge the

wages-portion, and thus, the number and intelligence of the laborers

continuing as before, are sure to raise the rate of wages. Or, if

there be no accessions to Capital, or other influence swelling the

wages-portion, and the number of laborers be diminished at that point,

as by migration to new fields of effort or enlistment in armies, the

competition of wages-givers for laborers will be quickened, and the

rate of wages will rise. Reversed conditions will of course give

reversed results.

2. A second popular remedy for low Wages, not only proposed, but also

for a long time brought into practical action, is Labor-Unions in

their various forms and with their manifold methods of operation upon

employers. It is important to note here and to remember, that the

Guilds of the mediæval times, from which the modern Trades-Unions have

borrowed something of form and much of nomenclature, were in substance

extremely different from their modern imitators. Those were

combinations of Masters with their journeymen and apprentices and

dependents in order to control the entire manufacture and sale of a

certain class of products, from the name of which the Guild usually

took its own name, as "Cloth-workers' guild," "Shoemakers' guild," and

so on. Whittier, himself a shoemaker in his boyhood, apostrophizes the

latter guild in words which more or less describe them all:--

"Ho! workers of the old time styled

The gentle Craft of Leather!

Young brothers of the ancient guild,

Stand forth once more together!

Call out again your long array,

In the olden merry manner!

Once more on gay St. Crispin's day,

Fling out your blazoned banner!"

These masters thus organized with their laborers were the capitalists

of their time, and in this vital matter differed from the Unions of

to-day, which are made up of laborers as such organized to confront,

and if need be, to antagonize, capitalists. A royal charter was

indispensable to the legal existence of those craftsmen. It took money

for them to start their guilds, and in progress of time most of them

became very rich. "A common fund was raised by contributions among the

members, which not only provided for the trade objects of the guild;

but sufficed to found chantries and masses, and set up painted windows

in the church of their patron saint. Even at the present day the arms

of the craft-guild may often be seen blazoned in cathedrals side by

side with those of prelates and kings." This radical difference

between the two must always be borne in mind in all arguments and

inferences drawn over from the mediæval "unions" to those of the

present day.

Two points may be freely conceded to these labor-organizations before

we pass to the economic objections to them. In the first place, the

employers _set the example_ for the employees in a tacit if not open

combination as against the employees in their own interest and

emolument. The so-called "protective" tariff, for instance, is nothing

in the world but a strongly-linked combination of certain rich

capitalists to extort from the masses (their own laborers included)

artificially lifted prices for the necessaries of life; and the

certain result of shutting out imports by tariff-taxes is the

shutting in of would-be exports, to the certain lowering of general

wages in a country, because there is a lessened demand for laborers in

consequence. For a second good instance of combinations as against

employees on the part of employers, take the well-known understanding

among manufacturers of the same sort of goods in the same general

locality, that laborers discharged from one establishment shall not be

hired in any of the rest; and that if the general voice call for a

"shut down," or for three-fourths time or less, all in that line of

goods shall comply. How can laborers be blamed for organizations in

their own behalf when they find themselves confronted as individuals

with an organization of employers?

Then, too, it must be acknowledged, that, had it not been for united

action of some sort on the part of the laborers, the unreasonable

hours of fifty years ago in mills and factories would probably not

have been shortened to this day. Capitalists as a class are

conservative of methods, as well as of ends. The cotton and woollen

manufacturers of Berkshire County, for example, who may doubtless be

taken as a fair sample of the manufacturers of New England, stiffly

refused the demands of their work-people that the hours might be

reduced from an average of 14 throughout the year to an average of 11.

When the late Civil War was going on, and the manufacturing became

extremely profitable, and the mills were more or less depleted by

enlistment, and the remaining hands felt more independent from the

consequent rise of wages, the combined demand in one mill for fewer

hours was reinforced by simultaneous demands for the same in other

mills in the neighborhood (the time and manner having been agreed upon

beforehand), and visits in force by the work-people from mill to mill

completed the desired reform. The mill-owners were sullen and

indignant, and submitted of necessity. The work-men were right. The

reform was imperative. Credit must be given to them for the good they

have done acting as a body on this and other occasions.

On the other hand, all this is not _business_. All this is contrary to

the very old, and the very good adage, that it takes _two_ to make a

bargain. If we express this adage in the language of our science, it

will take some such form as this: When two men have mutual services to

exchange, let them come to a fair agreement as to the terms on which

they will exchange. Certainly, let each make the best terms he can,

but let the bargain always be free. If one party, who happens to have

the power to do it, uses anything like compulsion upon the other, it

ceases so far forth to be a bargain at all, and becomes a sort of

robbery, of which in some cases courts will take cognizance. Now,

workmen bring a certain valuable service to the market, just such a

service as the capitalist wants, and he has to offer just such a

service as they want, namely, wages: let the two parties come to a

free and fair agreement on the terms of their exchange; let each

workman by all means make the very best terms he can, insisting to the

last penny on all he can get elsewhere, for the value of his service

is determined, as other values are determined, by what it will bring:

let the employer do just the same on his side, and so let a fair

bargain for the time present be struck. This is a very good kind of

_striking_, and the more intelligence and skill and self-respect a

workman has, the better prepared he is to strike the bargain and

secure his just due by and for himself alone; and this gives a good

chance for every man who has any peculiar gift, who may have surpassed

his fellows in diligence and skill, to secure a proportionate reward

now and to go on higher in future; all this gives opportunity for

_diversity of relative advantage_, which, as we have seen, lies at the

basis of all exchange, which itself starts in individualism and

naturally proceeds in a still higher individualism to the end. This is

the only way for a laborer of talent and diligence to secure fully

what belongs to _him_ as a man and a workman. If he cannot get from a

given employer what he thinks he ought to get, what he thinks the

service is worth in another market, let him exercise his perfect right

to quit and go elsewhere. All this is fair and aboveboard and

individual and progressive.

Everybody knows that there is a kind of _striking_ now in vogue wholly

different from this, in that it brings a sort of compulsion into play.

_A fair bargain should be broken, if at all, just as it was made, with

the two parties face to face, and everybody else aloof; and a new

bargain should be made, just as the old one was, with the two parties

face to face, and everybody else aloof._ But a combination among

workmen to leave an employer in the lurch, and especially a

combination which forces into its ranks by cajoling or menaces those

who are unwilling to join it, as is so commonly the case in Strikes,

is not only contrary to the inmost nature of a bargain, but is also of

itself a sort of confession of the injustice of the claim. If the

claim be just so far as _all_ the individuals are concerned, there is

no occasion to extort it. If the value of the service rendered by each

be equal to the sum demanded, and especially if this can be obtained

elsewhere, which is the only gauge of the value of any service

anywhere, there is no need of conference and combination and

conspiracy. Of course, this radical argument against Strikes implies

that employers of that grade have not entered into a combination not

to hire dissatisfied laborers from other establishments; if they have,

then the agreement can be turned with equal force against the

employers themselves, for _they_ are resorting to means outside the

nature of a bargain, means of the same nature as a Strike. Let, then,

each workman tell his employer the present facts just as they are, and

if this appeal prove ineffective to secure his commercial right, let

him go quickly where he can get the most for his service. That this is

not done, that means of the nature of a threat are brought to bear

upon the employer, that the justice of the claim is not relied on in a

case where more than anywhere else justice can enforce itself, that

free and full explanations are not had, that no notice is given, that

great damage is expected by their action to accrue to the

employer,--all this seems to forget that the transaction between

employers and employed is a case of pure exchange, a simple bargain of

one service against another service.

The above is the universal and fundamental objection to Strikes. _The

remedy for economical evils, real or supposed, must ever be found in

economical considerations._ The strong but foolish tendency of the

times is to mix up things that are quite distinct; to try to apply to

the evils of Trade the rules of Morals, which is a useless task; to

appeal to Politics in matters of pure Bargain; and to resort to Force

to cure the evils that flow from the wholly voluntary action of

individuals. This is like the doctor who would cure bodily ailments by

mental and spiritual recipes. It has all the absurdities of the late

famous "Mind-cure." The mind is indeed higher than the body, but

bodily maladies must be treated as such, or the patient will die; the

imperatives of Ethics are certainly superior to the profitables of

Economics, but the latter are well able to take care of themselves on

their own ground; Religion is loftier than Morals, but it becomes a

very poor substitute for morals in the daily routine of life.

_Similia similibus curantur._ Economical evils can only be removed by

a better Economics better applied. Strikes are an outside and

irrelevant remedy for low Wages.

A bad principle works badly in practice of course; the principle that

underlies strikes is so opposed to the fundamental nature of exchange,

that we might know beforehand that it would work badly; and as a

matter of fact, it does work badly enough both upon employers and

employed, because strikes are certain to embitter the relations

between the two classes, which ought always to be cordial and free,

and especially, because strikes must work on the minds of the

capitalist to lessen the Wages-Portion for the next industrial cycle.

Fortunately, we possess authentic statistics gathered about Strikes by

the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, and published in

detail in the Report of December, 1888. The information given is exact

in relation to five principal States, and approximate in relation to

the other parts of the United States. We will copy first the table

exhibiting the Losses in six years on account of Strikes of both

Employers and Employees, and the outside assistance received by the

latter:--

EMPLOYEES' LOSS AND ASSISTANCE AND EMPLOYERS' LOSS IN THE FIVE

PRINCIPAL STATES ON ACCOUNT OF STRIKES AND

LOCK-OUTS FOR 1881-1886.

+------------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+

+------------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+

| Illinois, | $6,636,208 | $238,452 | $5,251,829 |

| Massachusetts, | 4,200,489 | 266,708 | 1,970,881 |

| New York, | 8,581,784 | 726,696 | 5,966,421 |

| Ohio, | 6,378,757 | 415,568 | 2,793,427 |

| Pennsylvania, | 12,890,346 | 781,338 | 3,897,757 |

| United States, | 13,127,139 | 895,795 | 10,821,238 |

| +-------------+------------+-------------+

| THE UNITED STATES, | $51,814,723 | $3,324,557 | $30,701,553 |

+------------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+

The large percentage of establishments represented in this table, in

which the strikes were ordered by labor-organizations, is particularly

noticeable. In New York 94.26% of the establishments had strikes which

were ordered, in Illinois 83.96%, in Massachusetts 81.91%, and in the

United States 82.24%. The "walking-delegate" so-called became the

principal personage in all these strikes; he brought the orders to the

men from the "central-union" of their special organization, and became

in most cases the sole means of communication between the two. "_You

are the strike_," exclaimed the Lord Mayor of London the other day to

Mr. Burns, the walking delegate of the dock-laborers now on strike in

that city. That the daily bread and home comforts of tens of thousands

of men depend on the secret and irresponsible decision of a little

knot of agitators, sending out their verbal and often ambiguous

written orders by a walking-delegate or two, is one of the

monstrosities of Strikes often witnessed in the United States. The

laborers sometimes do not know even the causes of the strike. There

has been great want and suffering for three months past among the

striking coal-miners in the State of Illinois; and a brief editorial

in the "Springfield Republican" of Aug. 24, 1889, describes the state

of things so justly, that we quote it:--

"Ex-Congressman William L. Scott, who owns coal mines at Spring

Valley, Ill., has offered to pay 75 cents a ton for mining to the

strikers who in their destitution have been subsisting for some time

on public charity. This is 2-1/2 cents a ton more than the miners have

asked for, but it is coupled with the condition that each man must

seek work individually and not through some outside union committee.

Although the men have been reduced to a state of abject want it is

said the conditions imposed will prevent a settlement. In that case we

may conclude that a few well-fed walking delegates are acting for the

men and not they for themselves. It is a strange time to quibble over

such a matter. The worst and most oppressive enemy of labor is the

parasite who lives upon its distresses."

A strike is a state of war, and like war, there are two parties to it,

and it cannot be expected that the party of the other part should not

strike back. The "_lock-out_" is the counter-stroke of the capitalist

to the "_strike_" of the laborer. Lock-outs, however, are

comparatively infrequent. Capitalists, as a rule, are conservative and

forbearing. Massachusetts took the statistics of lock-outs as

carefully as those of strikes, and the following is the table:--

+------------------------+------------+------------+------------+

+------------------------+------------+------------+------------+

| Illinois, | $533,497 | $5,374 | $347,065 |

| Massachusetts, | 952,310 | 136,626 | 550,675 |

| New York, | 3,150,123 | 392,316 | 845,262 |

| Ohio, | 848,829 | 231,870 | 493,100 |

| Pennsylvania, | 712,956 | 77,038 | 237,735 |

| United States, | 1,960,002 | 262,814 | 988,424 |

| +------------+------------+------------+

| THE UNITED STATES, | $8,157,717 | $1,106,038 | $3,462,261 |

+------------------------+------------+------------+------------+

Like war too, strikes and lock-outs are wasteful and demoralizing to

both parties. Why should there be a resort to force to settle an

industrial dispute any more than to settle any other private dispute?

Will such a resort be long tolerated by public opinion in civilized

countries? The Legislature of Massachusetts in 1886 provided for a

State Board of Arbitration for the settlement of differences between

employers and employees. The statute was crude in some respects, and

the basis of it not very firmly fixed in the nature of things, but the

Bureau of Labor reports that it has been justified by the results in

its practical application during the short time of its operation. The

broad truth is, that the value of Commodities and the value of Credits

is now left to the safe action of Demand and Supply under free

competition in every country in Christendom: why should not the value

of Services be left to the same safe and inexorable action?

Governments gave up long ago all idea of regulating directly or

indirectly the prices of merchandise and the prices of commercial

claims of all kinds: will they not shortly give up also all idea of

regulating directly or indirectly the rates of Wages? They will. The

three kinds of things bought and sold are on an exact level in the

nature of things, so far as Government is concerned. Wages are

abundantly able to take care of themselves in the ordinary way, as

goods do, and stocks and bonds; and an enlightened Public Opinion is

fast coming to see, that a man's personal service rendered needs no

more the oversight of the State in its sale than his horse, or note of

hand at interest. Strikes, and lock-outs, and all extraordinary courts

or boards to settle quarrels between a labor-giver and a labor-taker

as such, since it is a case of ordinary buying and selling, are

foredoomed to pass out in the good time coming.

Towards this good end works strongly the common _futility_ of strikes

and lock-outs. Carroll D. Wright, chief of the Bureau of Labor in

Massachusetts, now the head of the National Bureau of Labor, in his

State Report for 1880, gave a succinct account of all strikes in that

State from their beginning in 1830. They were 159 in all, of which 109

were unsuccessful, 18 apparently successful, 16 compromised, 6 partly

successful, and 10 "result unknown." In Great Britain during the year

1878, there occurred 277 strikes, of which 256 were failures, 17 were

compromised, and only 4 were successful. The following table taken

from the Massachusetts Report of 1888, gives on a broad scale the

results of Strikes in the United States for six years:--

GENERAL SUMMARY OF STRIKES IN FIVE PRINCIPAL STATES FOR 1881-1886.

_Percentages._

+--------------+-------+---------+-------+-----+--------+-------+-------+

+--------------+-------+---------+-------+-----+--------+-------+-------|

| izations, | 83.96 | 81.91 | 94.26 |71.21| 61.59 | 73.06 | 82.24 |

| ments closed | 70.70 | 79.10 | 51.01 |81.21| 70.11 | 57.57 | 60.13 |

| | | | | | | | |

| wages, | 5.35 | 6.23 | 2.50 |20.73| 22.65 | 8.61 | 7.77 |

| work, | - | - | 3.86 | - | - | 0.05 | 1.61 |

| of wages, | 41.54 | 35.28 | 39.09 |52.42| 46.97 | 45.01 | 42.32 |

| hours, | 17.85 | 0.50 | 9.37 | 1.85| 1.06 | 4.96 | 7.59 |

| of hours, | 18.35 | 42.71 | 24.31 | 5.32| 5.32 | 17.23 | 19.48 |

| employer, | - | - | 7.32 | - | - | 2.19 | 3.59 |

|Other causes, | 16.91 | 15.28 | 13.55 |19.68| 24.00 | 21.95 | 17.64 |

| | | | | | | | |

|Succeeded, | 54.16 | 35.28 | *51.05|49.44| 32.60 | 42.69 | *46.52|

| partly, | 10.33 | 45.93 | *8.14| 8.87| 17.57 | 17.27 | *13.47|

|Failed, | 35.51 | 18.79 | *40.65|41.69| 49.83 | 40.04 | *39.95|

+--------------+-------+---------+-------+-----+--------+-------+-------+

* In 15 establishments the results were not ascertained.

3. The third popular remedy for low Wages, which has at least the

merit of being in the line of economical considerations, as the other

two are not, is "Co-operation." The interest in this proposed remedy

is much less both in Europe and in the United States than formerly,

owing to the failures that have mostly attended the attempts to put

the scheme into practice, although there have been some remarkable

successes also, particularly in England. The idea of Co-operation is

this, namely, that certain laborers within given classes combine of

their own accord, (1) _either to purchase their necessaries in common

and at wholesale, hence at cheaper rates because avoiding all profits

of the middlemen_; or (2), _more especially to engage in the joint

production of the commodities they are familiar with, the laborers

furnishing the capital also from their little hoards or borrowing it

on the strength of their individual or associated credit, managing the

business themselves, all being co-partners, and of course all sharing

pro rata the entire profits of the concern_.

All this is well; and in countries where laborers have been under

traditional disabilities, it may be in some cases very promotive of

their self-respect, activity, frugality, and general welfare; but any

one can see that no new economic principle is involved in the plan. As

in all other production, so here, there must be (1) capital from some

source, (2) steady and skilful labor, and (3) superintendence or

management of the business. It is at the third point that schemes of

co-operation have mostly broken down. The faculty of good management

is rare; the organizing and executive ability needful to carry through

any scheme of co-operation will not come upon call; if any of the

co-operators chance to possess it, the scheme may succeed, although he

who is conscious of having it will prefer to use it for his own gain

in his own way, to say nothing of the practical impossibility of any

man's working with the same spirit when the gain or loss is to be

largely another's as when it is to be wholly his own; moreover, it has

been well said, "it is impossible _to hire_ commercial genius or the

instincts of a skilful trader"; so that, while there is no trouble

about the workmen uniting the character of capitalist and laborer in

their own persons, and no doubt that they will work harder and more

skilfully while sharing profits as well as receiving wages, it is

still true, that the difficulty of securing a real "captain of

industry," and thus a perfect organization and management of the

whole business, puts the scheme of co-operation out of the question

as a means of raising wages, or promoting the general welfare of

laborers.

In this country, where there is nothing to hinder any laborer from

becoming a capitalist, where the savings-banks are open to the

smallest gains, where nothing is more common than for two or more

workmen to organize a firm to carry on some branch of business, where

most of the present capitalists proper were formerly laborers proper,

and where the shares of most of the joint-stock companies are open to

everybody who has the means to buy them, there is only one

consideration that seems to justify any special jealousy of laborers

as such towards capitalists as such; and that is the fact, that

Legislation, every now and then, sometimes on a small scale and then

on a gigantic one, now by means of corporate charters and then by

other means more indirect and effective, _does confer certain

extraordinary privileges upon capitalists_. So long as capitalists and

laborers rest upon their natural rights and positions, neither can get

any undue advantage of the other; and just so far as each recognizes

their identity of economic interest and the consequent reciprocity of

obligation and effort, the prosperity of each will help build up the

other; but, on the other hand, so far forth as any advantages are

given to capitalists by special laws, either of State or Nation, these

become necessarily unjust to laborers, and ultimately also injurious

to capitalists; and in this case, the laborers, seeing just what it is

that hurts them, _ought to combine together and to strike, not capital

(their best friend), but a piece of perverted legislation (their worst

enemy)_.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] O'Reilly's Poem, at Plymouth, 1889.

[6] Green's Short History of the English People, p. 144.

(i) Lastly, we must note the influence of _Casual Events_ upon wages,