matter of fact, impracticable: and, therefore, they have no right to share all the profits. In many cases where expensive machinery is employed, like in cotton mills, the machinery must be kept going at any cost, and in a period of depression masters work at a heavy daily loss, simply to prevent the machinery deteriorating, and the workpeople from starving, and the necessity of breaking up their establishment. Now if the workpeople devour all the profits in time of prosperity, where are the funds to come from to maintain them in a period of depression? If the bees devour all the honey in summer, what is to feed them in winter? Hence it is plainly to the real advantage of the workpeople themselves that they should not devour all the profits as soon as they are made. By allowing them to accumulate in the hands of the masters they are in reality laying up an insurance fund for themselves for a rainy day. Now this portion of the price of the product is a superior limit which wages cannot permanently exceed. It is a cast iron limitthe result of the inexorable law of Demand and Supply which imposes a superior limit on wages. Now we may observe that there are two kinds of labour in commerce, one of which is necessary to produce the profit, the other which is not. In a merchant's office, or in a bank, the clerks, servants, messengers, porters, &c., contribute nothing to the success of the business. Such labour as theirs is subject to the simple rule of Demand and Supply. They have no shadow of a claim to demand a share of the profits; and if the heads of the establishment give them a bonus in a successful year, that is mere grace and favour. So the servants of a railway company, engine drivers, guards, porters, and clerks, contribute nothing to the success of the enterprise. Their labour is a mere commodity, which must be paid for whether the line pays any dividend or not. They have no more claim to have a share of the profits than if the company buys engines and carriages from another company, that company would have a claim to be paid for their engines and carriages according to the profits the railway company was earning. Such persons have no more claim to a share of the profits than domestic servants would have to higher wages if their master were successful in business. But the labour of operatives, miners, and artisans, stands on a different footing altogether. Their labour, their skill, is indispensably necessary, and conduces directly to obtain the product and the profit. Their labour may justly be styled co-operative with that of the master: they are in reality quasi-partners with the capitalist in obtaining the profits, and without them the profits could not be made, and the master obtains a distinct profit out of the labour of such workmen which he can estimate in a very different sense to that of the labour of the other class. The claim of such workmen to a share of the profit which is distinctly due to their work, stands on a totally different footing from that of the other class. It is now pretty generally recognised that such workmen have an equitable claim to a certain share of the profit which is the result of the joint efforts of the master and workmen though what that share should be, and how they are to obtain it, is a very different matter: moreover, it is far easier to determine in some kinds of business than in others. : 63. Mr. Brassey says that "there is a maximum limit above which wages cannot rise, and a minimum below which they cannot fall. The minimum is determined by the cost of living according to the standard adopted by the people. Wages cannot long continue below the amount necessary for the support of the labourer and his family. On the other hand, wages cannot long continue so high as to deprive the employer of a fair return upon his capital, and a reasonable reward for the application of his time and abilities to the conduct of his business. If wages exceed the maximum limit determined by the necessity of fulfilling the conditions enumerated, capital will no longer be embarked in undertakings from which no adequate return can be obtained." What Mr. Brassey says of the superior limit of wages is true; but what he says of the inferior limit is subject to great qualifications. While no power on earth can raise wages above the superior limit, which is determined by the inexorable law of Demand and Supply, the inferior limit is, unfortunately, very elastic. If there is only a certain amount of work to be done, and workmen persist in crowding into it, nothing can prevent their outbidding one another and lowering wages: and as their wages go down under this competition, so must their scale of living deteriorate. Was it because potatoes were so cheap that 1 Work and Wages, ch, 3. Irish wages were so low? Certainly not: it was the excessive population of Ireland, whose numbers were multiplied by a vicious system of small holdings, created for political purposes, and the absence of an effective poor-law, and the deficiency of employment for them, that compelled them to resort to potatoes for sustenance, and we all know the consequences. So that, even if it were true, this law could not take effect until the very lowest and cheapest food that would support human life, were discovered. To say that scale of living regulates wages is only true when the law of Demand and Supply is called in to aid it, and means be taken to limit the numbers of workmen, so that they can enforce their demand for wages to afford them superior food. There must be found some method of removing the superfluous numbers. In China, as is well known, infanticide is practised to an enormous extent babies are destroyed with no more compunction than young kittens and puppies. In many continental States the most rigorous legal restrictions are placed on marriages; while in other countries emigration is the sovereign remedy. 64. A passionate cry, however, has gone up from many working men that human flesh and blood should not be treated like dead and senseless commodities, by the cold inflexible laws of Demand and Supply. They, and many of their self-appointed advocates, maintain that they have an absolute right to have such wages as will sustain themselves and their families in comfort, or, at least, that the State is bound to provide work for them. They abuse the science of Political Economy because it simply explains certain inevitable laws under which they live, and whose influence they cannot escape from. The science of Economics, or Political Economy, is not the cause of these laws, it simply explains them, as they exist. To vituperate Economics on account of human misfortunes is just as absurd as to vituperate the science of Mechanics because if a man were to stand under a falling house or mountain it would crush him; or to vituperate the science of Chemistry because if a man were to take a dose of arsenic or prussic acid it would kill him; or if he were to stand on a barrel of gunpowder it might explode and blow him to pieces; or to vituperate the science of Medicine because a man may die of a fever. Mechanics, Chemistry, and Medicine are not the causes of these human calamities; they only investigate their causes, and endeavour to discover the remedies applicable to them. So Economics is not the cause of human misery; it only investigates its causes, and points out the appropriate remedy by which it can be alleviated, so far as is consistent with the nature of things. But men treat Economics as they do Fortune "Quest' è colei, che tanto è posta in croce Pur da color, che le dovrian dar lode, Ma ella s'è beata, e ciò non ode."1 "This is she who is so execrated by those who ought rather to give her praise, wrongfully repaying her with curses and malediction. But she is blessed, and heeds not what they say." If only a full and true picture of the evils which erroneous doctrines and practices in Economics have inflicted upon the human race could be presented, men would hail Economics as beneficent a science as Medicine. For, like Medicine, it arose from the study of the calamities and miseries of men, and its business is to explain their causes and point out the remedy. 65. The doctrine that human beings should not be subject to the usual law of Demand and Supply, and that every workman is entitled to have work or wages found for him sufficient to enable him to live and bring up his family in comfort, is a very specious one, and, under the name of the droit au travail, has been very widespread among our neighbours across the channel. It has been tried there many times, but always with the most disastrous results, as we have shewn elsewhere.2 Experience and reason, however, shew that it is entirely erroneous. It is not men who are purchased, but their labour: and their labour is a commodity subject to exactly the same laws of Value as all other commodities. If a Shakespeare, a Macaulay, or a Scott, were set to do the work of a copying clerk, they would not be paid as Shakespeare, Macaulay, or Scott, but for the work of a copying clerk. If the rule could be applied to labour, it must be also applied to commodities. For how is Labour paid? Out of the price of the commodity. If a labourer offers the produce of his labour for sale, it is the demand for the commodity which gives value to his labour. Or if he is paid wages to produce a commodity, the 1 Dante. Inferno, c. 7, 91. 2 Dictionary of Political Economy. Art.: Ateliers Nationaux. master only pays him those wages because he expects that there will be a demand for the commodity; and he can only pay him wages in proportion to the price he expects to obtain for the commodity. Hence we see what a palpable absurdity the Ricardo-Mill doctrine is, that Demand for commodities is not a demand for labour! To say, therefore, that a certain price should be fixed for labour, is as much as to say that a certain price should be fixed for commodities. An error, indeed, which long prevailed, but which is now completely exploded. If, therefore, the price of commodities is left exclusively to be governed by the law of Demand and Supply, it follows as a necessary and inevitable consequence that the price of labour must be so too: for it is the expected price of the product which is the sole inducement to pay wages, and regulates their amount. But, in fact, if the droit au travail be admitted in principle at all, it cannot be restricted to handicraftsmen. If the shoemaker is entitled to call on the State to provide him with shoes to make, when there are no feet to wear them; if the mason is entitled to call upon the State to employ him to build houses, when there is no one to live in them; if the tailor can call upon the State to pay him to make endless coats, when there are no backs to be covered why, the same law is good for the lawyer, the doctor, the artist, the author, the editor. Every man who chooses to adopt the law as a profession should have a certain number of briefs deposited by the State every morning on his breakfast table every painter should be commissioned to paint endless Madonnas: every sculptor should be employed to produce perpetual Apollos: every author should have a certain number of copies of his work ordered by the State, which criminals, perhaps, might be sentenced to read: every editor should have a certain number of copies of his paper ordered by the State: though it might be somewhat of a puzzle to apply this rule to medical men and surgeons, as it is not easy to see how the State could provide patients and broken limbs at will. The rule that is good for one class is good for all classes: it is quite absurd at the present day to suppose that the various classes of society can be governed by different special laws. The fallacy which pervades the French theory of the droit au travail is manifest. It demands that work shall be found for the workmen of the nature they are accustomed to. Now, why is it |