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food which is to supply it must therefore be proportional to the force.*

In short, food consumed in the human body produces motion, just as does the coal consumed in a steam-engine. A given quantity of food and a given quantity of coal, are equally incapable of producing more than a fixed quantity of motion or force.

As the food is to undergo transformation, resulting in motion or force, to be communicated or expended upon the materials, so the latter are to be changed as to form and place. If they were not, they would be let alone.

Both the capitalist and the labourer expect, therefore, to derive their respective shares in the advantages of their partnership, from some division between them of the new thing produced; and, in point of fact, do so, however long may be the series of transformations and exchanges before the division is made. The share of the iron-master in Wales may finally turn up in railroad stocks in Illinois, and that of his workman in a fustian jacket made of Georgia cotton; but both came out of the iron. Whether the miller takes toll out of the grist, or is paid in coin for grinding, or buys wheat and sells flour, comes to the same thing in the end.

If the capitalist takes the risk upon himself, the share in the product which the workman obtains is called wages; and the difference in value between the materials as turned over to the workman, the food, raiment, shelter, &c., furnished to the workman in kind, or commuted in wages, the deterioration of the tools employed, and the finished product, is termed Profits.

If the workman takes the risk upon himself, that share which he gives to the capitalist, in addition to replacing the capital he had borrowed, is called Rent. This word is usually employed to denote the compensation for the use of capital that is incorporated with land. Mr. Ricardo's definition is, "Rent is that portion of the produce of the earth which is paid to the landlord for the use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil;" and he seeks to discriminate it from that portion " paid for the use of the capital which had been employed in ameliorating the quality of the land, and in

* See Liebig on the Phenomena of Motion in Animal Organism.

erecting such buildings as were necessary to secure and preserve the produce."

This definition goes upon the notion of a fundamental difference between capital in land, and in other shapes, which we regard as altogether unfounded. Rent, in Mr. Ricardo's sense of the word, never was paid. Vegetative power, like the other natural agents, is gratuitous. But, without now discussing that point, we shall have occasion to use the word to express the fact we have indicated. When, in the place of borrowing capital in the form in which it is desired for use, money is borrowed, the compensation paid to the lender is denominated interest. It generally includes a premium, sufficient to insure the lender against the estimated risk of not obtaining the return of his principal, as is shown by the lower rates at which governments in high credit can borrow than private individuals. Our definition is intended to exclude any such premium, and to confine the meaning to the remuneration to which the lender is entitled, for having deprived himself of the advantages he might himself have derived from the aid of his capital, in adding to the efficiency of his labour, by the co-operation of the natural agents which it enables him to command.

We now want to know what effect the growth of capital, which we have seen is the result of improvement of tools, has upon the terms of the bargain to be made between the labourer and the capitalist; in other words, upon the proportion which each will respectively take in the product of labour and tools.

Let us suppose a destitute savage to go to another, who has a bow and arrows and a stone axe, and ask what share of the game he shall have, if he takes the bow and hunts, leaving the other to work without intermission at the canoe he is making. The latter offers to give half the game for wages; and if this is demurred to, as unreasonable, the ready answer is, "Chase your game on foot and kill it with a club, if you choose; you will not procure half as much as your wages will come to at my offer." He is forced to accept. The employer, becoming tired of sedentary work at his canoe, in a few days, offers to hunt for both, permitting the other to take the axe and work, on condition that he build a canoe for each. This is to the advantage of the labourer, for he obtains food, and in

process of time will have a canoe for himself, and thus become a capitalist.

Suppose, now, a generation passes away, and copper axes are substituted, or, what is better than these, such an axe as Mr. Bigelow describes as in general use about the houses in Jamaica, for cutting firewood-" in shape, size, and appearance, more like the outer half of the blade of a scythe, stuck into a small wooden handle, than anything else I can compare it to. With this long knife," he continues, "for it is nothing else, I have seen negroes hacking at branches of palm for several minutes, to accomplish what a good wood-chopper, with an American axe, would accomplish at a single stroke." ."* With such an instrument, nevertheless, a man would do more than three times the work that he would with a stone axe. At this stage of the improvement, the son of the first labourer comes to the son of the capitalist, and wishes to hire out to make canoes. The capitalist sees that he can make six canoes in the same time that his father made two, and that if he gets two canoes out of the six, he will obtain twice as much in quantity for the use of his capital as his father did, though he gives the labourer two-thirds of the product of his toil, instead of one-half. But the labourer's twothirds give him four canoes in the same time that his father obtained a single one. His share has increased both in proportion and in quantity; that of the capitalist has also increased in absolute quantity, though it has diminished in relative proportion.

Time rolls on. Mechanical skill increases; implements are improved in shape and quality. The long knife becomes an American axe a tool as superior, for its purposes, to those used in the Old World, as the other weapon of our backwoodsman, the rifle, is to a Queen Anne's musket. The labourer of that day comes to the

* Jamaica in 1850, page 130.

William Vickers, of the firm of Naylor, Nicholson, Vickers & Co., of Sheffield, steel manufacturers of world-wide celebrity, was examined as a witness before the Committee of the House of Commons, on the exportation of machinery, in May, 1841. He testified, "The Americans have got the trade of making felling axes, which is a large one, employing a great deal of labour. We send more steel to make felling axes alone, than we make for all the small tools in England. It is for a plain article, the most mecha

owner of the axe for work. With the improved axe he can do three times the work that was done with that which preceded it. In the time that the former wood-chopper made six canoes, the modern one will make eighteen, and so of everything else that is to be wrought by the axe. If the capitalist, hunting through the account-books of his predecessor, observes that he doubled the quantum of his profit by means of the former improvement in axes, adopts this as a rule, and thinks himself entitled to double it again, he will take four out of the eighteen of the products of the axeman's labour, and leave him fourteen for his wages. If he is tempted to insist upon a larger proportion for the use of his capital, he is restrained by the thought, that it is easier for the labourer to get the improved axe, than it was for his father to procure the poor one: for that poor one enhanced the power of labour and diminished the value of capital. The result is that, at this stage as at the preceding, both the capitalist and the labourer obtain a reward enhanced in quantity, but the proportion of the labourer has advanced and that of the capitalist receded.

The cases we have put represent the capitalist agreeing to make a fixed payment out of the product of the capital which he entrusts to the labourer, and of the mechanical force of the latter. In so doing he runs a risk that the labourer may not exert himself to his full ability, and that the residue after payment of wages, upon which he depends for profits, may be less than he calculates. To insure himself against this contingency, he naturally seeks to bargain for less wages, than he is confident that the earnest and honest exertion of the workman's strength would enable him to pay, without impairing his expected profit. The workman, on the contrary, knowing what he can do, and unwilling to submit to any reduction, prefers to guaranty the profit which the capitalist desires, taking upon himself the risk that the product will leave a margin, broad enough to provide for the wages which the capitalist is afraid to guaranty. The contract thus becomes one of hiring capital. What we have called Profit, and what we have called Rent, are identical; the thing bear

nically and the best constructed little instrument I know; the art being that a man can fell three trees to one, compared with those that are ordinarily made in England."

ing one name or the other, according as it is stipulated or contingenta fixed, determinate profit, which the borrower agrees to pay, being denominated Rent, and a rent dependent in its amount upon good faith and the success of the enterprise, in which capital and labour have associated, being styled Profit. But the substantial fact is, that Rent or Profits, and Wages, are the complements of each other, their sum making up the advantages of an association. The same circumstances which control the proportion going to one, necessarily regulate that going to the other. It can make no difference whether the transaction assume the form of a loan or hiring of labour, or of a loan of capital. The extent to which the co-operation of natural agents, through the medium of machinery, has given labour the capacity to be effective, establishes the point on the scale of facility or cheapness at which it can obtain the ownership or the use of capital; or, what is the converse of the same truth, the dearness of the rate at which capital can obtain its use. If one capitalist will not loan his capital at a rate of compensation which will give the labourer the proportion and amount of wages, to which the increased value of labour at a given stage of progress entitles him, he can obtain it by hiring his labour to another capitalist. And in any supposed conflict of interest that may exist, he has this advantage, that the capital of no individual can take on an accession of value, without being put in combination with labour; on the contrary, some portion of its value oozes from it, by the general progress of improvement and discovery, while labour is not utterly powerless if denied its aid. The one refuses association at the loss of a realized advantage, and of an advantage in posse, the other at the loss only of the future advantage.

We have spoken of the loan of labour. The expression implies that the labourer parts with the use of something, which is to be returned to him. What is it? The waste of muscular fibre, in producing motion, is that which he gives away. The particles of fibre that are thrown off are themselves matter, transformed by the action of the vital principle from the constituents of food, previously consumed. In the final analysis then, it is food that the labourer lends, and which is returned to him. The distinction between man and the ox, and other animals who work with him, is that they

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