fact that his labor must also add something to the dividend. He no longer contributes more, far more to production than the cost of his own subsistence, as in an advancing state of industry, before natural agents are fully occupied and employed. He no longer contributes as much as he requires. But he still contributes something, and that something, however small it may be, helps to swell the amount that can be paid in wages.' See the remarks by Prof. Senior on the possibilities of English agriculture, quoted on p. 97. CHAPTER X. THE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION: COMPETITION: THE DIFFUSION THEORY: THE ECONOMICAL HARMONIES. HAVING discussed much at length certain principles in the production of wealth, in that connection showing the falsity of the current doctrine of a wages-fund, we come now to the problem of distribution, wherein we may look to find the true philosophy of wages. But is there a problem of distribution? Can there be a philosophy of wages? Certainly if we exclude the question of rent, the orthodox1 economists have scarcely recognized a problem of distribution, and were it not for the space taken for refuting the opinions of heretical writers, what the text books have to say on the subject of wages would be very little. How, indeed, can there be a philosophy of wages, when the doctrine of a wages-fund prevails? If the question of wages is simply a question in long-division, what need to take much space to illustrate the operations of "one of the four fundamental rules of arithmetic." 2 Population being given, there is no philosophy of wages. The whole question of the well-being of the laboring-class is, then, reduced to a question of population. Here philosophy becomes possible; but the question of population does not belong in the department of distribution at all. 1 "L'économie politique que j'appellerais volontiers orthodoxe. semblait être définitivement constituée, Comme l'église de Rome, elle avait son Credo."-E. de Laveleye, Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15 1875. 2 See p. 143. |