wages rise; and the thing which creates the two employers is the existence of increased capital. Every act or policy, therefore, which has the effect of diminishing capital already in existence or of preventing its increase is obviously injurious to the interest of those who live by wages, and if deliberately designed to produce that effect is suicidal irrationality.

Another consideration carries great weight in this matter, and indeed in all the relations between labour and capital, and that is the manner in which capital is created. Except what nature gives as it were to start with, capital is the result of an act of the human will. It is derived from wealth, from commodities already produced, which their owner deliberately resolves not to consume in luxurious enjoyment, but to apply as instruments to the creation of fresh wealth. He saves this wealth by abstaining from the increase of his gratifications, and this is a personal act. It proceeds from a clear motive. The saver wishes to become richer,-to be better off. He makes a sacrifice for the sake of the ulterior object, which he prefers. Obviously in proportion to the strength of the desire will be the amount of the saving; and that desire will necessarily be influenced by the success it can achieve in obtaining the end desired, increase of fortune.

If profits are large, and the opportunities for extending business multiply, the tendency to save gathers strength, and capital rapidly accumulates. But if profits are low and are likely to become lower still, the effort to save is weakened, and the feeling is apt to arise that it is not worth while to lessen present enjoyment for the sake of a small increase of wealth. What policy,

be

then, can be more mischievous for the earners of wages than to discourage by direct hostility the saving of capital? They act directly on the feeling and motive to save by proclaiming the capitalist to be the enemy of the labourer. Yet it is by capital that they live. They are sellers of labour, and it is capital alone which buys it. They have no stronger interest than that the buyers of the article from which they obtain subsistence should many and full of means. To dishearten them and to turn them away from the labour market is the most ruinous of proceedings. If the capital of a nation does not increase, its state must, at the best, be stationary. The labourers cannot raise either their position or their numbers. The desire to save may still survive, but the capital won, and the commodities to give to labourers, will be sent to foreign lands in search of better profit. The mistaken ideas of many unionists may easily drive English buyers of foreign labour to distant countries. They will send out English wealth-goods, be it remembered, not money-to be invested in foreign industry. They will reap a reasonable interest; but the English sellers of labour will have lost buyers and their wealth.

We now reach an element of supreme importance, the nature and quality of the article bought with wages. In every market, and in every exchange, the two fundamental questions always are, what is the kind of thing which is bought, its nature and character; and secondly, how much ought to be given for it? What is its value? The article which an employer intends to purchase with wages is efficient labour, that is, so far as depends on the labourer himself. The expression, efficiency of

labour, has a much wider meaning than the goodness of the work performed by the labourer, but this will come into consideration later. The man who engages to pay wages to another in return for labour, proceeds on the supposition that he will work well; and as Mr William Denny justly observes in his excellent pamphlet on "The Worth of Wages," "round this turns the whole question of our manufacturing prosperity." The employer hires the use of the faculties of mind and body of the labourer,-his bodily strength, his intelligence and skill, and also a particular manner of using them. This is a capital point in the quality of the article purchased; for on the manner of his work the value of the labourer to the man who contracts to give him wages depends. He is a purchaser of good work, and good work turns on the manner of working.

It follows from these facts that moral qualities are understood to be bought in engaging a labourer; care, diligence, honesty of purpose, self-respect, good will, and, what Professor Walker well calls, hopefulness in labour. These qualities are as intentionally purchased in hiring a labourer as beauty of colour is in a silk dress. The presence or absence of these qualities makes the work given in exchange for wages good or indifferent. The goodness and amount of the work performed constitute the worth of wages; and if wages do not obtain their worth, do not receive an equivalent for the money given, the work will at last stop altogether and wages will cease. Happy would it be for the working classes if they grasped the vital truth that labour is bought solely for the sake of what it produces, and that if the man who purchases it does not receive

an amount of good work equal in value to what it cost, he will disappear from the labour market, and the workshop will be closed. This is a truism, no doubt: but truisms are the main-springs of human life and of Political Economy, and are the very things most apt to be forgotten.

The market-value of labour, the quantity of money which an employer ought to give and a labourer to receive, is a problem of supreme interest for every country, but it is also one which is incapable of being pre-determined by science. In the labour, as in every other market, there are endless causes which act on the settlement of the price ultimately reached. Price is fixed experimentally by trial. Each party to the exchange of labour for wages has a desire to satisfy and an effort to make. Each tries to make the satisfaction as large and the effort as small as may be; each avails himself of the circumstances of the market at the time to effect this double purpose. For the purchaser the capital point is the value of the article he buys with wages, the worth of the labour purchased compared with its cost. But it is very important to distinguish carefully between the cost of labour and the rate of wages paid. High wages may easily co-exist with a low cost of labour and very cheap production. The highest paid workman may be, indeed generally is, the cheapest of labourers. Cost of labour is measured by the value of its product; it is high or low according as the results, the work, procured from it possess greater or smaller value. Of this fact the ordinary colonial state furnishes an excellent illustration. In Australia wages are very high, the selling price of the crop extremely small; yet the cost of

fight against and overcome the capacity to increase, and beat down the population into correspondence with the physical conditions of the world. Man himself takes part in the struggle. Ancient nations exposed unneeded infants on the mountain side; eastern nations drop them into lakes; and who can tell how many are the contrivances by which even in England superfluous and troublesome children are got rid of? Other resources derived from man's moral nature are brought to bear on the battle against excess of population. The tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence is discerned, and man does what it is beyond the ability of animals to do. He postpones marriage for a time, until the prospect of being able to support a family fairly dawns upon his mind. This tendency gathers great strength in proportion as young men and women belong to classes that are well off for comfort and social position; fathers counsel prudence, and refuse to help a reckless marriage. In some countries, as in France, the whole population expands slowly, if at all-a fact of enormous economical value to that thriftiest of nations, however it may be explained. In other lands the law interferes with marriage by positive regulations; it forbids marriage until a certain amount of property is exhibited. Habit in others appoints a late age for marriage.

On the other hand legislation may produce mischievous effects on the numbers, and consequently on the well-being of a population. The Poor Law of former days furnishes a striking instance of this misdirected but injurious interference of the law. The Poor Law distributed to every man who was unable to maintain