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the work of a bricklayer, or a bricklayer undertake the smallest casual patch of plastering or of stone-laying, or a carpenter finish a remnant of bricklayer's or mason's work, and if called in to fit a door or set a post, he may not, if he find the space accidentally left too small, remove so much as one loose brick, but must wait for the appropriate artisan to be summoned.

Prohibiting a workman, where an assistant is usually required, to be his own assistant, for never so small a job or short a time, so that a plasterer, called to a piece of work where an assistant would not be actively employed for one eighth of the time, must still come attended by his "homo," who, if he can not be kept usefully busy, will, for the good of the craft, remain dignifiedly lazy during the whole operation.

Prohibiting any one to be known as an exceptionally good workman in his trade; against walking fast to the place of work when in the employer's time; against carrying more than a certain load, as eight brick at a time in Leeds, ten brick in London, or twelve brick in Liverpool.

Prohibiting use to be made or advantage taken of natural agents, of improved machinery, or of special local facilities. Thus we have regulations against brick being wheeled in a barrow instead of being carried in a hod, for no other reason alleged than that brick can be wheeled more easily than carried; against brick being made by machinery or stone dressed by machinery, so that inventions. of vast capability remain almost unused in England; against stone being dressed, even by hand, at the quarry where it is soft and can be easily worked.

Prohibiting with more than Chinese intolerance the use within small districts, arbitrarily circumscribed, of material produced outside, so that brick can not be carried into Manchester from brickyards distant only four miles without the certainty of a strike; prohibiting an employer from taking a job outside the place of his own residence, unless he shall take with him at least one half the workmen to

be employed; prohibiting members to "work for any gentleman, at any job whatever, who finds his own materials or does not employ a regular master in the trade to find the same;" and, finally, making war at every stage upon "piece-work."

It is not to be understood that any one society has adopted all these rules, or that all societies have adopted any one of them; but, to a very great extent, rules like those recited, and many others quite as minutely restrictive, are enforced by the whole striking-power of the trade.

All such regulations and restrictions must clearly be judged by the principle which has been applied to State legislation on similar subjects. If they can be shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, to be correspondent to human infirmities in such a way that labor, on the whole and in the long run, has actually a freer resort to its best market by reason of them, then they stand justified on economical grounds. But if they are not thus required to correct liabilities which threaten the mobility of labor, they must be pronounced as mischievous as they are irritating and insulting. And this liability and strong proclivity of associations of workingmen to intermeddle and dictate concerning the methods and courses of industry must be accepted as a valid, practical argument from human nature against trades-unions.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

THROUGHOUT the foregoing discussions I have written un der a constant sense of my accountability as a teacher of political economy. I have adduced no causes, recognized no objects, but such as I deemed to be strictly economical. No ethical or social considerations have moved me consciously in the composition of this work. Causes have, it is true, been here adduced which are not commonly recognized as economical, but it has only been where reasons could be shown sufficient, in my judgment, for attributing to these causes, which are perhaps primarily ethical or social, a clear potency within the field of industry, affecting either the production or the distribution of wealth; for I hold that it can not be questioned that whatever affects either of these is, in just so far, an economical cause. Thus, sympathy for labor (pp. 362–372), if it serves in any degree to make competition on the side of the laboring class more active and persistent; if it takes any thing from the activity and persistency with which the employing class use the means in their power to beat down wages, or lengthen the hours of work, or introduce young children into painful and protracted labor, becomes, in just so far as it has such an effect, a strictly economical cause, to be recognized, and, so far as may be, its force measured, by the writer on the distribution of wealth. The economist recognizes indolence (pp. 174, 175), the indisposition to labor, as an economical cause, holding men back from the acquisition of wealth which they might obtain but for the force of this principle. Why is not public opinion, restraining men, as it so largely does, from the acquisition of wealth by means held to be dishonorable or oppressive to the weaker classes of the community, also and equally to be recognized as an economical cause?

I regret that this treatise should be so strongly controversial in form; but the fact is, certain doctrines which I deem to be wholly unfounded have become so widely spread that one can make no progress, by so much as a step, towards a philosophy of wages without encountering them. These doctrines are:

1st (pp. 136–140). That there is a wage-fund irrespective of the numbers and industrial quality of the laboring population, constituting the sole source from which wages can at any time be drawn.

2d (pp. 161-165). That competition is so far perfect that the laborer, as producer, always realizes the highest wages which the employer can afford to pay, or else, as consumer, is recompensed in the lower price of commodities for any injury he may chance to suffer as producer.

3d (pp. 243–246). That, in the organization of modern industrial society, the laborer and the capitalist are together sufficient unto production, the actual employer of labor being regarded as the capitalist, or else as the mere stipendiary agent and creature of the capitalist, receiving a remuneration which can properly be treated like the wages of ordinary labor.

These doctrines I have found it necessary to controvert; and in so doing have not cared to mince matters or pick phrases. For any excess of controversial zeal I shall easily be justified, if I have substantiated the positions I have taken; on the other hand, if I have been unduly presumptuous in assailing doctrines sanctioned by such high authority, a little too much harshness in argument will not add appreciably to my offence.

It may, perhaps, be well to guard against misconstruction on a single point. In getting rid of the wage-fund, we have not reached the result that wages can be increased at any time or to any amount whatever. We have merely cast aside a false measure of wages. Wages still have their measure and their limits, and no increase can take place without a strictly economical cause.

Wages can not be larger than the product except by force of pre-existing contract. Wages must, in the long run, be less than the product by enough to give the capitalist his due returns, and the employer his living-profits.

nate.

What then has been effected by doing away with the wage-fund? We have shown (Chapter VIII.) that the remuneration of hired labor finds its measure not in a past whose accumulations have been plundered by class legislation and wasted by dynastic wars, but in the present and the future, always larger, freer, and more fortuIf capital furnishes the measure of wages, then that measure is derived from the past, such as it has been, and no increase of energy, intelligence, and enterprise on the part of the laboring class can add to, as no failure on their part can take from, their present remuneration, which is determined wholly by the ratio existing between capital and population. If production furnishes the measure of wages, as is here maintained, then the wages class are entitled to the immediate benefit of every improvement in science and art, every discovery of resources in nature, every advance in their own industrial character (Chapter IX.). Surely it is not a small matter that the laborer should find the measure of his wages in the present and the future, rather than in the past!

But that portion of this treatise on which I should be disposed most strongly to insist, as of extended consequence in the philosophy of wages, is the doctrine that if the wage laborer does not pursue his interest, he loses his interest (Chapter X.) in opposition to the view so generally maintained by economists, that if the wage laborer does not seek his interest, his interest will seek him; that economical forces are continually operating to relieve and repair the injuries of labor; and, specifically, that all sums taken in excessive profits, or for the excessive remuneration of capital, whether through combina

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