These difficulties and intricacies do not belong to the principles of the Science of buying and selling, which are in the main clear and certain in their action, but are incidents of determining in certain cases what that is, which is bought and sold. Parties in interest in all kinds of buying and selling are sometimes compelled to go to the courts in order to have the Law decide what their respective rights are as buyers and sellers; but this is no fault of Political Economy as a science, or of trading as an art; two men in all cases make their own bargain, according to their own estimate of the respective rendering and receiving of each; if the uncertainties of language, the misconception on the part of one or both of the terms agreed upon, and the misapprehension of some of the circumstances of the case, breed confusion and litigation, all this cannot be justly charged to the science of Political Economy.
Nevertheless, it is into these incidental intricacies and uncertainties, that Henry George's now famous theory of landed rents and the taxation of them, strikes its roots. Instead of building his structure upon firm and open ground, so that thoughtful men can see that his basis is solid and scientific, Mr. George dashes at once into a thicket and lays his foundations with quickness and assurance where all is dark and doubtful, or at best where all is rather incidental than fundamental and demonstrable, and pretty soon displays a superstructure that appears attractive both without and within, through whose airy halls he knows how to conduct to their delight the credulous and discontented, and on whose walls hang plausible pictures calculated to invite and hold the attention of the masses. Let the perfect integrity and rhetorical ability of Mr. George be freely conceded; let it be freely conceded also, that he teaches in his books and lectures a great deal of vastly important industrial truth in a popular way so as to accomplish great good, such, for example, as the imperative need of greater simplicity in taxation, and the indisputable right of the people to their liberty in buying and selling; yet it must at the same time be owned, that he has never yet found out exactly what Value is in general, consequently what are the causes of value in lands, and what are the nature and grounds of Rent. Something more of patient and radical analysis at the outset, and of logical and scientific unfolding afterwards, would have made Henry George one of the chief benefactors of his age.
(b) It is also very easy to see, that the current price of produce, that is, what is gotten in return for the sale of what is gotten out of the land-parcels, must have a dominant influence upon what can be paid as rent for the use of the parcels. Unless the return from the produce be sufficient to reward at current rates the present labor and capital employed upon the parcel, the parcel will not continue to be cultivated at all, otherwise men would act without a motive for action, which they never do; unless, therefore, the price of produce be more than high enough to repay current wages and profits, there will be nothing left for Rent; and, consequently, the amount of the rent that can continue to be paid for lands will be the difference between the going price of what is produced from them and the current expenses of cultivating them. Here, as everywhere else within the domain of Exchange, Competition exerts its beneficent action. If one dealer, or ten, endeavors to put a price upon the produce more than enough to pay current wages and profits with a fair margin for the diminishing rate of rent, there are a plenty of others, dealers in the same grade of produce, who will be content with a fair return for present and past expenditure of labor and capital; and the action of these will effectually debar the others from exorbitant rates. The price of produce, accordingly, under free competition, is the divinely appointed regulator of landed rents. It regulates also, though more indirectly, the current rates of wages and profits in agriculture.
Very different from this is Ricardo's doctrine of Rent. He makes everything turn on the Cost of Production of the Produce, which is Effort, ignoring the ever-varying demands for the produce, which is Desire. His doctrine, too famous and too long received for us to pass by in this connection, though now superannuated, was for substance, this: there are some lands in every country whose produce just repays the expenses of cultivation, and consequently yields no margin for rent; and the cost of production on these rentless and poorest lands under cultivation, will determine the price of the produce; and as there can be but one price in the same market, the produce raised on more fertile land will be sold for the same price, and this price, besides paying the cost of cultivation, will yield a rent rising higher according as the land is more fertile; so that the rent paid on any land is always a measure of the excess of productiveness of that land over the least productive land under paying cultivation; and therefore, an increased demand for food in consequence of increased population, and the higher price resulting, will force cultivation down upon still poorer soils, or compel a higher culture for less remunerative returns on the old soils, according to the law of diminishing returns, which in either case will raise the rents on all the soils above that grade that just repays the expenses of cultivation; so that it is the sole interest of landlords, as such, that population should be dense and food high, their interest being directly antagonistic to that of the other classes of the community.
(c) Finally, in this connection, it is easy enough to see, what were the motives on the part of the landlords, and what were the results on the part of the masses, of Great Britain, in putting on and keeping on the infamous Corn Laws, so-called, which were repealed forever in 1846. The Corn Laws forbade the importation of foreign cereals under heavy pecuniary penalties. The simple purpose of the landlords then governing England was to raise the price of their grain by shutting off Competition of foreigners by means of these prohibitory tariff-taxes. It was Protectionism pure and simple. It was designed to raise the price of bread to the masses of their countrymen, and often did raise it to the point of their starvation. But we have just seen, that the higher the price of the produce, the wider the margin for Rent for the lands that produce it. The Corn Laws of England enriched the landlords at the expense of all other classes and to the starvation of many of the poor. As has been well said, this was the most successful of all the many expedients that have been tried, "to fertilize the rich man's land by the sweat of the poor man's brow." The words of Daniel O'Connell, spoken Sept. 28, 1843, in his parliamentary fight against the high-tariff Corn Laws, were surfeited with truth and righteousness: "But what is the meaning of 'Protection'? It means an additional sixpence for each loaf; that is the Irish of it. If the landlord had not the protection, the loaf would sell for a shilling, but if he has protection, it will sell for one and sixpence. Protection is the English for sixpence; and what is more, it is the English for an extorted sixpence. The real meaning of 'Protection,' therefore, is robbery,—robbery of the poor by the rich."
At the present moment and for twenty-five years past, the public laws of the United States ostensibly relating to Taxes, have had an immense influence upon the value and rents of the agricultural lands of the country to depress them; because these laws have put up nearly or wholly impassable barriers to the coming in of those foreign goods, against which the farmers would naturally and profitably and inevitably have sold their surplus agricultural produce; by destroying the foreign market for farm products, these laws do in effect destroy a large part of the value of the farms of the country, and of what would otherwise be the rentals of a part of them; the Constitution of the country expressly forbids any taxation whatever of Exports, but these laws have precisely the same effect on the value of farm products if they were themselves forbidden to be exported, because those goods for which these would be otherwise exchanged for a profit are forbidden to be imported. A market for products is products in market. Thus these wretched laws lower the price of farm products, and consequently the value of farms and of their rents, and impoverish the farmers who are nearly one-half of the entire population of the country.
While these paragraphs are being written, comes the intelligence of the formation of the "North American Salt Company," whose purpose is in their own language "to unify and systematize the salt interests of the United States and Canada," and to this end "arrangements have been completed for the purchase and control of nearly all the existing salt properties of the North American continent." As this is a fair instance out of some thousands, in which a tariff-tax has the designed effect to lift or lower values which deeply concern the people, let us look at it for a moment. On the average of the past twenty-five years the tariff-tax on salt has in general doubled the cost of that necessary of life to the whole people of the United States. When Canada had no such tax, American makers of it sold salt sometimes to the Canadians 40% less than they would sell it to their own countrymen. On the basis of this United States tariff-tax (it would never have been dreamed of without it) this new company comes forward with a scheme of international monopoly to control in their own interest the price of a prime necessity of life. They propose to issue stock and bonds to the amount of $15,000,000, with which to buy up "the existing salt properties"; and they frankly avow in the prospectus from which we are quoting, that profits of $2,000,000 a year on their capital are justified by the present outlook. Whence are these immense profits to come? Out of the pockets of the masses of the American people bound hand and foot in the meshes of a legal monopoly, which they themselves allow themselves to be ensnared in! In a similar but more outrageous way, are bound up at the present moment in the secret so-called "Trusts" about forty more of the necessaries of life; each one of which, unless it be the "Standard Oil Trust," has its footing in a so-called "protective" tariff-tax, and would collapse instantly on the repeal of that!
It was necessary in order to complete our study of the second class of material commodities, namely, those produced from valuable and rentful lands, to glance in passing at the frequently disturbing effect on these, aside from their cost of production, of sinister laws plausibly imposed upon an unsuspicious people in the interest and at the instance of a privileged few.
3. It only remains in this chapter, devoted to the discussion of material Commodities in their three economic classes, to conclude with a glance at the third class, namely, those material valuables that are obtained from free and unowned sources, such as masts cut in the wilds of America on both oceans two and three hundred years ago, and fish caught on the Banks of Newfoundland, and furs gathered to such profit in the north by the Hudson's Bay Company, and salt evaporated in the tropics by a free sun from old ocean's brine.
These, and all such things as these, have a cost of production determined only by the cost of present labor and capital, and consequently a grade of value determined only by present Demand and Supply, unentangled for the most part by questions of rent and prior claim and taxation and nationality. All these things, accordingly, are relatively cheap, except as the element of Scarcity, and on that account of strong Desire, may sometimes come in to enhance the value. No man can tell the time exactly when French fishermen from the coasts of Brittany ventured over to the Banks of Newfoundland in their frail barks for the abundant cod in those waters, and went back home again at the close of the season freighted with plenty of a free and cheap food for their families and countrymen; or when it was that rude men calling themselves English followed these in their western track for the same general purposes, to become thereby hardy seamen on deeper seas, such as those who gained long afterwards the naval victories of Nelson; and we have all read in the fascinating pages of Irving the ventures and adventures of John Jacob Astor, the attraction of free furs in the Northwest of America, the hazards and the history incident to obtaining them, and the immense profits gained by their sale in the markets of the old world.
There are three kinds of things only ever bought and sold in this good world of ours. In the preceding chapter we have conned carefully the first kind, material commodities, in their three subdivisions of land-parcels and products of such parcels and products of free land and sea. In the present chapter we come to study the second kind of valuable things, personal services, which we shall also find subdivisible into three classes. We have treated of Commodities first, because their value in its grounds and changes is more easily understood than that of the other two kinds, while in point of time Services might well enough have been considered first, since it is these that manipulate into value the originally rude forms of Nature. The main difference between the two is this: in Commodities the attention is naturally drawn to tangible things offered for sale, such as lands and wheat and fish; while in Services the attention is strongly drawn to persons offering them for sale, such as the common laborer and the skilled artisan and the professional artist. This distinction, though obvious and useful as between commodities and services, is not after all radical; because Economics is a science of Persons from beginning to end; inasmuch as the services precede and are merged in the commodities, and inasmuch as the Desires (personal) of some men for the renderings of other men antedate and underlie all exchanges whatsoever.
Personal Services are technically named Labor in the science of Political Economy. This nomenclature is old and familiar, and will probably always persist on that account, but it is not of itself of the happiest, and it gives birth to some ambiguities and many fallacies. Let us look at these for a moment, before we pass to the definition and discussion of what is commonly called Labor, but what is better described by the term, Personal Services.
Contrast will help us a little here. Commodities can always be measured by some Standard outside of themselves: for example, land-parcels are measured into acres and fractions thereof by a surveyor's compass and chain; metals and cereals are weighed into centners and parts thereof by scales of some sort; and sugar is not only weighed at the custom-house, but tested as to other qualities by the polariscope. Now land, wheat, sugar, and all other commodities, have an existence separate from the standards that measure them, and whether they are bought or not they continue for a time essentially the same. They exist per se. They were indeed brought into existence on purpose to be sold, and if they cannot be sold, similar things additional will not then and there be brought into the market, but these things themselves are there separate from the seller and separate from the buyer. Not so with personal services. They do not exist per se. They are not separate from the seller, and they cannot come into existence without a buyer. Skill is something the artisan cannot part with, nor can he sell the service to which the skill gives rise till the buyer be present with the return-service in his hands. The Laborer of any class cannot put his "service" on exhibition, and then wait for a buyer, as the commercial drummer sells goods by sample. The doctor, for example, must have his patient before he can show his skill. The buying and selling of personal services, accordingly, is more intimate and ultimate than the buying and selling of commodities: it brings people more closely together: it depends much more on traits of character and on acquired skill.
Right here we may see clearly the main objection to the term, "Labor," as commonly used, and the bad fallacy to which it gives birth. "Labor" is indeed in form and origin an abstract term as much as "service" is, with this difference, that the word "service" radically implies the person serving and another person served at the same instant; but the term "Labor" has long been taking on itself in the mouths of men a concrete meaning, as if it might be something separate from the laborers, as in the common phrase "Labor and Capital," which has already done a world of mischief and is likely to do a good deal more, because it seems to imply, that the two are alike in independent self-existence, and that they stand over against each other on equal terms for a fair bargain or for a free fight. This is not the case, as we shall see more fully later; since capital is something separable from the capitalist, always a commodity or a claim, always transferable, always valuable or else it will not be "Capital." Some of the German economists, and particularly John Conrad of Halle, have avoided this difficulty by a clean nomenclature. They say "Labor-givers" and "Labor-takers," instead of Laborers and Capitalists, and especially instead of "Labor and Capital," thus emphasizing the personal element in both terms, and also leaving themselves free to define and use the term "Capital" as distinct from any particular capitalist, while the term "Labor" cannot be defined and used as distinct from any given laborer. This precise point, though probably new, is of very considerable consequence in the true doctrine of Wages.
We are compelled by the exigencies of the English language and the still stronger fetters of economical custom to continue to use the terms "Labor" and "Laborers" in their technical sense, and in connection with the scientific terms "Capital" and "Capitalist"; but we shall always use each of these words in the same meaning, and free them as far as possible from the fungous accretions that have fastened upon them in the course of time.
Personal effort of any kind put forth for another in view of a return-service and for the sake of it is labor.
Laborers are persons rendering their peculiar services to other persons for a commercial reward.
The valuable received by a laborer for his service rendered is Wages.
These definitions exclude from our circle of view all Efforts of anybody put forth for other than commercial reasons; and they include all Efforts of everybody, from the President to the scrub, put forth under the inducement of a return-service or Wages. No good end seems to be reached by trying to distinguish, as Francis Walker does in his "Wages-Question," between the "Wages-class" and the "Salary-class," because there appears to be no scientific or other economical difference between Wages and Salary. Each is a return-service for another service rendered, and that is all there is to it. The whole class of Laborers, accordingly, in any civilized and progressive country, is immensely large and becoming constantly larger. Excluding, of course, from this class all persons in so far as they render so-called moral services to others, which are in their very nature free, such as those that spring from duty and courtesy and benevolence, and these happily are also an immense and fast-augmenting class, though our Science has nothing to do with them directly, the number of those persons in every community and in every rank of every community, who sell personal services of some sort in distinction from commodities and credits, is pretty nearly as large as the per capita population of adults and competents within that circuit. It must be borne in mind, that the same persons whose primary business it may be to sell commodities or credits, often sell services also in some subordinate or incidental way; and also, that the same persons, who are dispensing on the one hand their gifts and moral renderings freely, are frequently of the busiest in selling on the other hand their personal services for pay. In other words, the sellers of Services cannot be discriminated as to their persons from other sellers, or even from downright givers; but the action itself, and the law of it, is quite distinct in the three cases of selling, and utterly diverse in the one case of giving.
Now, can we sub-classify within this vast class of service-sellers, so as to help us understand better the class as a whole, and so especially as to help us understand better the Law of Wages within the entire class? We have just criticised Walker in a friendly spirit for attempting to draw lines of demarcation within this wide field: can we draw any useful ones ourselves less open to criticism than his, and such as rest back upon fair differences in nature and form? Walker makes his distinctions turn on certain peculiarities in the return-services: can we make ours turn better and clearer on certain peculiarities in the services themselves? We can at least try. Hard and fast lines cannot be drawn here, we admit. The exterior lines around Commodities and around Services and around Credits are each sharp and firm; and so is the deep-fixed circle that includes all three of these alike as Valuables; but within the smaller circles the lines of needful division are somewhat more shadowy, though we leave with confidence to competent Economists the triple lines but just now drawn within the sphere of material Commodities.
A rude classification among "Laborers," then, yet one useful and indeed indispensable, may be made into (1) Common Laborers, (2) Skilled Laborers, and (3) Professional Laborers.
Common Laborers are those, whose services may be acceptably rendered by an ordinarily competent person after a little patient practice and instruction, without anything corresponding to an apprenticeship as a preliminary to their selling their service. Farm hands, teamsters, porters, waiters, miners, 'longshoremen, railroad laborers, and many more belong to this first class. Owing to the ease with which this class can be recruited at any time from growing boys and emigrating foreigners and from those who may have essayed the class above and fallen back, the Supply here is kept constantly large relatively to the Demand for such services, and consequently Wages are always the lowest and steadiest in this lowest class of Laborers.
Skilled Laborers are those, who have had to pass through something equivalent to an apprenticeship in order to be able to offer their services for sale. These, as a class, present some considerable points of difference from common laborers. Their numbers are fewer, for the reason, that relatively few parents can afford to give their children the time and money needful for them to learn a trade, or to become skilful in any art requiring prolonged education; as a result of this lessened press of competition among themselves, and because being intelligent and consequently mobile they are able to insist better on their claims and distribute themselves to points where their services are in more demand; and because they are likely to be subject to a stronger Demand than common laborers, on account of the close connection of their services with special accumulations of Capital; the Wages of skilled laborers will infallibly rule higher than those of common laborers. Artisans in general constitute this second class of laborers.
Professional Laborers are those, who have received a technical education,—something more than an apprenticeship,—expressly to fit them to render difficult and delicate services to their fellow-men for pay, and who possess besides the requisite character and talents and genius to enable them to succeed. Clergymen, physicians, lawyers, literary men, artists, actors, and many more, render professional services loosely so-called. The obstacles at the entrance of this path occasioned by the lack (1) of appropriate natural gifts, or (2) of the requisite industry and character, or (3) of the means of suitable education and training, practically exclude so many persons, that the competition in the higher walks of professional life is not such as to prevent a very large remuneration for services rendered. The demand for these is often peculiarly intense, as well as the supply peculiarly limited. When great interests of property, of reputation, of life, are at stake, it is felt that the best men to secure these must be had at almost any price. Fees and rewards for services of great delicacy, of great difficulty, of great danger, are paid by individuals and corporations and nations without grudging. Comparatively few men reach the highest points of excellence in their respective professions, and they have in consequence a natural monopoly in these fields of effort, and receive for their labor a very high rate of Wages. For example, Daniel Webster often took a fee of $1000 for a single plea in court; Paganini, a like sum for an hour's playing on a violin; and Jenny Lind, at least as much for an evening's singing in a concert, because there was in each case a strong demand for a peculiar service and only one person in the world who could render that service in the circumstances to the same perfection. But the objections which lie with such force against artificial monopolies, cannot be urged at all against a natural monopoly; for, if the road to excellence be open to all, and no artificial obstructions thrown in the way of any, there is no blame but rather praise for him who distances all competitors, and asks and receives for services of peculiar excellence a large remuneration. Exchange rejoices in all diversities of advantage that are the birth of freedom, but reprobates with all her force advantage that is gained by artificial restrictions, because artificial restrictions always infringe on somebody's right to render services for a return; and the right to render services for a return is the fundamental conception in the Right of Property.
Is it open for us, to gain a somewhat deeper and clearer sense of what that is exactly that is rendered in these three classes of personal Services, before we pass to the considerations which determine in all cases their Value? It is plain, that what common Laborers sell for the most part, if not exclusively, is muscular exertion of some kind, guided by the mind as trained in habit, and aided by appropriate implements, all designed to meet the desire and so call forth the return-service of the purchaser; it is equally plain, that skilled Laborers with scarcely any more exceptions than before sell the same sort of physical exertions, or motions, this time guided by mental action of a higher grade and wider scope, and aided also by more elaborate tools working towards the desires and consequent returns of a set of buyers more scrupulous and exacting than the first set; and it is plain enough, that some of the highest professional services, for instance the surgeon's, though not by any means the mass of such services, are essentially of the same kind as the two former, namely, muscular motions, guided by the most intimate and exact knowledge of things, and aided too by instruments the most scientific and expensive. In many of the professional services the physical element sinks to a minimum, while the intellectual and moral factors come to the front and take up the chief attention; it will be found, however, that the physical factor is always present in some degree, as, for example, in the counsel's plea before the court, and in the physician's visit on his patient; and in almost all cases, if not in all, some implement or other plays its part in the process of professional service before it ends, as Cicero used a pitch-pipe or tuning-fork to gauge his voice in his great pleas for Roman clients.
Precisely what is rendered, then, in all cases of Personal Services in each of their three loose kinds, is muscular motion conjoined with mental effort and both these assisted by habit and by some form of what we call Capital. The Services are therefore Personal in the highest sense. The Mind and Body of the Laborer conspire to render them. The most sagacious animal can never be trained to render one of them. They are wholly human. Nevertheless the muscular part in the rendering—motion and resistance to motion—is just what tools and machinery can be made to take the place of in large measure but never in whole measure, because tools may not be taught to think. It may seem sometimes as if machinery were about to take the place of human hands in some classes of Production; but it will be found in the ultimate issue, as it has been found in every stage of the process, that human hands and human minds in action are absolutely essential at every point of the Exchanges among men. Men are so made and Society is so organized, that they need increasingly for their comfort and progress the personal services of their fellow-men, and can render their own in exchange for these; and consequently, there never can fail (under freedom) a Market for Personal Services of the three kinds.
Having now seen as closely as possible what that is which is rendered in personal services, let us pass to the principles which determine their remuneration. That is, we will now inquire carefully into the Value of personal services. We have learned already, that Demand and Supply in their action and reaction upon each other determine in all cases the value of Commodities for the time being; and we shall find it to be equally the dictate of all reason, and the outcome of all experience, that Demand and Supply decide too in all cases on the value of all Services and all Credits then and there. Shall we look first at the considerations that issue in the Demand for personal services, and then at those other considerations that limit the Supply of them?
1. Demand is never the mere desire for anything, but desire coupled with the ability to pay for it at rates satisfactory to the present holder. The Demand for Services, therefore, is made by the prospective purchasers of them; and the purchasers, of course, are those who desire them and are willing to pay for them at current rates. It will be easiest and surest for us to study the Demand for Services in each of the three classes of them in succession.
(1) The Demand for Common Laborers has several points of difference from that for Skilled, and from that for Professional, Laborers. It is scarcely ever intense. It is mostly disconnected from large accumulations of Capital. The desire is usually for immediate gratification, without any other end in view. It is frequently for such a service, as, if a renderer may not be conveniently and cheaply found, one is inclined to do for himself. For instances: if the barber be not accessible and reasonable and tolerably skilful, a man will certainly shave himself, provided he have not yet attained the independence and the luxury of wearing a full beard; and the ordinary housewife, if the cleanly and tractable domestic does not come into sight, will do her own work with casual assistance. It is this important fact, that common services among men and women in common life may in many cases be dispensed with altogether, and in many other cases substitutes be found for them, in connection with the other important fact, that common laborers learn their art quickly and easily, and consequently are present everywhere in large numbers, that makes the Wages of such laborers uniformly low. The Demand is moderate and the Supply is large.
(2) The Demand for Skilled Laborers is steadier and stronger than for Common, because in general the desire for these is not for immediate gratification, but for an ultimate satisfaction to arise from the commercial coöperation of these laborers with their employers, who are capitalists, in connection with accumulations of capital, the end in view being the production of commodities for sale at a profit. Here comes in a new motive on the part of capitalists to buy the personal services of laborers. The motive is simple and intelligible and commendable, but its nature and operation is popularly and grossly misapprehended.
Capital is the result of Abstinence from the present use of a Valuable in gratification, for the sake of a future increase of it through Production. But Abstinence is always irksome in itself. It must have its prospective reward in an increase, a profit, or it will never transform itself from a mere valuable into a capitalized product. Now, the owner of the valuable, having transformed it into capital from this motive, is under a commercial necessity to hire laborers, in order by their help to make his capital yield a profit. Capital lying idle decreases in value even, to say nothing of its yielding no increase to itself; and the motive of the capital-owner, accordingly, is strong and constant to buy the services of laborers, to marry these services with his own capitalized products, and thus to produce commodities for sale, whose value shall be greater than the present value of the capital and the services combined. Here we reach in the minds and motives of a large class of men an ultimate Demand for laborers, and specially for skilled laborers, which is as true and constant to its legitimate end of Profit as the needle is true and constant to the pole.
At this point it is very evident, that, if the fair expectation of the capitalists be realized in a steady profit, and the larger the circle of capitalists and the more of capitalized products to each the better for all concerned, the Demand for laborers will become steady, and will be likely to steadily increase, because there will then be a constant motive on the part of all capitalists as such to put back a part or all of their yearly profits into capitalized products, and thus the Demand for laborers will become more intense, and the rates of Wages so far forth must be enhanced. The steady Demand for the services of the laborers hinges upon the steady Profits of the capitalists, and there is no antagonism between the interests of these two classes of buyers and sellers, but rather a complete identity of interest between them.
We are looking now solely at what constitutes the Demand for laborers of the second class. As always, so here, there is Desire first and then a ready Return-service. The Desire of employers of this class is for a Profit on their capital, and the return-service for the laborers is present as a part of these capitalized products. This part of the capital we call Wages-Portion. It is already in hand or provided to be in hand when the wages fall due. Of course it is expected, that the current wages will ultimately come out of the current joint-production of the laborers upon the capitalized products set apart for that purpose by the capitalist. But if the profits fail to the capitalists at the end of that industrial-cycle, whether it be two months or twenty-four, then Desire will fail or be weakened to hire laborers for the next cycle, and the return-services or Wages-Portion with which to pay them for another cycle will be lessened of necessity. Both elements in Demand are curtailed by the falling-off of Profits. There is at the same instant less desire to buy services and less ability to pay for them. It is of the very nature of capitalized products to wear out in the process of production; if there be not net profits at the end of the cycle for the capitalists, it shall go hard but there will be less wages for the laborers during the next cycle. This is not a matter of sentiment or of philanthropy, but of eternal law, which God has ordained and the devices of men cannot frustrate. Capitalists and laborers are joint partners in the same concern. Under industrial and commercial freedom their interests are identical. Both are buyers and sellers to each other at the same instant; and, as always when both parties are alike benefited and satisfied with a trade, both will cheerfully and profitably continue the connection. The Demand of each class for the product of the other will continue unabated. Profits and wages reciprocally beget each other.
But still it is not altogether true, what has sometimes been stated by economists, that capitalists are under the same sort of pressure to buy their services as the laborers are to sell them. Capital is a Valuable already created by the mutual desires and efforts of two persons, and is now the exclusive property of one of them, and has also been set apart by him through an act of will to be thereafter an aid to some future production under the motive of a new value to accrue thereby. The capital has now become secondary to and separated from the person who owns it. He very seldom understands the real nature and operation of it. He commonly imparts to it in his imagination a more substantive and persistent existence than it actually possesses. He is frequently more or less stuck up as towards his neighbors and employees in consequence of his possession of it. The very fact that he has capitalized it for future operations shows that he is independent of it as a means of present livelihood. The personal services of the laborers, on the other hand, stand in very different relations to them. Their personal services may indeed be valuable, but they cannot be capitalized. As laborers they have nothing else to sell. Unless they sell their services now, these have no existence even, still less can they have any value. It is only by a mischievous figure of speech, that the skill of laborers is sometimes spoken of as their "Capital." Therefore, the laborers are under a certain remote yet inherent disadvantage as sellers of their personal services, when compared with the capitalists as buyers of them. This disadvantage, however, though apparent in the nature of things, and under certain circumstances disastrous to the laborers, may disappear practically under another and natural state of things; and it is every way to be desired by both classes alike that it should disappear in practice.
Whenever there is a broad and constant and profitable market for all the commodities the capitalists and the laborers can jointly produce,—that is to say, whenever profits are steady and remunerative and wages are high and growing in their purchasing-power,—the Demand for skilled laborers must always be such as puts the laborers on a footing of equality as over against the capitalists, because under such circumstances the purchasers of services are many and eager, two bosses will be likely to be bidding for one skilled laborer, and then wages are always growing in dollars and each dollar growing in effective purchasing-power.
It is of the last importance in this connection to notice, that everything in Profits and Wages turns in the last resort upon the breadth and freedom of Markets. It is out of the return-service received from the sale of the commodities produced jointly by the capitalists and laborers, that both wages and profits must ultimately be paid. There is no other possible source of them. When the Market fails, everything fails that leads up to a market. Particularly fails the Demand for laborers for the next industrial cycle, and of course drops also the prospective wages for that cycle. The public folly and universal loss of shutting off foreign markets for our own commodities by lofty tariff-barriers, as has been conspicuously done by the United States for thirty years past, follows of course from this radical truth; and the Wages of laborers, instead of being lifted by tariff-taxes, as has been so often falsely and wickedly asserted, are inevitably depressed by them, because they effectually forbid to capitalists and laborers their best and freely chosen markets for the sale of their joint products.
Another vastly important matter, constantly affecting the Demand for laborers of the second class, is the Competency or otherwise of the practical managers of the Capital invested in industrial enterprises. Capital cannot manage itself. It is of itself wholly inert. It is always either a Commodity or a Credit. Conscious of their inability to handle wisely their own bits of Capital, or else taught it through a bitter experience, by far the larger number of individual owners of it loan it to others to manage; they invest it in some industrial corporation, in a bank or a mill or a railroad. Some one person, or at least a small body of persons, must practically manage now all specific accumulations of capital. It is they in their capacity of manipulating-capitalists, who constitute in large measure the Demand for laborers. But such managers, who are at once skilful and long-headed and honest, do not grow upon a chance bush. They are rare. Most of them in this country at least have been those, who started in a small way in the control of their own earned or small-inherited properties, and rose through practice and knowledge and conscience to the ability to handle profitably to all concerned large masses of Capital. In the hands of such men, given a tolerable chance by public law and private circumstances, both Profits and Wages are sure to come in satisfactorily. They are Captains of Industry. They are an honor to human nature. They are a blessing to the whole community. They have no need and no will to ask to be bolstered up in their business by unjust taxes enforced upon a whole people.
Such men sometimes have sons or protégés, who possess similar capacities and similar integrity, and these by experience become able to carry on the business to similar successful issues. This is happy, but it is unusual. More commonly, in the second, and pretty certainly in the third, generation, the line of royal succession fails. There comes in a lieutenant rather than a captain of Industry. Likely enough he mistakes the nature of capital, and thinks that it will go along of itself without that eternal vigilance that is the one price of its maintenance and increase; likely enough he lacks the touch and rule of men, and his laborers become demoralized and refractory; more likely still he thinks he sees other operators around him getting quicker rich by speculating in enterprises outside the legitimate business, and takes some of his own and of what is not his own and throws it out of its proper channels; and, as the result of one or all of these, things soon go wrong, profits and wages fall off, poor work is done and finds slow sale, and Demand for laborers (which is their life-blood) slackens or goes out in that establishment. No wonder the Paper-makers in their annual gathering at Saratoga of 1889, resolved as the main outcome of their meeting, that they would bring up their sons (or somebody's sons) to succeed them in their business by a thorough practical training in the paper-mill itself, beginning early and continuing long. Industrial higher education in this or some other form is the secondary hope of manufacturing business in the United States, the primary hope being in a decent commercial liberty to buy their supplies and to sell their products in the best markets wherever these are to be found.
There is one other important item that bears directly upon the Demand for laborers of the second class, and consequently upon their Wages, namely, the constant introduction of more and better Machinery. At first blush it would seem, and it has often been stated so, that the use of machinery takes just so much work from human hands, reduces by so much the Demand for laborers, and tends to lessen by so much their wages. All this is the opposite of the truth; but before we explain why it is the opposite of the truth, let us attend carefully to the truth itself, as stated in 1889 by the highest living authority on these special points, Sir Edwin Chadwick, the octogenarian pioneer in sanitary and economic reforms. Fifty-six years ago Chadwick joined with his colleagues of the English Factory Inspection Board in recommending reduced hours of labor and other improvements which have now become general in England. In a paper recently read before the Political Economy Club, he calls attention to the greatly increased production which follows improved machinery and shortened hours.
He says: "Spinning machines which formerly turned 8000 in a minute, now turn 11,000; and in Lancashire not more than half the hands are now employed to produce the same amount with new machinery as were employed on the machinery of 1833. As an example of the extent of the reduction of hands by these improvements, it may be mentioned that one large family of cotton spinners in Manchester, which 40 years ago employed 11,000 hands, could not now muster one half that number. Yet the mill population has increased, as well as the general population, the hands discharged being absorbed in other employments. At the beginning of the century the cost of spinning a pound of yarn was a shilling. The pound of that same yarn is now spun for a half-penny by hands earning double wages for their increased energetic attention and skill. It is now found, however, that the strain of the increased responsible attention cannot be so long sustained as the slow, semi-automatic pace by the old working of the old mills with the long hours. Hence there is a tendency to a further voluntary reduction of the working hours in the best mills, first to nine hours. In one mill, in which 2000 men are employed a voluntary reduction has been effected to about eight hours with a more equable production; and I have heard of other examples. As showing the cost of working with inferior hands and loose regulations, a recent report from the Manchester Chamber of Commerce states that 20s. worth of bundled yarn may be produced at a cost of from 2d. to 3d. per pound less in Manchester than in Bombay, notwithstanding the hours of working are 80 hours per week, while in Manchester they are only 50. At the present time Lancashire, with its short hours, will meet Germany or any other country, in neutral markets, in the world. In Germany the spinners and weavers still work 13 hours a day as they once did in England; France has only come down to 12 hours; whereas the English rate has long been 10 hours, and may soon be 9 or even 8. And this reduction improves the health of the wage-workers, while the reduced cost of production allows them higher wages; yet Germany with its long hours and high tariff maintains a system of low pay, dear production, high cost of distribution, and limited sales."
The accuracy of these important statements of fact is confirmed on every hand. Committees of British spinners and weavers have repeatedly visited the United States, and then reported to their fellows at home, that wages, all things considered, were equal for spinners and weavers in Great Britain and the United States, and in some cases and respects higher in the former. Many times before his late lamented death, John Bright publicly testified that wages in England during his parliamentary life had risen in general 50%, and in some of the manufacturing lines 100%. A few months before these statements of Chadwick were made, Sir Richard Temple reported to his section of the British Association, "That the average earnings per head in the United Kingdom, taking the whole population without division into classes, is £35, 4s., and exceeds the average of the United States, which is £27, 4s., and of Canada, which is £26, 18s., and of the Continent, which is £18, 1s.; while it falls below that of Australia, which is £43, 4s. per head."
According to this, the average earnings in Great Britain per head of the population are 30% higher than in the United States, and 81% higher than on the Continent of Europe. Truly, Britain is a prosperous and profitable country so far as average earnings of the whole people by the year is concerned. Sir Richard goes on in the same statistical paper to show, that the average annual profit on British Capital is 14%, and that Capital yields about the same rate for the United States.
Now, can we easily give the grounds on which the introduction of more and better machinery, instead of displacing laborers, tends to lift and actually does lift the wages of those concerned, who continue to work with their hands and heads? We will try it.
(a) It takes the hands and heads of laborers to invent and construct and keep in repair the machinery itself, that is often supposed to displace laborers, and so far forth opens a vent for the more profitable employment of some of the laborers, who before performed the cruder and more repetitive and automatic parts of the processes, which parts alone machinery can be made to perform.
(b) Machinery always lessens the cost of a given amount of production, otherwise there would be no motive for its introduction. But, other things being equal, the lessened cost of a commodity broadens the market for its sale. The cheaper a useful commodity is offered, the more the buyers of it the world over. The more and the better the machinery brought in, the more and the cheaper the commodities produced and the broader and better the markets to be supplied; and, therefore, the more and the more skilful the hands needed to tend the machinery and to market the products.
(c) The more commodities thus created by men and machines, and the wider the markets found for them over the earth, the more laborers are required to extract and prepare and transport the raw materials for the now augmenting commodities, and also to ship and distribute the finished products. As Chadwick says, notwithstanding the strictly factory hands have diminished one half in one place, "yet the mill population has increased, as well as the general population, the hands discharged being absorbed in other employments."
(d) These improvements in machinery, and the consequent refinements in the skill of the laborers, cheapen also of course the commodities consumed by the laborers themselves, and therefore a given rate of wages, to say nothing of a rate sure to enlarge under these circumstances, now secures for the laborers a higher grade of comforts.
More and better and more durable machinery, consequently, so far forth, tends at once to enhance the rate of laborers' wages and increase the purchasing power of the unit in which wages are paid.
To return now to the main line of discussion under the present head, we have shown by proof positive that there is nothing either in new machinery introduced, or in higher wages paid in connection with such machinery, or in shortened hours made possible by these two, to lessen the Demand of Capitalists for the personal services of Laborers; because, there is nothing in all these, commercial and industrial freedom being presupposed, to lessen the Profits of the Capitalists, which profits are the sole motive actuating them as such. That high wages and short hours are rather an advantage to Profits in connection with skilled laborers and fine machinery, than a disadvantage when compared with long hours and low pay and poor implements, is clearly shown by Chadwick in the passage quoted comparing England with English Bombay, where the working hours are 60% more and the wages greatly less and the cost of the machinery very little; "twenty shillings' worth of bundled yarn may be produced at a cost of from 2d. to 3d. less in Manchester than in Bombay"; call it 2½d. less; that is, it costs the Bombay spinner more than 1% per pound of yarn more to spin it than it costs the Manchester spinner! For truth and decency's sake, then, let us have done with the gabble in this country about the advantages of "pauper labor" over skilled, of low wages over high, of cheap machinery over dear!
The penetrating reader will perceive, that the root of this whole matter lies in the breadth and quickness of the Markets, in which the commodities produced by the laborers and capitalists may be sold against other commodities, and against Services and Credits; if the markets of the world are free to all to buy in and to sell in, which seemingly two things are precisely one and the same thing, then the Demand of Capitalists for the services of laborers to create and market salable commodities wherever these may be wanted, can apparently never slacken on the whole; because, the desires of men which the efforts of other men may satisfy commercially, are indefinite in number and unlimited in degree; and, therefore, the Wages of the skilled laborers, the commercial freedom of the nations being presupposed, are likely to be on the whole on a steady rise throughout the world; and the amount and excellence of the machinery on a similar rise, since Capitalists can always under these circumstances see their Profits looming up ahead of them,—the profits of an endlessly diversified and marketable Production.
The chief reason at any rate, and almost the only reason in common sight, why little England has surpassed in commercial prosperity of every sort every other nation on the globe during the past forty years, as evidenced by these statistics of Sir Richard Temple and other abounding proofs on sea and land, is in the fact, that her statesmen of the last generation came to perceive clearly, and then helped the people to see, that a market for products is products in market; that her traditional tariff-barriers to keep foreign goods out kept in equally domestic goods that wanted to get out for a profit, and so down went the tariff-barriers little by little, accursed alike by God and Englishmen, never to be set up again around the shores of the land of Cobden and Bright and Elliott; and to-day we read, that the average annual Earnings per head of the entire population of the United Kingdom, men and women and children, English and Irish and Scotch, are $176, while the annual average Profits of Capital within the three kingdoms is 14%.
(3) In the last place here, we must now look at the Demand for the personal services of Professional laborers. These are persons, who have done something more with reference to their life-work than serve an apprenticeship to a trade, or acquire some mechanical skill in connection with some kind of machinery. An Education rather than an Apprenticeship is implied in Professional laborers. Knowledge of the bodies and of the minds of men; acquaintance with some one section at least of the general laws that pervade the universe; some confidence (the more the better) in God, who created and governs the world; are all requisite to a reasonable success on the part of Professional laborers. The Demand for their services, and of course also the Return made to them for such services, will largely depend on such superior knowledge and confidence acquired by such persons, and involved in their services. Clergymen, physicians, lawyers, statesmen, literators, actors, teachers, and scientific experts, may serve as our chief examples of Professional laborers.
(a) "All that a man hath will he give for his life." When men fall sick, or those fall sick who are dear to them, they send for the doctor. Scarcely any trait of human nature is more universal than this. And the trait puts honor on human nature, because it implies a relatively high estimate of the worth of life in the mind of the patient, and also a relatively high confidence in a certain class of one's fellow-men. As Society progresses, and as Christianity deepens the sense of the worth of the individual life, and knits a stronger tie of confidence between man and man, a change is slowly coming over the relations between physicians and their patients; people do not wait to fall sick before they send for the doctor, so much as they formerly did; some individuals and families are establishing connections with a medical adviser, who studies their constitutions and habits of life beforehand, guides them in general sanitation, and thus both he and they are better ready for curatives in times of illness. Gladstone has long had such an attendant, with the best of results as he thinks, and strongly commended such action to John Bright, but too late to save the latter from what was thought to be premature death in consequence of imprudent and ill-advised handling of his health. In a few cases in England and the United States an annual salary is paid a physician for general care of the family's health, whether sickness befall or not, instead of the more usual fees on consultation and attendance. Dr. Munn of New York receives such an annual salary from Mr. Jay Gould. But in whatever way medical services are paid for, the Demand for them is constant and intense. The motive to buy them is immediate and personal, not mediate and remote, as in the case of capitalists and laborers of the second class.
It is to be noticed further in respect to physicians, and indeed in respect to all professional laborers much more than in respect to other laborers, that much knowledge has been gained by them for its own sake, out of pure love for it, rather than for the sake of merely selling their services as laborers; while this does not diminish in the least the commercial character of their services, it tends to beget on the part of the buyers of them a stronger confidence in the men who render them, so that the Demand for such services and consequently the pay for them is enhanced by the trust reposed in the laborers on the ground of something acquired by them for other than selling purposes, and which indeed cannot be sold; and superior character also, as well as superior knowledge, which is wholly moral in its basis and not mercantile at all, affects the Demand for the services of the possessor of it to increase it, on the ground of a naturally stronger trust in him as a professional laborer, and at the same time tends to increase his Wages by limiting the circle of those who can offer in competition such services on the background of such superior knowledge and character.
(b) Lawyers do not meet such a universal Demand in the nature of things as do physicians. Said Jonathan Smith of Lanesborough in the Massachusetts Convention of 1788: "We have no lawyer in our town, and we do well enough without." Still, one hundred years after that time there were about 70,000 lawyers in the United States, and Lanesborough itself had had in the meantime at least three distinguished ones. The interests of property and of reputation, and the constitutional rights of individuals as over against the claims of Government, so far as these may be conserved through the agency of lawyers, are by no means so constant and imperative as are the interests of life and health. Yet lawyers are in legitimate request in all civilized countries. A Latin legal maxim announces the obvious truth: It is the interest of the Commonwealth that there should be an end of disputes and litigations. Beyond question courts and counsel are wholesome on the whole for the individual and for the commonwealth. But the extremely complicated and unsatisfactory condition of American Law at present, owing to the fact that we have a none too simple United States Law with its three grades of courts and judges, and considerably divergent bodies of Law in each of 42 States, and owing also to the fact that our law in general is drawn almost at random from two pretty distinct Sources, the Common Law of England and the Civil Law of Rome, multiplies the number of lawyers relatively to the population out of all proportion to such ratio in other countries, and tends to make the lawyers as a class too conservative of old and drawn-out processes to the extent of opposing obvious betterments and simplifications. Said David Dudley Field, President of the American Bar Association, in August, 1889, at Chicago: "So far as I am aware, there is no other country calling itself civilized where it takes so long to punish a criminal, and so many years to get a final decision between man and man. Truly we may say, that Justice passes through the land on leaden sandals. One of our most trustworthy journalists asserts that more murderers are hung by mobs every year than are executed in course of law. And yet we have, it is computed, nearly 70,000 lawyers in the country. The proportion of the legal element is, in France, 1:4762; in Germany, 1:6423; in the United States, 1:909. Now turn from the performers to the performance. It appears that the average length of a lawsuit varies very much in the different States; the greatest being about 6 years, and the least 1½. Very few States finish a litigation in this shorter period. Taking all these figures together, is it any wonder that a cynic should say that we American lawyers talk more and speed less than any other equal number of men known to history?"
Mr. Field then repeated his well-known argument for Codification, ascribing the law's delays to the chaotic condition of the law, and maintaining that it is the first duty of a government to bring the laws to the knowledge of the People. "You must, of course, be true to your clients and the courts, but you must also give speedy justice to your fellow-citizens, more speedy than you have yet given, and you must give them a chance to know their laws."
Owing to the immense difficulties in the way of any one person mastering the various branches of the law in this country, it is falling more and more into specialties, and lawyers are devoting themselves to some one of its many branches, the main division line being between "Law" and "Equity" technically so-called; and whenever one becomes eminent along any line, his compensation is apt to be very large owing at once to a large Demand and to a small Supply at that point, while the average compensation of the lawyers as a whole class is meagre enough, because there are too many of them, and the people have become very suspicious of the law's meshes and delays.
(c) The grounds for the unabating Demand in Christian countries for religious teachers and preachers, let us rather say, for spiritual guides, lie deep down in the nature of man. If there be one proposition about men more incontestable than another, it may be this, that men are made in the image of God, and that there is among men in general an irrepressible striving to maintain and deepen this image. The touch between man and man and between man and God is such at this point, that men can help each other in this striving, and that they feel that they can help each other. This is the chief reason why some men are constantly consecrating themselves to the Christian ministry, and other men as constantly soliciting these to become their pastors and teachers. Those more enlightened in divine things and more spiritually minded offer themselves, as it were, not commercially but morally, to the unenlightened and less advanced as guides and helpers. It is, as it was with Wolfe and his men at the Heights of Abraham: those who got first to the top tarried a little to help those up who came after. And the most striking thing about it is, that the masses of men at bottom are as desirous to be uplifted as the choicer spirits among them are desirous to help the work forward. Ministers are still, and always will be (human nature is unchangeable), eagerly called; chapels and churches and cathedrals are still going up all over the earth; worship and petition and aspiration are ever ascending on the great world's altar stairs towards heaven, guided and inflamed by the chosen and choosing men of God,—"when priests on grand cathedral altars praise!"[5]
It is a monstrous perversion of language to maintain, that a clergyman in rendering such services as these is selling his religion. It is true, that he is selling under Demand services to the appropriate rendering of which his own personal piety contributes one large element, and thorough confidence in him on the part of his people as a good and earnest man contributes another large element; but the piety and the spiritual power and the worthy example are not nourished for the sake of selling the services, but for their own sake in personal worth and worthiness, and these things must not be confounded with the services that are sold. Accordingly, while the clergyman's vocation is sacred, and belongs to the sphere of religion, his salary belongs to the sphere of exchange, and its determination, in harmony of course with the higher impulses, is a business transaction. This distinction ought to be better understood than it is; and both clergymen and people need to be reminded that the spiritual things belong to one sphere, and the temporal things to another. The amount of a minister's salary, and the time and mode of its payment, are matters of pure business; and the minister himself is to be blamed if he does not attend to them, and insist on them, on business principles.
In the professions generally, and particularly in the ministerial profession, while, if we confine our attention to those persons who both have the requisite gifts of Nature and have been also thoroughly trained, we shall find a high rate of compensation on the two grounds of a strong Demand and a limited Supply, we must bear in mind too the counter-working influences which tend to increase the competition and thus decrease the compensation, namely, the respectability which attends them, the desire of knowledge for its own sake which is gained in connection with them, the instruction wholly or in part gratuitously offered to those in course of preparation for them, and the desire to do good without regard to pecuniary reward which actuates many who enter upon them.
(d) Physicians and lawyers and clergymen serve primarily individuals, or at most relatively small groups of individuals, and of course look for their pay to those whom they have served. It is different with Statesmen, the fourth class of professional laborers that we need to look at in an economic view. Statesmen worthy of the name serve at least a whole nation, and to the nation as such must they turn for their pecuniary rewards. And such men have never turned in vain to those whom they have benefited as a whole. Bismarck is the best modern instance of a Statesman, who has received from a grateful country immense money-measured remunerations for immense political services rendered. The Demand for the services of Statesmen rests in the deep consciousness of men organized politically into a Nation, that they need, especially in trying times, a Man of the highest natural gifts, and of the broadest attainments and of the loftiest political integrity to plan and act for them in emergencies, as they are conscious that they cannot plan and act for themselves organically. This does not mean, that the one ever knows essentials better than the many: he does not. This does not mean, that the true objective of a nation's march is ever discerned more clearly, or rather felt after more eagerly, by one man than by the many men concerned: it is not. Still less does it mean "a man on horseback." But it does mean this: a Nation (as the very name implies) is made up of the thoughts and hopes and throbbings and dim forecastings and half-formed purposes of multitudes constituting a unit (born together for one destiny on earth); and the true Statesman is one of themselves, sharing with them at once the traditions of the past and the perspectives of the future; one, with the instinct and the intellect to gather up and embody the general feeling and the general will; one, who has gained in some way the confidence of the masses who are willing for the time being to entrust to him the guidance of their affairs, and to empower him to plan and act for them as their champion and deliverer; and one, who (because he is one) can better seize the propitious moments for declaration and negotiation and public action, yet who never forgets that he is nothing but an agent for others, and is as ready to lay down responsibility at the public will as to assume it at the public will.
Washington was such a statesman, and Lincoln. Even Bismarck, under monarchical and later imperial environment, disclaims anything substantive and original in his own action: he did what he could not help doing: he followed the instincts of Prussia, and his own; and became the means of fulfilling as they gradually ripened the longings of the other German people for unity and order. Such a statesman was Chatham in England, and Cavour in Italy. Now, such services as these, done for a whole people, always deserve and usually receive, though not expressly bargained for beforehand, yet implied in the public devotion of one party and the general consensus of the other, extraordinary honors and emoluments. This is right, even on purely Economic principles. The services of great statesmen to their country in great epochs and emergencies are at once a gift and a sale, they are both patriotic and economic, there is equally a national Demand for them and a grateful recognition of them, the Supply is always exceedingly rare and the reward often exceedingly great; and it is to be put down to the lasting credit of the science of Economics, that its peculiar motives and results may mingle in and harmonize with the motives and results of the higher moral impulses, such as those of Patriotism and Religion, as in the cases of the Soldier and Statesman and Clergyman. There was no rational ground for the hesitation of Garibaldi to receive from the Parliament of Italy in 1875 an annual pension of 50,000 lire.
(e) There is a single class more of Professional laborers, loosely so-named, which should be noted before we dismiss the subject of Demand for laborers to pass to consider the Supply of them, namely, Literators and Artists and Actors of the highest rank. Statesmen primarily serve the individual nation that selects and rewards them, though their influence may indirectly uplift other nations also; but the great Writers and Painters and Actors, whatever may be their local habitation and name at first, soon come to belong to the world at large and to derive their revenue from many lands, because the highest Art is cosmopolitan in its own nature, and the best characterization of men as such cannot but be the property of Mankind. Shakspeare is no longer English, nor Angelo Italian, nor Mozart German, nor even Bernhardt French. Deep as are the scars and the sea that separate nation from nation, there is something deeper still in the innate recognition by man of man as depicted by the great Masters in immortal lines. There is, accordingly, a sort of Demand in the inmost soul of Humanity as such for these living and lofty touches and delineations of itself, whencesoever they may come. There is not indeed nor can there be, as in most other cases of sale, a bargain made beforehand between these preordained sellers of the rarest services and their silent yet waiting purchasers, yet there is after all an antecedent and an assured understanding between them. They are in touch even across the sea. The master strikes his chord, and the audience, fit, though few and scattered, listens and applauds and makes return.
Is the principle of "International Copyright," so-called, correct? Let us look narrowly before we pronounce. At present this good country of ours makes itself a mocking and a by-word even to its own intelligent and art-loving citizens by putting a tariff-tax of 30% on paintings and statuary by foreign artists, not at all to get revenue thereby, but to "protect" domestic artists in their inferior work by artificially lifting the price of their wares. So far is carried this jealousy of foreign works of art, that when the artists generously loan them for exhibition on our national occasions, they are put under bonds not to sell them on this side without previously paying the tariff-tax, which is graciously intermitted during the Exposition. This is Restriction. This is Protectionism pure and simple. This is legally excluding the Better in order to give a forced currency to the Worse. Now, domestic Copyright restricts the sale of any book to one publisher in his interest and in that of the author. The book now in the reader's hand is thus copyrighted. This legal arrangement between authors and publishers and their public may be perhaps logically defended, it may even be for the public weal on the whole, though in many cases it doubtless raises the price of good books, which would have been published without any such artificial encouragement. The copyright, however, like all patent-rights also, soon expires by limitation of time, and the public thereafter have the unrestricted use of what is really their own.
For what is sometimes called "literary property" is not property in the strict sense of the word. A book is not like a plough or a house. Its contents even when most original have been but colored, as it were, and rearranged and reinforced by the author's individual mind. Its substance always comes out of the common stock. It cannot be the author's own, as the bushel of wheat is the farmer's, who sowed the seed on his own land and threshed it in his own barn and carried it to market in his own wagon. The rights of the individual and the rights of the Community commingle more or less in private property of every kind, at least to the extent that the latter may tax the property if needful for the common wellbeing, as it is bound also legally to secure it to the owner when threatened by others; it is no part of the purpose of the present book to draw the wavering line in general between the rights of individuals and the rights of their Government as towards them; but the distinction between common property and copyrighted property is plain enough to everybody, and the Law puts emphasis on the distinction by making the one quickly terminable and the other continual. So then, when the Government under which the author resides, has given him a limited copyright within its own jurisdiction, it would seem as if the individual right in the premises had been sufficiently recognized alongside of the undoubted right of the Whole to the ultimate use of the labors of their own citizen.