At Rome and in the Roman Empire, instead of the usual voluntary union of capitalists and laborers for the mutual advantage of each other, the laborer was owned by the capitalist, and the true relations between the two were thoroughly disguised and wretchedly distorted. Business in all its branches came to be carried on by means of slaves; the lands were tilled by slaves; slaves became the artisans of the country; the money-lenders and bankers of the centre scattered branch-banks in the towns under the direction of their slaves and freedmen; the Company that leased on speculation the Customs-Taxes from the State had their slaves and freedmen levy these taxes at each custom-house; the contractor for buildings bought architect-slaves; and the merchant imported his goods in ships of his own manned by his slaves or freedmen, and then sold the same at wholesale or retail by the same means. In this way a gigantic system of unnatural traffic was built up and extended. In this way the very name "laborer" became tainted by the vile system of slavery of which he was a part, and the distinction itself between capitalist and laborer was obliterated. "Roman mercantile transactions fully kept pace with the contemporary development of political power, and were no less grand of their kind." "The Roman denarius followed up closely the Roman legions." "It is very possible that, compared with the suffering of the Roman slaves, the sum of all negro suffering is but a drop" (Mommsen).

We want now to examine critically the causes of these constantly recurring labor-troubles, the true economical Remedies for them, and in connection with these the futility of the remedies popularly recommended for low Wages and the disputes between employers and employed of the second class.

(1) There is an extremely common misapprehension on the part of both labor-givers and labor-takers as to the real nature of the transaction between them. Both parties forget, or rather neither party is ever fully instructed, that it is a case of pure Buying and Selling. There is never any obligation of the moral sort between buyers and sellers. The relation itself is purely economical. Moral considerations indeed cover this relation from above, just as they cover all other relations between man and man in human Society; and any two individuals standing over against one another as buyer and seller, also stand over against each other in higher and broader relations as man and man; but it works confusion and mischief as between both, whenever relations differing in their nature and operation and reward are not separated from each other in the mind of each relator, and whenever each does not act in the particular relation according to the nature and rules of that relation alone. When A hires B to work in his factory, this new relation is economical not moral; there were moral relations between the two before this relation was knit, and will be again after this has been broken, and indeed are while this continues; but the economical relation is one thing, and the others a very different thing; they are so different, that they cannot be blended in mind or motive to any advantage to either individual or to either set of relations; and any degree of confusion as between the relations has always wrought mischief as between the individuals, because instead of seeing either set of relations in its own clear light, they now see both in a commingled twilight.

What is the economical relation? This. A desires the personal service of B in his factory purely for his pecuniary benefit, and assumes his own ability to make all the calculations requisite for determining how much he can (profitably to himself) offer B for his service; and B, who knows all about his own skill, how it was acquired and how much it has cost, wants to sell his service to A for the sake of the pecuniary return or wages. There is no obligation resting upon either. Man to man, each in his own right. There is no benevolence in the heart of either, so far as this matter goes. Benevolence is now an impertinence. It is a question of honest gain in broad daylight. Benevolence is blessed in its own sphere, but there is no call for it here and now. If it comes in an unbidden guest, it comes in to mar and to distort. It is an incongruity. "I never knew a Jew converted but it spoilt him," was the word of one deeply versed in human nature and in Christian experience. Conversion is good, and its field is broad; but the Jew as such is incongruous with it. Good is benevolence and wide its field, but Buying and Selling does not need it. Its own motives are independent of it, and sufficient without it.

A clouded understanding of this vital distinction has always played its part in Labor-troubles. Buyers and Sellers of personal services are always on a plane of perfect equality as such exchangers, and no one can be more independent than either of them except the hermit in his cell. Which must look out for the interest of the other beyond the terms implied in the trade itself? Which is the superior party? Which should take off his hat, the other remaining covered? The truth is, and all experience and all analysis brings us up abreast of it, that the two parties to a trade of any kind stand on a footing of absolute equality towards each other then and there in the economical relation about to be knit, and any conception in the mind of either that he has the other "at his mercy" in either the good or bad sense of that phrase, disturbs and destroys the proper conditions and balances of the exchange in hand; and, what is more to the point, it implies that each party has not all he can do to fulfil in the letter and in the spirit what is always implied in the terms of a trade deliberately entered upon by two parties. When B agrees to work for A at skilled labor in his factory for a year at $15 per week, he makes a good deal of a contract; and virtually pledges to A not only the motions of his hands for that period of time, but also the vigorous attention of his mind to that service and to the general interests of his employer so far as these come under his own eye and supervision. Nor is this all: he virtually pledges himself to B to coöperate with the least possible friction in all plans for betterment in his division of the work, and to cordially coalesce with all other employees for the general ends of the business without too much of self-assertion and without too little of courtesy to others. To fulfil this contract in all its spirit rounds up the circle of B's economical obligations to A. He will practically have all he can do, so far as A is concerned, and in consistency with all his various duties to others, to make good to him at all points his simple business pledges. Benevolence, the interests of a common citizenship, and the reciprocal ties of religion, lie wholly outside.

A will practically have all he can do, so far as B is concerned, to fulfil in the letter and in the spirit his economical obligations to him, without troubling himself to see whether B is going to vote the same party ticket that he himself votes, and without confounding either B's poverty or prosperity with his own obligation to be polite to him at all times and to pay him promptly his weekly stipend. So long as B renders in letter and in spirit what he has agreed to render, and A returns in the same way what he has promised to return, the less either thinks and talks and acts about the other in all the other relations of life, the better hope of good success to both in this relation. Church relations and social relations and political relations are all of consequence in themselves; but when any of these begin to get mixed up with labor-relations, there is soon a muss and a mess. Incongruous things, things no way vitally connected with that, often come in to disturb and destroy a simple matter of mutual renderings.

(a) The first practical remedy for difficulties arising under this first head, is a clearer separation in the mind of both parties to a trade of what really belongs to Buying and Selling from what belongs to all other departments of activity. More common sense is needed at this point, more simple analysis, more daylight, more personal independence, more introspection as to motives, more power in making distinctions, and a more practical separation of what is clear and fixed from what is complex and obscure in human relations. Metaphysics may yet lie in cloud-land, Ethics may not yet have drawn its outer and interior lines so strong and deep as it will, Sociology also is a vast field of complexities, but truth to tell Economics has no mysteries to speak of. I buy and sell for my own advantage, which proves in the nature of things to be for the equal advantage of my compeer. It is my business and my compeer's business and every other man's business who buys and sells, to pick that action out in its motive and result from the great mass of dubious actions, and to set it up in its own light, to rejoice in it as the clearest thing in social action, to claim it as God's own plan so far forth for our comfort and progress, and then to see to it that no preposterous hand mixes it up with perplexities or theologies or other abominations—muddying with a tentative pole the stream of our clear brook! In this country at least, in its ignorance of common things and common science, the pulpit often fulminates against the gains of exchange as "materialism," and mixes up buying and selling with "worldliness," and only half permits its deluded hearers the privileges of the market, and illustrates again in modern times such teaching as is denounced to St. Timothy,—"some swerving turned aside to vain babbling, desiring to be teachers of the Law, understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm." "Let every shoemaker stick to his last." Those who have looked into it with any care have found, that Exchange in all its natural outgoings is not answerable to these pulpit charges, nor is contrary to the letter or spirit of the biblical precepts, but on the other hand is in full harmony with the claims of Conscience and with all the inbreathings and aspirations of Christianity.

(b) The second practical remedy for the labor-difficulties arising from the want of thorough understanding by both parties of the real nature of hired renderings of the second class, is fair common honesty. More of an easily accessible intelligence, more of penetration and separation as to social relations in general, meets the first point; but quite as needful as this simple intellectual process, is the still simpler moral habit of doing just what one has agreed to do, without evasions and without diminutions. Labor difficulties take their origin more often, perhaps, in some clouded moral action of one of the parties, than in a clouded mental apprehension. Men are too conscious as men of their own temptations, to be lax in their pledged renderings and of their own shortcomings at this point, not to be suspicious of each other as buyers and sellers, for fear the party of the other part is about to withdraw something either in quantity or quality of what he has promised to render; there is almost always something or other to give color to such a suspicion, and it grows by what it feeds on; frank explanations are not had at the outset, and a good understanding is not come to, as it doubtless might be in nine cases out of ten; and the little cloud, at first no bigger than a man's hand, by and by becomes black and threatening, and bursts at last in a strike or lock-out of large proportions. An open honesty that is such and seems such, that is not beyond the aim and reach of common men, that is taught in scores of forms in "Poor Richard's Almanack," and that each man ever likes to meet with and so ought ever to put forth, is in fact a preventive of conflicts between laborers and employers, and would if properly manifested have prevented multitudes of such actual conflicts. Here is the main, almost the sole, point of contact between strict Ethics and the Economics. What buyers and sellers, that is to say, the whole practical world, needs, is not disquisitions on Morals from Press or Pulpit, but an inner ear to hear the true click of Conscience, and the quick and open answer in honest action.

(2) A second general cause of the Labor-troubles of the past and present has been a strong tendency to neglect the special preparation for their peculiar functions by both capitalists and laborers. A successful employer of laborers year in and year out to their advantage and his own is always one who has been trained to that function by special preparations. He is a living man with all the limitations of living men: he has to deal with many living men with all their imperfections: he has to deal also, and constantly, with what is in its own nature dead, namely, Capital, always either a commodity or a claim: to animate and invigorate these dead forms of value, to put them into vital connection with living men who shall enhance their value, and thus to become a leader to living men as towards swelling interests, demands unusual native gifts and a special long-continued training. When one looks from without upon such an establishment as this in full action, it seems automatic, it seems as if almost anybody with a clear head could continue to direct it; and when this "captain of industry" departs this life, perhaps his son or some previous subordinate, without the proper gifts and at least without the peculiar training, assumes the post of direction. For a little everything seems to go on as before. As sure as fate, however, a friction will soon develop here, and a misunderstanding there, there will be whisperings among the men, some breath of suspicion will be likely to cloud the borrowing-power, opening difficulties of any kind such as loss of credit or a weakening of the usual markets are apt to throw a new operator more or less off his base, and gathering labor-troubles of any sort commonly find such a man unprepared for lack of suitable training and experience to ward them off or to make timely concessions to the men or to minimize the evil results when these become inevitable.

Also labor-troubles are quite as likely to arise from the want of character and training and considerateness of the employees towards the capitalists. The relations are reciprocal and they are also in their very nature delicate. One poor workman however good his disposition, one unfaithful overseer no matter how great his possible skill, may mar the current product in such a way as to lose it the market and cost the establishment the present profit. The strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link. It is a matter of immense difficulty at any time, and emphatically so at the present time to organize a working force in factory from top to bottom so as to have it go forward as a unit as towards the marketing of the product, without bad workmanship at some point and unskilful supervision at another; because the laborers as a rule have not given themselves time to learn thoroughly their special parts, because they are not content to remain steady at one thing and at one place, and because they do not practically recognize even if they perceive it that their own permanent interests are exactly coincident with the permanent interests of their employers. Just now in this country the public Law robs the manufacturers (at their own behest) of their best markets at home and abroad, makes it difficult or impossible for them through wanton taxation of their raw materials to create a good quality of goods for any market, and so multiplies frictions and failures and losses along the whole line of production. The lack of what may be called Apprenticeship on the part of skilled laborers, the consequent difficulty of rising from one gradation of effort to a higher and better-paid one, the restlessness of native laborers under such disabilities, the rapid admixture of foreigners, the lack of coherence throughout in point of intelligence and apparent identity of interests, together with the instability and haphazardness of the resources and personal training of the employers as a class, gives birth to Labor-troubles which are at the same time Capital-troubles, to read the daily record of which makes one sick at heart.

(a) The only possible and practicable remedy for this state of things, so far as the employers are concerned, is in a more conservative attitude of capitalists as a class about passing over their resources to the hands of men who have not proven their ability to handle them wisely by a full course of training in the management of practical affairs. By a wretched policy in this country at present Capital is prohibited from building and from buying ships, with which to navigate the oceans; from selling domestic manufactures in foreign markets; and also from a profitable agriculture, which may sell its products abroad and take its pay back. Consequently Capital, eager in its own nature to be invested to a profit somehow somewhere, has rushed without due circumspection into the hands of domestic operators, who have not been half fitted for their task, who have knitted relations with laborers without being able to secure their permanent respect or to control their services, and who have lost to their owners in multitudes of cases the entire capital intrusted to them. If capitalists had had during the last quarter of a century one-half of their natural and proper chance to invest their money to a profit, there would not have been such a reckless investment through incompetent hands in building mills and foundries in this interval of time, and such wholesale losses in connection with them. When capital comes to be at liberty to turn right or left according to its own will in view of a prospective profit, factory companies and projectors cannot draw resources from the public for their operations, without demonstrating to the owners the trained and tried capacity of the practical operators, who will buy the materials and hire the laborers and market the products.

(b) The practical remedy for the inexperience and instability and unskilfulness of laborers as tending towards labor-troubles of all kinds and degrees, is only to be found in a want of market for such services. In a natural and wholesome state of things, such as would exist in the United States were it not for national laws tampering with Trade and with Money, the questions asked an applicant for skilled work by any labor-taker would be, "What have you learned to do? How long and for what pay do you want to do it? What do you want to reach next, when the present job is done?" When employment turns on good answers to such questions as these, and when the questions themselves are put in good faith, there will be an end of Strikes and Lockouts. Untrained and restless hands will get nothing to do in mills and factories. Apprenticeship in its various forms will come back into vogue, and will probably be made a part of the course in public schools. The division and gradation of laborers will be carried out further than it ever yet has been. Laborers will then be organized in the best sense of that word, and to the best advantage of capitalists. The permanent Supply of skilled laborers will be constantly adjusting itself to a permanent and increasing Demand for them. And it requires no millennium for such a state of things to come in. It requires nothing but an ordinary and enlightened and beneficent selfishness on the part of capitalists to adjust itself to the ordinary selfishness of laborers sure to become enlightened and beneficent to the best and ever-growing interests of both parties. This is not the spoken word of Morality, still less is it the divine word of Religion, it is only the common programme of a common-sense Political Economy.

(3) The third and last general cause of misunderstandings and embittered disputes as between laborers and capitalists is partly economical and partly moral, and consequently the remedy for it is partly moral and partly economical. The Past projects itself down into the Present partly with blessings and partly with curses. In the old times under Slavery and Feudalism the laborer always came forward to his task with a taint upon him. Sometimes the taint attached to his birth, and at all times it attached to his calling. Slavery in all its forms always makes manual labor degrading. The courtly Cicero apologizes in a letter to his friend for his open sorrow over the death of his favorite slave; and in several passages of his treatise on Morals he follows his Greek teachers, Plato and Aristotle, and declaims in a pitiful way against the noble rights of laborers. "All artisans are engaged in a degrading profession." Again, "there can be nothing ingenuous in a workshop." When trade and commerce are carried on on a small scale, "they are to be regarded as disgraceful"; when on a large scale, "they must not be greatly condemned—non admodum vituperanda!" (I, 42.)

Serfdom once existed in England, and threw its shade over free laborers there long after itself had disappeared. A class of indented servants pervaded all the New England Colonies, and a clause of the New England Confederation of 1643 provided for their forced rendition from Colony to Colony, and passed over almost verbally into the Constitution of the United States of 1787 as applicable to the slaves of the South. In this way in all parts of this country manual laborers came to be more or less off color, and this has continued in a continually lessened degree till this time. When those who work with their hands are looked down upon by those who do not, two sets of feelings are apt to be engendered equally unfortunate to the two classes that entertain them. The non-manual workers, the employers, are more or less puffed up with pride and a sense of superiority (there are beautiful exceptions) as towards their laborers, and the latter in their turn are apt to develop alongside an unmanly servility and an apparent deference, a sort of secret breasting up of hostility and defiance, which is sure to manifest itself when labor troubles come on even when it has not helped to brood these troubles into life. The parties then are not well placed as towards each other to negotiate and to compromise and to coalesce in a future harmony. The party of the first part is too proud to yield to their inferiors, and the party of the second part is too bitter to be sweetened. Who is sufficient for these things? And what is the remedy for them?

(a) So far as employers are concerned, their natural though unreasonable and provoking arrogance may well be reduced by the economical reflection, that the laborers are exactly as necessary to production as the capitalists are, that the two stand on a precise level so far as the product goes, that each is one blade of the shears and the other the other and that it takes both blades to cut anything, that while the laborers are sellers in the open market the capitalists are likewise sellers and that the same ultimate purchaser furnishes the market for both sets of sellers, that as sellers they are only equal in position, that buying and selling is a levelling as well as an uplifting process the world over, and that as such co-equal partners in one indivisible operation all haughtiness on one side and all undue humility on the other is nothing but obstacle as towards the common end; and also by the moral and social reflection, that their laborers are just such men as themselves in motive and action, that the two are very likely to exchange places with each other before very long, that riches are extremely liable to take to themselves wings and fly away, that Christianity is no respecter of persons, that humanity deems nothing human alien from itself, that morality puts the golden rule upon the fore-front of its precepts, and that whatever may unite any body of men in a legitimate purpose of achievement along any line of human action multiplies the power of each individual and exalts his standing and responsibility as such individual and thus reduplicates the reward of his individual action.

(b) So far as the employees are concerned, in any temporary sense of dependence or even of injustice, there is open to them the economical reflection (and it will do them good to bring it home) that their best route to the respect and favor and feeling of equality of their employers is through the excellence of the service they render them and the courtesy (not servility) with which they render it, that as every capitalist becomes such by means of abstinence they may themselves by saving become capitalists, that there is nothing in the nature of their work or its relations to capital to cause them to hang down their heads, that handsome is that handsome does, that the opportune offer of the present capital to work on gives them a chance to exhibit their skill and to earn a living, that the capitalists are just as dependent on them as they upon those, and that as single sellers of a valuable personal service they daily confront on a footing of equality the sellers of a valuable product so created; and there is open to them also the moral and social reflection fortified by constant observation and experience, that no matter where a man begins it is the end that crowns his work, that life to all is a series of stepping-stones, that manly qualities are appreciated everywhere, that character tells in the lowest position however high and low are reckoned, that the poor gain and hold friends quite as well as the rich, that there was a certain poor wise man that saved the city by his wisdom and gained a lasting record in consequence, that the poor and the rich are constantly changing places in this world, and that there is no respect of persons with God.

We may see now what we are to think of some popular remedies constantly recommended for low Wages. A brief discussion of what is false will give us a stronger hold of what is true. The chapter will close with relevant reference to three current remedies.

1. It is being dinned into the ears of the present generation, that Government has large functions in the ongoings of business, that it ought sometimes to interfere to better the rate of Wages, at least to designate a minimum below which they shall not go, and that Government should hold itself ready to undertake directly to carry on certain branches of business under certain circumstances. This scheme goes under the high-sounding name of Nationalism. Richard T. Ely, Professor of Political Economy in Johns Hopkins University, is one of the most prominent representatives at present of this school of thought. In his Introduction to Political Economy just published (1889), he lays down this principle: "When for any class of business it becomes necessary to abandon the principle of freedom in the establishment of enterprises, this business should be entirely turned over to Government, either local, state, or federal, according to the nature of the undertaking." He begins his book by attempting to hammer in the "lesson" that as Civilization improves, coöperation takes the place of individualism. The golden age of individualism, he says, is among the wild tribes of Australia. They never coöperate with each other in their economic efforts, or in anything else. No one expects anything from his neighbor, and every one does unto others as he thinks they would do to him. The life there is one prolonged scene of selfishness and fear. But as civilization comes in, he says, individualism goes out, and coöperation takes its place. The fine old Bentham principle of laissez faire, which most English thinkers for a century past have regarded as established forever in the nature of man and in God's plans of providence and government, is gently tossed by Dr. Ely into the wilds of Australian barbarism.

There are some propositions that are certainly true, and one of them is, that no man can write like that, who ever analyzed into their elements either Economics or Politics, who ever gained a clear conception of the sphere of either science in its relation to the other, or who ever saw distinctly the relations of either to the nature of Man. The sole motive in Buying and Selling is the gain of the individual, each for and by himself. That always was the motive, is now, and always will be. No complications of modern business, no complexities of credit, no combinations of capitalists or laborers, ever altered or ever can alter one particle the motives of men in buying and selling. In a natural and progressive state of things, Individualism, instead of going out, comes more and more into play, through the Division of Labor and the falling of all sorts of services more and more into specialties. To talk glibly, as Professor Ely does, about Government taking up easily and carrying on in a better way and to better ends branches of pure business as they are dropped or forced from the hands of Individuals, is ignorance at once and alike of the real nature of Government and of Business. Let us look at a few of the native incongruities and logical fallacies of this nationalistic position.

(1) What is human Government? Is there anything substantive and continuous in its personnel and purposes, as there is in the government of God? Is government anything more, can it be anything more, than a transient Committee of the citizens charged and changed to do in certain few particulars the changing will of a Majority? Government is indeed a necessity, as men are, to restrain the lawless, and to shape the ends of the law-abiding; but it has to be administered, if at all, by precisely the same kind of men as the rest are, chosen for brief periods, their duties sharply prescribed by constitution or custom, and impeachments or other punishments provided for them when they transgress. One President of the United States and one Judge of its Supreme Court have already been solemnly impeached by the sovereign people themselves.

Government, then, is an Agent, and nothing more. Even nationalists will not contend for the divine right of kings. And the duties of every decent government on earth are political in their character. The agents are chosen and dismissed with a direct reference to that kind of action. Politics has a sphere wholly distinct from Economics. The true and only end of politics is the greatest good of the greatest number, so far as that end can be mediated by governmental agents of the people. Individualism as such does indeed sink out of sight under a true Politics, and the inalienable rights of one are maintained for the sake of and in consistency with the greater rights of all. But Economics is all individuals from beginning to end. "It takes two to make a bargain." Only two. Each of the two has his own motive, estimates for himself, gives and takes for himself, and enjoys alone his own gain. All this is involved in the very idea of Property, which is derived from proprius, and which means one's own. How illogical, then, and incongruous, to suppose, that a set of limited human agents briefly trained to purely political action, and liable to be turned out of office by every change in party administration, can be competent at the same time and in addition to perform economical functions for the people!

Notice, too, that governmental agents in all good countries are already overburdened with their mere political duties. Work is behindhand in every portfolio, on every court calendar, and in every legislative body, in Christendom. How absurd it is, therefore, to talk about throwing upon shoulders, already overburdened, additional loads of a different kind, for which shoulders and heads are wholly unfitted!

Why not, then, inquires our nationalist innovator, organize new bureaus to undertake in their behalf the buying and selling of the people? Ah! Who pays the taxes needful for the support of the present political bureaus? And who would have to pay the taxes needful for the support of the new economical bureaus? Besides not having any substantive existence of its own Government has not one cent of money, except what the people voluntarily pay in taxes out of their own personal gains, in order to maintain their own agents to do certain political things for them, which they cannot do as well for themselves directly; and when it comes to the cold question for the people themselves to answer, whether they will organize a new set of hired men to do their trading for them, and pay them for doing this out of aggregate gains certainly to be vastly diminished by the process, our nationalistic leaders will perhaps find out that the people have common sense, whether the said leaders have it or not.

But the damning difficulty with this governmental business association is, after all, in the inevitable lack of motive on the part of the hired men doing the buying and selling. It is an honor to human nature, that hired men never have and never can have the zeal and enterprise of principals and owners to forecast and to perform and to lay up; because it shows that man is a rational animal, made in the image of his Maker, always acting under the pressure of personal motives, and always estimating what is his own more highly than what belongs to another. Business motives act in their fulness only on the individual, whose is the effort and whose is the return. Any policy whatever on the part of Government, which lessens the number and the eagerness of individual operators in favor of great artificial combinations resting in the shadow of the Law, lessens of necessity the gains of exchanges, and the progress of the nation, because it lessens of necessity the press of motive on the many to work and save.

Government, accordingly, is quite too far off in every respect from the business, that is to say, from the buying and selling of the people, to undertake any branch of it when "it becomes necessary to abandon the principle of freedom in the establishment of enterprises." It will then be high time to "abandon" the "enterprises" themselves. If the "principle of freedom" cannot compass the "establishment of enterprises," is it likely that the "principle" of secondary and irresponsible agents can do it? To show the people how to make their bargains, how to buy and sell and save and spend, is a function government is not fitted for, was not established to perform, and never undertook without making a botch of it.

In the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States there is a careful and complete and elegant enumeration of the purposes, which the body of the instrument was designed to attain. These purposes are six. No one of them contains even a hint of any purpose to enter upon the "establishment of enterprises," still less of any necessity "to abandon the principle of freedom." The last of these six purposes is phrased: "and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." The liberty to buy and sell freely was precisely that "liberty" of the Colonies which was most threatened and infringed by the British Government, to vindicate that special "liberty" was the chief cause of the American Revolution, and "to secure the blessings" of that and other forms of similar "liberty" was the final purpose of the Constitution of the United States.

It is true indeed that the Constitution empowers Congress, a creature of the People, "to establish Post Offices and Post Roads"; but the purpose of this was political, and not pecuniary; it was to bind all the States together in one Union of intelligence and intercourse; it was to keep the outlying and distant parts in touch with the central and seaboard; it is not in any sense a "business" enterprise; the department of the mails is not now and never has been, for any length of time, self-supporting; and it illustrates through and through in its "Star route frauds" and other contracts, in its appointment and removal of postmasters, and in the sickening dependence of primal Service of the people on partisan and corrupting impulses, many of them inherent evils of the much-vaunted Nationalism.

But besides all these vital and political objections to the assumption on the part of government of any direct industrial functions whatever, there remains two other fundamental objections, of which the first is, that our national government has received no powers to any such end, and is emphatically prohibited in the Constitution itself from exercising them:—"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."

(2) The second remaining objection is, that such proposed action of government could have no tendency at all either to enlarge the Wages-portion, or to increase the industrial efficiency of the laborers, or to diminish the number of competitors at any one point of the wages-scale. As a matter of fact, such governmental action would have precisely the opposite effect at each of these three vital points of wages: employers would have less motive to swell the wages-portion, laborers less motive to improve their capacity, and more motive to congregate locally. Suppose, that at some given point in the scale of wages, free and intelligent competition has been had on both sides, and that the average rate of wages as thus determined proves one dollar per day for each laborer. Suppose further, that everybody outside the employers thinks this is quite too little, and that government accordingly issues a decree that wages at that point must be thereafter one dollar and a half per day. That decree can have no tendency at all to enlarge the wages-portion of those particular employers, because that has already been determined for the next industrial cycle by the general productiveness of the cycle last past, and by the last division under free competition between wages and profits; if, therefore, the decree were carried out, as it never practically could be, the result would be that only two-thirds of the laborers previously employed could be employed then at all, and the remaining third would certainly be worse off than before; and besides the Division of Labor being necessarily lessened, production would be less profitable to the employers, and the next wages-portion would certainly be less than the one before, and thus the outcome of the remedy would be worse than the disease. Now let alone the artificial interference of government, and all natural accessions to Capital at that point, all investment of profits in an enlarged business, all saving from expenditure for the sake of further production, tend strongly of their own accord to enlarge the wages-portion, and thus, the number and intelligence of the laborers continuing as before, are sure to raise the rate of wages. Or, if there be no accessions to Capital, or other influence swelling the wages-portion, and the number of laborers be diminished at that point, as by migration to new fields of effort or enlistment in armies, the competition of wages-givers for laborers will be quickened, and the rate of wages will rise. Reversed conditions will of course give reversed results.

2. A second popular remedy for low Wages, not only proposed, but also for a long time brought into practical action, is Labor-Unions in their various forms and with their manifold methods of operation upon employers. It is important to note here and to remember, that the Guilds of the mediæval times, from which the modern Trades-Unions have borrowed something of form and much of nomenclature, were in substance extremely different from their modern imitators. Those were combinations of Masters with their journeymen and apprentices and dependents in order to control the entire manufacture and sale of a certain class of products, from the name of which the Guild usually took its own name, as "Cloth-workers' guild," "Shoemakers' guild," and so on. Whittier, himself a shoemaker in his boyhood, apostrophizes the latter guild in words which more or less describe them all: —

These masters thus organized with their laborers were the capitalists of their time, and in this vital matter differed from the Unions of to-day, which are made up of laborers as such organized to confront, and if need be, to antagonize, capitalists. A royal charter was indispensable to the legal existence of those craftsmen. It took money for them to start their guilds, and in progress of time most of them became very rich. "A common fund was raised by contributions among the members, which not only provided for the trade objects of the guild; but sufficed to found chantries and masses, and set up painted windows in the church of their patron saint. Even at the present day the arms of the craft-guild may often be seen blazoned in cathedrals side by side with those of prelates and kings." This radical difference between the two must always be borne in mind in all arguments and inferences drawn over from the mediæval "unions" to those of the present day.

Two points may be freely conceded to these labor-organizations before we pass to the economic objections to them. In the first place, the employers set the example for the employees in a tacit if not open combination as against the employees in their own interest and emolument. The so-called "protective" tariff, for instance, is nothing in the world but a strongly-linked combination of certain rich capitalists to extort from the masses (their own laborers included) artificially lifted prices for the necessaries of life; and the certain result of shutting out imports by tariff-taxes is the shutting in of would-be exports, to the certain lowering of general wages in a country, because there is a lessened demand for laborers in consequence. For a second good instance of combinations as against employees on the part of employers, take the well-known understanding among manufacturers of the same sort of goods in the same general locality, that laborers discharged from one establishment shall not be hired in any of the rest; and that if the general voice call for a "shut down," or for three-fourths time or less, all in that line of goods shall comply. How can laborers be blamed for organizations in their own behalf when they find themselves confronted as individuals with an organization of employers?

Then, too, it must be acknowledged, that, had it not been for united action of some sort on the part of the laborers, the unreasonable hours of fifty years ago in mills and factories would probably not have been shortened to this day. Capitalists as a class are conservative of methods, as well as of ends. The cotton and woollen manufacturers of Berkshire County, for example, who may doubtless be taken as a fair sample of the manufacturers of New England, stiffly refused the demands of their work-people that the hours might be reduced from an average of 14 throughout the year to an average of 11. When the late Civil War was going on, and the manufacturing became extremely profitable, and the mills were more or less depleted by enlistment, and the remaining hands felt more independent from the consequent rise of wages, the combined demand in one mill for fewer hours was reinforced by simultaneous demands for the same in other mills in the neighborhood (the time and manner having been agreed upon beforehand), and visits in force by the work-people from mill to mill completed the desired reform. The mill-owners were sullen and indignant, and submitted of necessity. The work-men were right. The reform was imperative. Credit must be given to them for the good they have done acting as a body on this and other occasions.

On the other hand, all this is not business. All this is contrary to the very old, and the very good adage, that it takes two to make a bargain. If we express this adage in the language of our science, it will take some such form as this: When two men have mutual services to exchange, let them come to a fair agreement as to the terms on which they will exchange. Certainly, let each make the best terms he can, but let the bargain always be free. If one party, who happens to have the power to do it, uses anything like compulsion upon the other, it ceases so far forth to be a bargain at all, and becomes a sort of robbery, of which in some cases courts will take cognizance. Now, workmen bring a certain valuable service to the market, just such a service as the capitalist wants, and he has to offer just such a service as they want, namely, wages: let the two parties come to a free and fair agreement on the terms of their exchange; let each workman by all means make the very best terms he can, insisting to the last penny on all he can get elsewhere, for the value of his service is determined, as other values are determined, by what it will bring: let the employer do just the same on his side, and so let a fair bargain for the time present be struck. This is a very good kind of striking, and the more intelligence and skill and self-respect a workman has, the better prepared he is to strike the bargain and secure his just due by and for himself alone; and this gives a good chance for every man who has any peculiar gift, who may have surpassed his fellows in diligence and skill, to secure a proportionate reward now and to go on higher in future; all this gives opportunity for diversity of relative advantage, which, as we have seen, lies at the basis of all exchange, which itself starts in individualism and naturally proceeds in a still higher individualism to the end. This is the only way for a laborer of talent and diligence to secure fully what belongs to him as a man and a workman. If he cannot get from a given employer what he thinks he ought to get, what he thinks the service is worth in another market, let him exercise his perfect right to quit and go elsewhere. All this is fair and aboveboard and individual and progressive.

Everybody knows that there is a kind of striking now in vogue wholly different from this, in that it brings a sort of compulsion into play. A fair bargain should be broken, if at all, just as it was made, with the two parties face to face, and everybody else aloof; and a new bargain should be made, just as the old one was, with the two parties face to face, and everybody else aloof. But a combination among workmen to leave an employer in the lurch, and especially a combination which forces into its ranks by cajoling or menaces those who are unwilling to join it, as is so commonly the case in Strikes, is not only contrary to the inmost nature of a bargain, but is also of itself a sort of confession of the injustice of the claim. If the claim be just so far as all the individuals are concerned, there is no occasion to extort it. If the value of the service rendered by each be equal to the sum demanded, and especially if this can be obtained elsewhere, which is the only gauge of the value of any service anywhere, there is no need of conference and combination and conspiracy. Of course, this radical argument against Strikes implies that employers of that grade have not entered into a combination not to hire dissatisfied laborers from other establishments; if they have, then the agreement can be turned with equal force against the employers themselves, for they are resorting to means outside the nature of a bargain, means of the same nature as a Strike. Let, then, each workman tell his employer the present facts just as they are, and if this appeal prove ineffective to secure his commercial right, let him go quickly where he can get the most for his service. That this is not done, that means of the nature of a threat are brought to bear upon the employer, that the justice of the claim is not relied on in a case where more than anywhere else justice can enforce itself, that free and full explanations are not had, that no notice is given, that great damage is expected by their action to accrue to the employer,—all this seems to forget that the transaction between employers and employed is a case of pure exchange, a simple bargain of one service against another service.

The above is the universal and fundamental objection to Strikes. The remedy for economical evils, real or supposed, must ever be found in economical considerations. The strong but foolish tendency of the times is to mix up things that are quite distinct; to try to apply to the evils of Trade the rules of Morals, which is a useless task; to appeal to Politics in matters of pure Bargain; and to resort to Force to cure the evils that flow from the wholly voluntary action of individuals. This is like the doctor who would cure bodily ailments by mental and spiritual recipes. It has all the absurdities of the late famous "Mind-cure." The mind is indeed higher than the body, but bodily maladies must be treated as such, or the patient will die; the imperatives of Ethics are certainly superior to the profitables of Economics, but the latter are well able to take care of themselves on their own ground; Religion is loftier than Morals, but it becomes a very poor substitute for morals in the daily routine of life. Similia similibus curantur. Economical evils can only be removed by a better Economics better applied. Strikes are an outside and irrelevant remedy for low Wages.

A bad principle works badly in practice of course; the principle that underlies strikes is so opposed to the fundamental nature of exchange, that we might know beforehand that it would work badly; and as a matter of fact, it does work badly enough both upon employers and employed, because strikes are certain to embitter the relations between the two classes, which ought always to be cordial and free, and especially, because strikes must work on the minds of the capitalist to lessen the Wages-Portion for the next industrial cycle. Fortunately, we possess authentic statistics gathered about Strikes by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, and published in detail in the Report of December, 1888. The information given is exact in relation to five principal States, and approximate in relation to the other parts of the United States. We will copy first the table exhibiting the Losses in six years on account of Strikes of both Employers and Employees, and the outside assistance received by the latter:—

Employees' Loss and Assistance and Employers' Loss in the Five Principal States on Account of Strikes and Lock-outs for 1881-1886.