Chapter XXXV: Section CLXXVIII: Wages-Policy.--Minimum of Wages

The demand[178-1] so frequently heard recently, that the state should guaranty an "equitable" minimum of wages, could be granted where the natural rate of wages has fallen below that minimum, only on condition that some of the working class in the distribution of the wages capital (no longer sufficient in all the less profitable branches of business) should go away entirely empty handed. Hence, as a rule, in addition to that wages-guaranty, the guaranty of the right to labor is also required. But as useful labor always finds purchasers (the word "useful" being here employed in the sense of the entire economy of a people, and understood in the light of the proper gradation of wants and the means of satisfying them), such a right to labor means no more and no less than that the state should force labor which no one can use, upon others.[178-2] Something similar is true of Louis Blanc's proposition that the rate of wages of the workmen should be determined and regulated by their own votes and among themselves.[178-3]

All such measures are injurious in proportion as they, by extending aid and the amount of the minimum, go beyond the limits of benevolence, and approach those of a community of goods. (§ 81 ff.) However, if they would be lasting and not pull workmen rapidly down to the very depths of universal and irremediable misery, these measures should be accompanied by the bestowal of power on the guarantor to hold the further increase of the human family within bounds.[178-4]

The condition of workmen can be continued good or materially improved only on condition that their numbers increase less rapidly than the capital destined for wages. The latter increases usually and most surely by savings. But only the middle classes are really saving. In England, for instance, the national capital increases every year by at least £50,000,000, while the working classes spend at least £60,000,000 in tobacco and spirituous liquors, _i. e._, in numberless instances, only for a momentary injurious enjoyment by the adult males of the class, one in which their families have almost no share. According to this, every compulsory rise in wages would be a taking away from the saving class and a giving to a class that effect no savings. Is not this to act after the manner of the savages who cut down a fruit tree in order more conveniently to relish its fruit?[178-5]

Benjamin Franklin calls out to workmen and says: If any one tells you that you can become rich in any other way than through industry and frugality, do not listen to him; he is a poisoner! And, in fact, only those changes permanently improve the condition of the working classes which are useful to the whole people: enhanced productiveness of every branch of business in the country, increased capital, the growth (also relative) of the industrial middle classes, the greater education, strength of character, skill and fidelity in labor of workmen themselves. Much especially depends upon their foresight and self-control as regards bringing children into the world. Without this latter virtue even the favorable circumstances would be soon trifled away.[178-6]

[Footnote 178-1: Compare, besides, the Prussian A. L. R.,
II, 19, 2. In _Turgot_, _droit du travail_, and _droit au
travail_ are still confounded one with the other. Oeuvres
éd. _Daire_, II, 302 ff; especially 306. In such questions,
people generally think only of factory hands. But have not
writers just as good a _droit au travail_ to readers whom
the state should provide them with, lawyers to clients and
doctors to patients?]

[Footnote 178-2: _L. Faucher_ calls the _droit au travail_
worse than the equal and compulsory distribution of all
goods, because it lays hands on not only present products
but even on the productive forces. It supposes that
unlimited production is possible; that the state may
regulate the market at pleasure to serve its purposes; that,
in fact, the state can give without having first taken what
it gave. (Mélanges d'Economie politique, II, 148 ff.) The
French national assembly rejected the "right to labor" on
the 15th of September, 1848, by 596 ayes to 187 nays, after
the provisional government had proclaimed it, February 25.
Le Droit au Travail à l'Assemblée nationale avec des
Observations de _Faucher, Wolowski, Bastiat_ etc., by _J.
Garnier_, Paris, 1848.]

[Footnote 178-3: _L. Blanc_, De L'Organization du Travail,
1849.]

[Footnote 178-4: "Every one has a right to live. We will
suppose this granted. But no one has a right to bring
creatures into life to be supported by other people. Whoever
means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce
all pretension to the last.... Posterity will one day ask
with astonishment what sort of people it could be among whom
such preachers could find proselytes." (_J. S. Mill_,
Principles, II, ch. 12.)]

[Footnote 178-5: Compare _Morrison_, loc. cit. Quarterly
Rev., Jan. 1872, 260. The English savings in the savings
banks, between 1839 and 1846, increased yearly in amount
only £1,408,630, and scarcely half of this came from
wages-workmen in the narrower sense of the term. What the
latter contribute to the fund for the old and sick is not
really productive capital but only individually deferred
consumption. Let us suppose that a man had an income of
$3,000 a year, of which he laid out yearly $2,000 ($1,000
for wages, $1,000 for rent and interest on capital), and
that he capitalizes $1,000. If now this man were, either
through philanthropy or in furtherance of socialism, to
double the wages he paid, the result would not be
detrimental to the economic interests of the whole country
only on the supposition that working classes who received
the increased wages should either save what he is no longer
able to save, or that by inventions or greater personal
skill, etc., they should increase the national income.]

[Footnote 178-6: According to _Hildebrand's_ Jahrbb., 1870,
I, 435, 193, North American workmen, the quality of work
being supposed the same, now accomplish from 20 to 30 per
cent. less than before 1860. Thus, in 1858, in New York, a
steam engine was manufactured for $23,000, in 2,323 work
days. In 1869, a similar one was built for $40,000 in 3,538
days. In the former case, the manufacturer made a profit. In
the latter, he lost $5,000.

_John Stuart Mill_, II, ch. 13. Against the
"philanthropists" who find it hard to preach to the poor,
the only efficacious means of improving their condition,
_Dunoyer_, L. du T., IV, ch. 10, says: The rich _do_ employ
it, although they have much less need of it! Even _Marlo_
admits that a guaranty of the right to labor, without any
measures to limit population, would, in a short time, and
irredeemably lead the country to destruction. (Weltökonomie,
I, 2, 357.) _von Thünen_, der isolirte Staat., II, 1, 81
ff., would take a leap out of the vicious circle that those
who live by the labor of their hands can produce no rise in
their wages, because they are too little educated to hold
their increase properly in check; and that, on the other
hand, they cannot give their children a decent education,
because their wages are too low; by suggesting that
educational institutions should be established by the state,
and that these should elevate the subsequent generation of
workmen intellectually.]