Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/249

Rh from dying at once of starvation.

These circumstances are utterly beyond the control of the laboring man. He may toil with the utmost diligence, with the greatest exertion of his vital energies, he can never earn more than is sufficient to supply his most immediate wants—aside from the fact that the lowest wages now paid represent the expenditure of all the workman's energies. On the contrary: the more he works, the more intolerable does his position become. This sounds paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true. The more that the operative produces, the lower goes the selling price of his productions, while his wages remain the same if they do not become less. Thus he spoils his own market by straining every nerve, and depreciates the value of his own labor. This phenomenon would not occur if the production of the great manufacturing industries was regulated by the demand. Then over-production would never occur, the price of the articles would never be depressed by an over-supply, and the producing laboring man would be paid higher wages for an increased amount of work. But Capital perverts this natural operation of the forces of political economy. A man builds a factory and commences the manufacture of goods, not because he has become convinced that a demand hitherto unsatisfied exists for the goods he is to produce, but because he has capital, for which he is seeking a profitable investment, and also because he has some neighbor who has accumulated wealth with his factory. Thus individual whims or want of judgment, instead of the laws of political economy, decide the investment of capital. The market is thus flooded with an over-supply of certain manufactured goods because some man has been following a false trail in his mad chase after the Almighty Dollar. The mistake brings its own punishment, it is true. The manufacturer