Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - Lassalle's Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany - tr. John Ehmann and Fred Bader (1879).djvu/14

 and I say that it must not be confused with the methods, to better the condition of the working class, and which is the aim of the workingmen's movement to accomplish.

The merciless economical rule,under which the present system fixes the rate of wages, in obedience to the so-called law of supply and demand for labor is this: that the average wages always remain reduced to that rate which in a people is barely necessary for existence and propagation; a matter governed by the customary manner of living of each people. That is the inexorable point about which the real wages always gravitate; never keeping long above or below it. Were it to remain for any length of time above it, there: would be an increase of marriages from which would flow a greatly increased number of the working element, which would invariably bring down the; wages below its former rate.

The wages also cannot fall with anything like permanence below the ordinary rate of living; as from it would flow emigration, celibacy, restraint in the number of births; circumstances in the end lessening the number of laborers; an equilibrium is thus secured, keeping wages generally uniform; the wages being at all times in obedience to the vibrations. There is no gain saying the assurance that the wages of a people are regulated by their ordinary habits of living, those habits conforming to the limits of existence and propagation. This is the cruel, rigorous law that governs wages under the present system.

The truthfulness of this standard no man can question. I could call in support of my assertions names famous in national economical science even from the liberal school; for, truth to tell, it was the liberal economic school which discovered and proved the law.

Gentlemen, this cruel inflexible law you must at all times; have before you, impressing your souls with its terrible truth, and in all your thinking you must start with it as a perpetual presence.

And here I can give you and the whole body of the working people an infallible test by which all mistakes and errors can be avoided in your dealings with would be leaders.

To every one who speaks of ameliorating the condition of the worker, you must put the question: whether or not he recognizes this law?

If he does not, at once say to yourself, he either desires