Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/627

Rh the fact that every increase of goods brings a corresponding increased demand for such goods?

If there is one thing more than another working-men long for, it is high wages. To keep up their pay they unite in trades'-unions and analogous combinations. The employer wages war against this effort. While the former would demand all the profit of his labor, leaving the latter nothing for his pains, he in turn would like to retain it all for himself. If these were the sole factors of this battle, wages would steadily ascend, the balance of force ranging upward. Unfortunately (?) for the workman, this is not the case. His own unconscious efforts to pull wages down outweigh his conscious efforts to keep them up. Can he not see that every time he deserts a dear dealer to buy from a cheap one he is thoughtlessly creating a tendency to lower the wages of all who take part in the manufacture of such articles? This eventually, and through a variety of channels, works around to his own. This move on his part likewise creates a necessity for dishonesty and adulteration, which still further reacts against him. His employer, on the other hand, does more toward keeping up wages by seeking dear markets for his goods than his conscious efforts amount to in pulling them down. As the heaviest strain on the produce of the workman is the downward one, since all consumers take part in it, wages must fall. All the world clamors for cheap goods. Eventually a point of stable equilibrium must be reached, where very low wages precede very cheap goods. As capitalists, studying the cost of production, hold on to goods, refusing to sell at a sacrifice, their sales descend or cease, and wages are thrown down first. Could working-men be made to realize the fact that high wages mean correspondingly high food, clothing, fuel, rent, with all else he would purchase, while low wages mean the opposite, I think they would agree with me in saying that the amount received per diem for their work was of secondary importance. Some laborers must take the shrinkage in advance of others.

That there are more goods in the American market than is at present demanded, under existing conditions, is a certainty. But if over-production has glutted one market, why not seek another? Why stop mills and factories? Why turn laboring-men into the street? Is there no channel of least resistance for business to travel in? An over-production of goods is an over-production of wealth. Has the nation more wealth and comfort than it can manage or knows what to do with? The thing is perfectly absurd. When railroads came they brought an over-supply of accommodation for stage-coach travelers, but this extra amount of room found a use for itself in making travel cheaper and more comfortable, so that immensely more people traveled. Every labor-saving machine has done the same for the articles it produces. But suppose the price of travel had kept up, and the comforts remained the same, while the means of carrying