Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/62

52 great combinations of capital," in which case, of course, the broken beads and boycotts are the fault of the great combinations. (Query: What-"great combination of capital" was at fault in the case of the poor widow whose bakery business was broken up in this city recently because she kept a journeyman baker who did not happen to be a member of a particular boycotters' union which was "competing for labor" in the vicinity of her bake-shop?) A few other simple negations are necessary in disposing of the above sentence—namely: There is no such thing as "the rate of interest" that is "fixed by free competition." The rates of interest are fixed by the laws of demand and supply in the mercantile world, and by statute so far as courts and legal proceedings are concerned. Labor does not, even when wicked capital combines, compete for wages. It appears to be oftener the rule, nowadays, that wages compete for labor; and finally, the combination or centralizing of capital is not an infraction of economic law at all; nor are any one of the above statements we have been at the pains to contradict ever offered as a "plea" or as "pleas" for such an infraction. As to what the "competition of labor for wages" is at the present date, we may illustrate by a single example. Last summer the workmen in a sugar-refinery in Brooklyn struck for an advance in wages. The proprietor called them together, showed them his books, explained to them his expenses, and demonstrated to them that if he paid them the wages demanded, his sugar would cost him more than the market price at which imported sugars were that moment selling in New York city, and that, therefore, he not only could not compete with the imported sugar, but must close his refinery. The "walking delegate," however, had his orders: the strike could not be "off." The rates must be paid; and so the refinery was closed. But, in this Mr. Hudson perceives nothing but justice. Having declined to see that the laws of supply and demand have anything to do with prices, why should they stand in the way of a capitalist paying what wages his "competing workmen" demand? The owner of the Brooklyn refinery was one of the "favored class of capital," who, "by means of the control of the highways of commerce" (the refinery in question stands on the dock, and ocean-going vessels load and discharge at its hatches), "establish an exemption from the force which fixes the reward of human effort." But in this case some force (whether that of the "walking delegate" or of the laws of commerce, or of the New York market) closed his refinery, nevertheless. The workmen who refused to keep their contracts of employment with the sugar-refiner—nay (for such the facts were), threatened to break his machinery and burn and pillage his establishment—and who, by force and arms, kept