Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/677

Rh remuneration, people would not change back. What has happened is really a revolution in the quality of labor and the general conditions of life. The net gain, in one view, is less than the apparent gross improvement, looking at the matter strictly; in another view, the gain is so great as to make the present condition of workmen on the average incommensurable with their former condition. The two things are not on the same plane, and can hardly be compared.

An important corollary seems to be suggested by these considerations. If there is so much doubt about the adequacy of the reward for the additional labor thrown on workmen by the conditions of modern society, is not that reward really a minimum reward? In other words, may not the amount of production itself be conditioned by the energy of the workman, which is in turn a function of the food and other things on which he expends his wages, so that the quality of labor by which modern society is carried on would not itself exist if the remuneration were less than it is? The complaint we are dealing with is that of the severity of modern toil, and implies that the workman is tasked to his full capacity, and can just do the work, so that the remuneration can not be reduced. And that this is really the case in many employments may be easily enough illustrated. It is quite certain that the driver of an express engine could not go through the very formidable labors he undergoes if he only had the food of the rude laborer of a former time, and only lived in the way that such a laborer used to live. He would not, under such conditions, have the energy or brain-power for the work to be done. It is the same with workmen in a factory who have to attend to many machines. The constant strain simply could not be endured if the workman had to live as the factory worker of a former time had to live. The present worker is really cheaper than the former worker, because he does more in proportion; but, dear as he is, yet, in another respect, he may perhaps be viewed, according to a suggestion already made, as really engaged at a minimum wage—without which he could not do the work at all. This is not a question merely of a rise in the scale of living, though that question is intermixed with it. It is a question of the actual necessity on the part of the workman that certain things should be put into him, or supplied to him, as a condition of his doing the work which he actually performs. What is true of the workman specially referred to is of course still more true of the higher kinds of work involving artistic or other skill.

It may also be added that the suggestion already made as to the reason for a non-increase of remuneration in certain directions being that the work done has not itself improved in quality, is fully confirmed by the general view thus stated. If the work