Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/317

Rh theoretical justification for the existence of our democratic form of government—that is, that the best interests of the constituent individuals are best served by placing in the hands of their chosen representatives certain functions which can be better performed for the individuals by those representatives than they could be performed by the individuals for themselves.

When an employer announces a rate of wages, an employee has the right to work at that rate or not, as he may choose—that is, he has the right to contract for his services. But if the manager of a mill, a mine, a factory, or other large establishment employing a great number of workmen engaged in the same kind of work, announces a reduction from the established rate of wages, what is the effect upon the individual workman if entirely dependent upon his individual resources in the negotiations incident to this individual contract? He may continue to work at the reduced wages or not, as he may choose, but to seek work at another establishment is often impracticable, especially if necessitating removal to another locality. To remain without work, even for a short time, entails ill-borne loss. The result is that a portion of the employees may leave, but the majority find it preferable to accept the reduction, especially those who have acquired homes in the vicinity, and live wrapped in the web of attachment woven by the associations of the home, the neighborhood, and the community. The contract for a rate of wages between the employer and the individual is, therefore, one in the negotiations for which the employer has an advantage so tremendous that his decision is practically the mandate of a despot, and, as upon the rate of wages practically depends the employee's subsistence, the amount of necessaries, comforts, and luxuries he can procure for himself and family, the employer oftentimes has greater power over the manner of life and the happiness of his employees than the Constitution accords to Congress and the President of the United States. When this power is used to reduce wages, workingmen have frequently but little means of knowing whether the reduction is forced by the conditions of production and distribution, or whether it is an arbitrary attempt to swell the employer's profits. The conditions of their lives are such that they can not know much of the cost of plants, appliances, material, and the relation that wages bear to the cost of production or to the expense of distribution. In any event, the strong promptings of immediate self-interest impel them not only to resist any reduction, but to endeavor to obtain, from time to time, an increase of wages, a general betterment of condition; and as individual assertion is of little or no avail in resisting reduction or obtaining an increase, the natural result is that the workingmen in a particular line of industry endeavor to obtain by combined action that which they