Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/606

588 labor, as capital, not theories, but immense and awful facts which must bruise and grind each other until they are worn into some finer social relations. The idea that some wrong principles in the first constitution of the facts might be changed, and the whole result might be ameliorated, never occurs to him. The whole affair must be fought out representatively and fairly; and, when the strongest force has manifested itself, right will prevail. He admits the many evils of trades-unionism, stating them with candor and force. But he believes the institution to be absolutely necessary. He says, on page 320:

Mr. Thornton supports the extraordinary theory that an artificial rise of wages may be made into a permanent value by reconstructing the whole formula of supply and demand as it is enunciated by economists and men of affairs. He says, on page 108:

It is not necessary to refute this theory in its relation to price and value—it refutes itself; common facts, occurring since he wrote, have nullified it. I am only stating the basis of trades-unionism in the words of its most intelligent advocate. It is interesting to compare these doctrines of Mr. Thornton with those of Josiah Warren, an American socialist, who approaches the question from the opposite direction. Mr. Warren works his theory of value, price, and supply and demand, out of the sovereignty of the individual, as he terms it; while Mr. Thornton's comes out of the historic organization of society, political and social, as well as economical. Mr. Warren was an earnest man, who has had and now has a great influence in forming the opinions of laborers and labor-agitators in this country. He says in his pamphlet on "True Civilization" (pages 41, 64, 100):