Page:Shop Talks on Economics.djvu/39

 above its value for any length of time. To repeat:

Reformer says: The wage worker receives his wages. That he is exploited by his employer. But when he goes to buy shoes, food, meat or clothes, he finds the owner of these commodities selling them at a higher price than he can pay. Then the reformers conclude that these merchants are exploiting the workers also. These people do not understand that the value of A (the necessities of life) determine wages.

Not all individual workingmen or women receive the value of their labor-power. Some men and women receive a little more than the value of labor-power. We know a young girl in this city who works in a department store for $5.00 a week. She cannot buy food, clothing and shelter for $5.00. Her brother receives $18.00 a week. He can live on less than that sum. He helps his sister pay her expenses. Thus both receive the value of their labor-power.

Men cannot work long upon less wages than the value of their labor-power. They must have help from without. Fortunate members of families help those who do not earn enough to live on. Thousands of families receive intermittent aid from charity organizations, so that the working class, in general, receives just about the value of its labor-power. In other words, the army of workers receive enough to produce more workers for tomorrow and twenty years from now. It is the unemployed fighting for jobs who force wages down almost to the bare cost of living.