Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/264

 72 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.

But while in large factories and mines regulations as to hours, ages, etc., though subject to evasion and offer ing opportunities for extortion and corruption, may be tc some extent enforced, how can they have any effect ii those far wider branches of industry where the laborei works for himself or for small employers?

All such remedies are of the nature of the remedy foi overcrowding that is generally prescribed with them the restriction under penalty of the number who maj occupy a room and the demolition of unsanitary build ings. Since these measures have no tendency to increase house accommodation or to augment ability to pay foi it, the overcrowding that is forced back in some places goes on in other places and to a worse degree. All sucl remedies begin at the wrong end. They are like putting on brake and bit to hold in quietness horses that are being lashed into frenzy ; they are like trying to stop a locomotive by holding its wheels instead of shutting ofl steam ; like attempting to cure smallpox by driving bach its pustules. Men do not overwork themselves because they like it ; it is not in the nature of the mother's hearl to send children to work when they ought to be at play ; it is not of choice that laborers will work under danger- ous and unsanitary conditions. These things, like over- crowding, come from the sting of poverty. And so long as the poverty of which they are the expression is lefl untouched, restrictions such as you indorse can have only partial and evanescent results. The cause remain- ing, repression in one place can only bring out its effects in other places, and the task you assign to the state is as hopeless as to ask it to lower the level of the ocean by bailing out the sea.

Nor can the state cure poverty by regulating wages, It is as much beyond the power of the state to regulate wages as it is to regulate the rates of interest. Usury

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