Henry R. Seager

“ Adam Smith asserted that in a day's labor the laborer "must always lay down the same portion of his ease, his liberty, and his happiness." Later writers assumed also that labor was disagreeable, if not painful, and would only be undertaken in the hope of reward. Professor Jevons first stated clearly that different kinds of labor and different hours of labor involve different degrees of sacrifice. He emphasized the thought that some labor is a source of positive pleasure to the laborer, and that it is usually only because labor is carried to excess that it becomes painful. ”

“ Ricardo gave his attention primarily to the distribution of wealth, and based his theory on the proposition that value is always in proportion to the quantity of labor. He added little to Adam Smith's treatment of labor as a factor in production, except to point out that nature assists man in all his industrial pursuits, and not merely in farming. John Stuart Mill went a step further toward giving scientific precision to economic analysis by pointing out that labor does not create commodities, but merely changes their forms, and in so doing creates utilities. ”

“ The earliest civilizations were based on systems of slave labor, the slaves being either a subject people dominated by a conquering race or prisoners of war. Such systems led inevitably to the degeneration of the governing class, and were overthrown as soon as the peoples establishing them came in contact with more vigorous races which had been forced by circumstances to depend more upon their own exertions. During the Middle Ages, and even down to modern times in some of the countries of Europe, the system of labor was a modified form of slavery known as serfdom. ”

“ Production, instead of figuring in the economic calculus as a sum of pains to be weighed against the pleasures of consumption, would appear in such a society as a sum of pleasures to be added in determining the full joy of living. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to point out that such a condition is far in advance of the real situation even in the most progressive communities; but the world has certainly advanced to a stage in which economists and other thoughtful people have definitely discarded the idea that labor is a 'curse,' and in its place have set up the ideal of labor as a necessary means to the fullest self-realization and self-development of the laborer. ”

“ Human activity put forth as a means to the production of goods. Two forms, forced or slave labor, induced by the fear of punishment, and contract or free labor, induced by the desire for goods as a means to the satisfaction of wants, are to be sharply distinguished. ”

“ The different conceptions of free labor which have played a part in the development of economic thought can best be indicated by reviewing briefly the views of leading economists. It was characteristic of the Mercantilist writers to ignore labor and the other factors in the production of wealth, and to ascribe exaggerated importance to the precious metals. The Physiocrats appreciated more truly the function of the precious metals; but they also gave slight attention to labor, as such, because they ascribed undue importance to the part which land and natural forces play in production. ”

“ When such phrases as 'the laboring class,' 'the labor problem,' 'the labor movement,' 'labor laws,' etc., are used, reference is made to the wage-earning class, whose rise to its present prominence dates from the industrial revolution at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. ”

“ With the broadening of the conception of productive labor, more attention has been given to the interdependence of different groups of workers. It is recognized that unskilled manual laborers owe much to skilled or mechanical laborers, and that both would be worse off but for the guidance and direction of the business men or entrepreneurs who perform the 'labor of management.' At the same time there is still a tendency to draw a distinction between workers who work for wages and independent business or professional men who work for profits. ”

“ To be sure, the utilities created by the actor are consumed as they are produced by his listening audience; but in this they differ only in degree from the utilities created by the fishman or the green-grocer, whose products must also be consumed promptly to be enjoyed at all. If permanence of results is the test of productiveness, the labor of all three must be considered unproductive in comparison with the labor of the pyramid-builder. ”