Henry George

“ And thus when the division of labour is fairly inaugurated and, instead of each attempting to satisfy all of his wants by direct resort to nature, one fishes, another hunts, a third picks berries, a fourth gathers fruit, a fifth makes tools, a sixth builds huts, and a seventh prepares clothing - each one to the extent he exchanges the direct product of his own labour for the direct product of the labour of others is really applying his own labour to the production of the things he uses. ”

“ Keeping these principles in view, we see that a draughtsman drawing the plans for a great marine engine in some dingy office on the banks of the Thames is in reality devoting his labour to the production of bread and meat as truly as though he were garnering the grain in California or swinging a lariat on a La Plata pampa. He is as truly making his own clothing as though he were shearing sheep in Australia or weaving cloth in Parsley. The miner digging out silver ore in the heart of the high Comstock is in effect by virtue of a thousand exchanges, harvesting crops in the valleys below ”

“ We shall see that wages are the earnings-that is to say, the makings - of labour, not the advances of capital, and that the labourer who receives his wages in money (coined or printed, it may be, before his labour commenced) really receives in return for the addition his labour has made to the general stock of wealth a draft upon that general stock, which he may utilize in any particular form of wealth that will best satisfy his desires. ”

“ If we keep this firmly in mind, if we look upon the whole production of a community as the cooperation of all to satisfy the various desires of each, we see plainly that the reward each obtains for his exertion comes as truly and certainly from nature as the result of that exertion, as did the reward of the first man. ”

“ Chapter III Wages and capital The cause that produces poverty in the midst of advancing wealth is evidently the cause that exhibits itself in the tendency, everywhere recognized, of wages to a minimum. ”

“ What wages really represent If we follow these principles, obvious enough in a simpler state of society, through the complexities of the state we call civilized, we shall see clearly that in every case in which labour is exchanged for commodities, production really precedes enjoyment. ”

“ And every man engaged in it, whether tossing wood into the furnace, running the engine, dressing stones, printing sacks or keeping books, is really devoting his labour to the same purpose that the prehistoric savage had when he used his mortar: the preparation of grain for human food. ”

“ If it be shown that this is an error, and that on the contrary the maintenance and payment of labour do not even temporarily trench on capital, but are directly drawn from the product of labour, then all this vast superstructure is left without support and must fall. And so likewise must fall the vulgar theories which also have their base in the belief that the sum to be distributed in wages is a fixed one, the individual shares in which must necessarily be decreased by an increase in the number of labourers. ”