Henry George

“ Wages paid by an employer Production is always the mother of wages. Without production, wages would not and could not be. It is from the produce of labour, not from the advances of capital that wages come. Wherever we analyse the facts this will be found to be true. For labour always precedes wages. This is as universally true of wages received by the labourer from an employer as it is of wages taken directly by the labourer who is his own employer. In the one class of cases as in the other, reward is conditioned upon exertion. ”

“ If we trace the circle of exchange by which work done in the production of a great steam-engine secures to the worker bread, meat, clothes and shelter, we shall find that though between the labourer on the engine and the producers of the bread, meat, etc., there may be a thousand intermediate exchanges, the transaction, when reduced to its lowest terms, really amounts to an exchange of labour between him and them. ”

“ It is not necessary to the production of things that cannot be used as subsistence, or cannot be immediately utilized, that there should have been a previous production of the wealth required for the maintenance of the labourers while the production is going on. It is only necessary that somewhere within the circle of exchange there should be a contemporaneous production of sufficient subsistence for the labourers, and a willingness to exchange this subsistence for the thing on which labour is being bestowed. ”

“ The demand for consumption determines the direction in which labour will be expended in production. This principle is so simple and obvious that it needs no further illustration, yet in its light all the complexities of our subject disappear, and we thus reach the same view of the real objects and rewards of labour in the intricacies of modern production that we gained by observing in the first beginnings of society the simpler forms of production and exchange. ”

“ Imagine such a suspension of labour in any community, and you will see how true it is that mankind really lives from hand to mouth; that it is the daily labour of the community that supplies the community with its daily bread. ”

“ It is tangible in the case of horses, cattle and sheep which increase in value as they grow towards maturity. And if not always tangible between what may be called the usual exchange points in production, this increase of value as surely takes place with every exertion of labour. Hence, where labour is rendered before wages are paid, the advance of capital is really made by labour, and is from the employed to the employer, not from the employer to the employed. ”

“ As the ploughman cannot eat the furrow, nor a partially completed steam-engine aid in any way in producing the clothes the machinist wears, have I not, in the words of John Stuart Mill, "forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labour, but of past?" ”

“ The item of money will be less, for it has been paid out in wages; there will be less raw material, less coal, etc., and a proper deduction must be made from the value of the buildings and machinery for the week's wear and tear. But if he is doing a remunerative business, which must on the average be the case, the item of finished products will be so much greater as to compensate for all these deficiencies and show in the summing-up an increase of capital. Manifestly the value he paid his hands in wages was not drawn from his capital nor from anyone else's capital. ”

“ When we do not distinguish different parts in the final process of production we do distinguish the value of the materials. The value of these materials may often be again decomposed many times, exhibiting as many clearly defined steps in the creation of the final value. At each of these steps we habitually estimate a creation of value, an addition to capital. ”

“ We see that now, as then, each labourer is endeavouring to obtain by his exertions the satisfaction of his own desires; we see that although the minute division of labour assigns to each producer the production of but a small part, or perhaps nothing at all, of the particular things he labours to get, yet, in aiding in the production of what other producers want, he is directing other labour to the production of the things he wants - in effect, producing them himself. ”

“ For, though ploughing is but a part of the operation of producing a crop, it is a part, and as necessary a part as harvesting. The doing of it is a step toward procuring a crop, which, by the assurance it gives of the future crop, sets free from the stock constantly held the subsistence and wages of the ploughman. ”

“ Surely, it will be said that in such cases, even if in no others, wages do actually come from capital; are actually advanced by capital; and must necessarily lessen capital in their payment? Surely here, at least, industry is limited by capital, for without capital such works could not be carried on? ”

“ The creation of value is tangible enough when growing crops are sold, as is sometimes done, or where the farmer does not himself harvest, but lets a contract to the owner of harvesting machinery. It is tangible in the case of orchards and vineyards which, though not yet in bearing, bring prices proportionate to their age. ”

“ The fact that the labourer must have food, clothing, etc., in order to enable him to perform the work is at once recognized and the unwary reader, having been told that the food, clothing, etc., used by productive labourers are capital, assents to the conclusion that the consumption of capital is necessary to the application of labour. ”

“ The conclusion is no more valid than it would be to infer from the acceptance of the proposition that a labourer cannot go to work without his breakfast and some clothes, that no more labourers can go to work than employers first furnish with breakfasts and clothes. Now the fact is that labourers generally furnish their own breakfasts and the clothes in which they go to work; and the further fact is that employers are never compelled to make advances to labour before the work begins, although in exceptional cases they may do so. ”

“ For an entire suspension of productive labour would be a disaster more dreadful than ever yet befell a beleaguered city. It would not be a mere external wall of circumvallation, such as Titus drew around Jerusalem, which would prevent the constant incoming of the supplies on which a great city lives, but it would be the drawing of a similar wall around each household. ”

“ And so the man who is following the plough - though the crop for which he is opening the ground is not yet sown, and after being sown will take months to arrive at maturity - he is yet, by the exertion of his labour in ploughing, virtually producing the food he eats and the wages he receives. ”

“ Even if wages thus paid be considered as drawn from capital, then by that act they pass from the category of capital to that of wealth devoted to the gratification of the possessor, as when a cigar dealer takes a dozen cigars from the stock he has for sale and puts them in his pocket for his own use The manufacturer and his capital Take, for instance, an employing manufacturer who is engaged in turning raw material into finished products - cotton into cloth, iron into hardware, leather into boots, or so on, as may be, and who pays his hands, as is generally the case, once a week. ”

“ If, for instance, I devote my labour to gathering birds' eggs or picking wild berries, the eggs or berries I thus get are my wages. Surely no one will contend that in such a case wages are drawn from capital. ”

“ And if this would be so, is not the man who ploughs really producing his subsistence and wages as much as though during the day or week his labour actually resulted in the things for which his labour exchanged? ”

“ Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that the manufacturer neither buys nor sells during the week and, after work has stopped and he has paid his hands on Saturday, he takes a new inventory of his capital. ”

“ If I hire a man to gather eggs, to pick berries, or to make shoes, paying him from the eggs, the berries, or the shoes his labour secures, there can be no question that the source of the wages is the labour for which they are paid. ”

“ It seems to me that the proposition that present labour might be maintained by the produce of past labour will upon analysis prove to be true only in the sense that the afternoon's labour must be performed by the aid of the noonday meal, or that before you eat the hare he must be caught and cooked. ”

“ Wages a share of produce The farming of land on shares, which prevails to a considerable extent in the Southern States of the Union and in California, the metayer system of Europe, as well as the many cases in which superintendents, salesmen, etc., are paid by a percentage of profits, what are they but the employment of labour for wages that consist of part of its produce? ”

“ And this, manifestly, is not the sense in which the proposition is used to support the important reasoning that is made to hinge upon it. That sense is, that before a work that will not immediately result in wealth available for subsistence can be carried on, there must exist such a stock of subsistence as will support the labourers during the process. ”

“ Supposing a hundred men to be landed, without any stock of provisions, in a new country. Will it be necessary for them to accumulate a season's stock of provisions before they can begin to cultivate the soil? ”

“ They involve the idea that labour cannot be exerted until the products of labour are saved thus; putting the product before the producer. And being examined, they will be seen to derive their apparent plausibility from a confusion of thought. ”