Cheap labor

“ And not only may this, but there is every inducement and almost necessity urging that it should, be done except where the workmen are organized. No employer can afford to pay a workman more than his surplus over and above what would be produced without him, and it will be to his advantage to pay less. He is a purchaser of labor, and like every other purchaser wants to get that commodity at the lowest figure. ”

“ But to-day's labor can be sold only to-day. And if it be not sold, it is probable that the workman will be physically less fit to-morrow. Yet even if he does accept the wage offered, and it is less than enough to repair the daily waste of force, the same result will be brought about gradually. ”

“ On the other hand, the men who use the opportunity offered by a scarcity of labor to exact wages higher than the average of their class, without doing more than the average work in return, are merely laying up trouble for themselves in the long run. They grow accustomed to a high rate of living and expenditure, and when the inevitable turn comes and they are either thrown out of employment or forced to accept low wages, they are the losers by the whole transaction. ”

“ Did they demand more, the competition of others would prevent them from getting employment. Did he offer less, none would accept the terms, as they could obtain greater results by working for themselves. Thus, although the employer wishes to pay as little as possible, and the employee to receive as much as possible, wages will be fixed by the value or produce of such labor to the laborers themselves. If wages are temporarily carried either above or below this line, a tendency to carry them back at once arises. ”

“ Even though the worker who is making shoes has to turn out twenty times as much work for the same wages, still as a consumer he shares in the all-round cheapening of manufactured articles, and is able to buy clothes and shoes and pins so much the cheaper. That the cost of living on the whole might be greater, that the wage of the worker might be too low to permit of his purchasing the very articles into the making of which his own labor had gone, did not occur to these à priori reasoners. ”

“ Would it ever be possible for him to pay the laborers MORE than the value of their labor power and to sell their products at LESS than their value, and still make a profit? Explain why this would be possible.
Are the workers any better off where the cost of living is low than where the cost of living is high? Are they able to save any more in the countries of low prices? Do low prices benefit the working class? Do we find wages high or low where the cost of living is high? Where the cost of living is low? Does a low cost of living benefit the capitalists? ”

“ The constant effort to obtain the maximum of production at the minimum of cost operates injuriously upon employer and employee alike; while the shrinkage in money circulation, caused by the competition, reduces, in every branch of industry, the wages of those who are the great consumers as well as producers; it produces those "hard times" which bear so hardly upon the poor in every walk of life. Even the laboring man has entered the race, and now competes in the labor market with his fellow for an opportunity to make a crust of bread to feed his wife and child. ”

“ Will you tell me, John, where the Socialists are going to get the money to meet this enormous pay-roll, if they stop making goods for profit? Wages are to be increased out of all proportion to the present schedule; hours of labor are to be reduced to a minimum, and yet, despite all this, the prices of all commodities are to be cheapened, too. ”

“ But intelligent workmen and women are not content with selling their laboring-power at its value. They are coming more and more to demand the value of their products. We are growing weary of being mere commodities, compelled to sell ourselves, for wages at the regular "market price." We are weary of receiving a product of two hours of labor for products containing ten hours of our labor. We are tired of living on meagre wages while we pile up millions for the capitalist class. ”

“ Now it is an undeniable fact that the condition of many of the wage-workers of the country approximates to this: They must have food, shelter, and clothing for themselves and their families, and the only thing they can offer in exchange for it is their labor. Suppose an honest and industrious man has some misfortune, as an accident, or illness, and loses employment. When once more able to work, he finds his old place filled and new places hard to find; but at last he finds a mercenary employer who agrees to give him half wages. ”

“ And as it holds that so-called "pauper labor" is cheaper than free labor, it gives the employers in each country a constant motive for reducing their own laborers to the lowest condition of poverty, consistent with their ability to labor at all. In other words, the theory is, that the smaller the portion of the products of labor, that is given to the laborers, the larger will be the portion that will go into the pockets of the employers. ”

“ What the laborers require to live, and to marry, and beget children in sufficient numbers to supply the labor market, is their standard of life. This they obtain and no more. Labor costs labor, and is measured by labor; but labor produces more than it consumes, and this surplus-value is rent. ”

“ Labor-time, therefore, is the universal measure of value, the common medium that determines values. But this labor is acquired in the open labor market by the capitalist at the lowest possible price, a price whose utmost limit is the bare cost of living. The reward for his labor is called a wage. ”

“ When there's much work to be done, and few men to do it, labour is dear because it's scarce. When there's little work to be done, and many men to do it, labour is cheap because it is plentiful. And when labour is cheap, no amount of strikes can make it worth more than it is worth, even though wages may be forced up unnaturally for a while. ”

“ In this case it is as clear as in the case of the self-employing laborer that the wages are really drawn from the product of the labor, and not at all from 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 that his labor secures, there can be no question that the source of the wages is the labor for which they are paid. ”

“ Hence arose, of course, a necessity for looking abroad for new markets to take the place of those before obtained at home, and thus cheap labour, a consequence of the system, became in its turn a cause of new efforts at dispensing with and further cheapening labour. ”

“ What conceals the absurdity of speaking generally of supply and demand in reference to labor is the habit of considering the demand for labor as springing from capital and as something distinct from labor; but the analysis to which this idea has been heretofore subjected has sufficiently shown its fallacy. It is indeed evident from the mere statement, that wages can never permanently exceed the produce of labor, and hence that there is no fund from which wages can for any time be drawn, save that which labor constantly creates. ”

“ The effort to organize business with a view to cheap production, may be carried on in such fashion as to press unduly on those who work for wages; employers are in a position in which they may be able to drive hard bargains as to hours of work and rates of pay, and to pass on the risk of loss, which arises from fluctuations of business, to be borne by those who [Pg 63] are thrown out of employment. ”

“ Thus, under conditions which admit of no explanation consistent with the current theory, do we find high interest coinciding with high wages, and low interest with low wages—capital seemingly scarce when labor is scarce, and abundant when labor is abundant. ”

“ By virtue of the law of wages the increase in the productivity of labor by the perfecting of machinery increases the frequency of dull seasons and makes poverty more general by diminishing the demand for and augmenting the supply of laborers. ”

“ To whatever extent it is so, this smaller cost of labor, being not general, but limited to those employments, is just as much a cause of cheapness in the products, both in the home and in the foreign market, as if they had been made by a less quantity of labor. ”

“ This is not a plea of free workmen, but of slaves begging to be better fed.
(b) They may complain of too many hours of labor; but the number of hours of labor is arbitrarily fixed. There is no valid constant reason why one should wish to work less. In the management of one's own work, and the collection of his own earnings, there are times when long hours, of the strain of labor, are necessary, and there are other times when ease can be taken. With no standard of earnings or time, it is impossible to arrive at a just and satisfactory settlement. ”

“ The employers pay as little as they can. When the world becomes civilized everybody will want to pay what things are worth, but now capital is perfectly willing that labor shall remain at the starvation line. ”

“ For example, instead of lifting large stones by means of cranes, three or four men may be seen tediously and laboriously moving them by means of levers, keeping time to an unearthly sound ejaculated by the foreman or leader of the group. Labour is no doubt cheap. I suppose that wages do not exceed 2 francs per day, but the employment of so many men unnecessarily must add to the expense of public improvements. ”

“ And how can the worker secure these conditions, if as a consumer, he demands cheap goods? So industry, it is thought, moves in a vicious circle of shorter hours and higher wages and less production, which in time must mean {131} longer hours and lower wages; and every one receives less, because every one demands more. ”

“ The value of a commodity is determined by the labor-time socially necessary for its production, in this case necessary for the proletarian and his family to live; for the workman being mortal, and capital having need of new forces, the wage must be sufficient to raise a new generation of workers. ”

“ It is perfectly true that cheap production and cheap labour are by no means synonymous; but it is also true that wages cannot increase beyond a certain proportion without destroying cheapness. Cheapness, then, with, as part and parcel of cheapness, a moderate price of labour, is essential to our success as competitors in the markets of the world. ”

“ People ought to tread very carefully when approaching wages. On the cost sheet, wages are mere figures; out in the world, wages are bread boxes and coal bins, babies' cradles and children's education—family comforts and contentment. On the other hand, there is something just as sacred about capital which is used to provide the means by which work can be made productive. Nobody is helped if our industries are sucked dry of their life-blood. There is something just as sacred about a shop that employs thousands of men as there is about a home. ”

“ Thus, as means are constantly being found for the maintenance of labor on cheaper and more wretched food, the minimum of wages is constantly sinking. If these wages began by letting the man work to live, they end by forcing him to live the life of a machine. ”

“ The worker, wholly separated from the land and the tools, with his skill of craftmanship rendered useless, is sunk in the uniform mass of wage slaves. He sees his power of resistance broken by class divisions, perpetuated from outgrown industrial stages. His wages constantly grow less as his hours grow longer and monopolized prices grow higher. ”

“ If it cost him more to reach the worker, he must pay less. Suppose we abolish the sweater, or middleman, then he would not distribute the work, and there would be no work. Is that better than some work? ”

“ Increase their number and the evil is remedied. Let the employer consume more himself and there will be no diminution of demand for labour; but the pay of the labourer, which was before extravagantly high, will be reduced. You say in your letter, 'If an increased power of production be not accompanied by an increase of unproductive expenditure, it will inevitably lower profits and throw labourers out of employment.' In this proposition I do not wholly agree. ”

“ The pauper labourers were unskilled. If these schemes had not broken down by their own weight, and workhouse manufactories had gone on producing a competition of unskilled labourers with skilled, the rate of wages would have been more and more deteriorated, and the amount of poor seeking workhouse employment as a last resource more and more increased. Experience has very satisfactorily demonstrated that these schemes for employing the poor ought to be strictly limited to the [Pg 390] production of articles of necessity for their own consumption. ”

“ Soon the millowners discovered that in the new methods with the new cheap labour there was a mine of wealth and, their greed growing by what it fed on, they sought for even 6cheaper labour than that of the poorly paid wage-slave women and children. This cheaper labour they found in the thousands of pauper children under the care of the supervisors of the poor. ”

“ Low wages for the great majority of the laborers employed by the mills, not lower than in other large cities, but low compared with the prices—so low as to be inadequate to the maintenance of a normal American standard of living ”

“ Irregularities in the conduct of industry and in the method of employing labor are evident in dock work, in the unskilled work in iron and steel, and in slaughtering and meat packing; in the competitive conditions in industries which force employers to cut labor cost down to the utmost and to close down in order to save operating expenses ”