Labor productivity

“ The Test of Final Productivity.—There are now at work ten units of capital and ten of labor, and we cannot go through the process of building up the working force from the beginning. How, then, do we measure the true product of a single unit of labor? By withdrawing that unit, letting the industry go on by the aid of all the capital and one unit of labor the less. ”

“ The Static Standard of Wages of Unorganized Labor.—In that static state toward which society is always tending, and in which the normal standard of wages is completely realized, men are supposed to get all that they produce. The law of marginal productivity of labor works, as it were, in vacuo, and gives an ideally perfect result. Every unit of labor receives what a marginal unit produces. ”

“ The general effect of improved machinery has been several times referred to already. Its advantages come to the wage-earner directly in multiplying employments and in multiplying the demand by cheapening products. Indirectly, the benefits are still greater, because these cheaper products form the bulk of living for the workers. It is probable that even the better living thus provided has raised the efficiency of labor so as to command better wages. ”

“ When the rapid growth of the country required greater productiveness, and the enlargement of territory made necessary a change in the distribution of the products of labor, the factory system was introduced, whereby capital, or unproductive labor, was joined with productive labor to accomplish greater results than had heretofore been attained by individual labor. ”

“ Notwithstanding the enormous increase of productive power by the universal introduction of labor-saving machinery and the discovery of new agents for the increase of wealth, the task of the laborer is scarcely lightened, the hours of toil are but little shortened, and few producers are lifted from poverty into comfort and pecuniary independence. ”

“ After such complete reversal of the chronological order, the assumption, that is, of first the existence of private property with wage labour, and then, at a later stage, such level of labour productivity as makes exploitation possible at all, he now assumes [Pg 197] labour productivity to progress with equal speed in all spheres, the surplus product to contain precisely the same amount of value in all branches of industry, and to be divided among precisely the same number of people. ”

“ If invention and improvement still go on, the efficiency of labor will be still further increased, and the amount of labor and capital necessary to produce a given result further diminished. The same causes will lead to the utilization of this new gain in productive power for the249 production of more wealth; the margin of cultivation will be again extended, and rent will increase, both in proportion and amount, without any increase in wages and interest. ”

“ It did not take them long to figure out that no cheaper method could be devised for improving the product of their establishments and to create an interest among their workmen that would make for greater industry, better workmanship and consequently increased profits. On their part the workmen were quick to see their own advantage in increased wages in proportion to increase in skill and output. As an economic proposition the net result is greater stability in the industrial life of [Pg 78] the community—decreased labor troubles and increased confidence between employer and employed. ”

“ One of the least questioned assumptions of the capitalist system is, that production ought to be increased in amount by every possible means: by new kinds of machinery, by employment of women and boys, by making hours of labor as long as is compatible with efficiency. ”

“ While capital invested in manufactures is yielding adequate and fair profits under the new system, the wages of labor, whether employed in manufactures, agriculture, commerce, or navigation, have been augmented. The toiling millions whose daily labor furnishes the supply of food and raiment and all the necessaries and comforts of life are receiving higher wages and more steady and permanent employment than in any other country or at any previous period of our own history. ”

“ The manufacturing industry is continually passing under the management of fewer individuals, while the number of operatives in each factory tends to increase. With concentration of management goes concentration of wealth, and the gap widens between rich and poor. Out of the modern factory system has come the industrial problem with all its varieties of skilled and unskilled work, woman and child labor, sweating, wages, hours and conditions of labor, unemployment, and other difficulties. ”

“ In practice, consumption, or purchasing power, must be maintained on the level of production, which latter can be controlled and stabilized by a progressive decrease in the number of labor hours as invention and improvements increase the output per labor hour. But this remedy will be effective to maintain purchasing power on a level with production only if wages are kept on a level that will give the worker, per year, a sufficient income for his reasonable needs. ”

“ On the basis of this mode of production, the laborer’s cost of production consists of the sum of the means of subsistence (or their price in money) which on the average are requisite to enable him to work, to maintain in him this capacity for work, and to replace him at his departure, by reason of age, sickness, or death, with another laborer—that is to say, to propagate the working class in required numbers. ”

“ Who can say to what infinite powers the wealth-producing capacity of labor may not be raised by social adjustments which will give to the producers of wealth their fair proportion of its advantages and enjoyments! With present processes the gain would be simply incalculable, but just as wages are high, so do the invention and utilization of improved processes and machinery go on with greater rapidity and ease. ”

“ It is to the increase of demand, growing out of the increase and cheapness of production, that he must look for employment and profit, not to the catching at the empty bubble of ownership, or to the ambition of governing, with none to serve under him.
“LABOR AND MACHINERY. A thoughtful laborer—for wages—sends us an account he finds current in the journals of the rapid progress of Printing by Machinery, as illustrated by a single cheap daily newspaper. ”

“ Our evidence leads to the conclusion that, while a rise of wages is nearly always attended by a rise of efficiency of labour and of the product, the proportion which the increased productivity will bear to the rise of wage will differ in every employment. ”

“ Labor-saving machinery reduces cost by increasing the productive power of labor; a reduction of wages reduces cost by reducing the share of the product which falls to the laborer. To the employer the effect may be the same; but, to the community, which includes both employers and employed, the effect is very different. In the one case there is increase in the general wealth; in the other there is merely a change in distribution—whatever one class gains another class necessarily losing. Hence the effect of cheap labor is necessarily very different from that of improved machinery. ”

“ Whenever, therefore, he pays for a service voluntarily, he acknowledges its productiveness. Lastly, from a national-economical point of view, all labor is considered productive which increases the quantity of goods exposed for sale in the market ”

“ Other aspects of labor to which increasing attention is given by economists are the circumstances which determine the worker's industrial efficiency. It is now recognized that the food, clothing, housing, etc., of the working classes are important, not merely because they affect the happiness of those classes, but because upon them depends the amount and quality of the work that can be performed. The standard of living influences wages not merely through the control which it may exercise over the rate at which population increases, but also because it determines the standard of efficiency. ”

“ Now, by virtue of the same principle, the highest point of natural productiveness open to labor under existing conditions will be the lowest point at which production continues, for men, impelled by a supreme law of the human mind to seek the satisfaction of their desires with the least exertion, will not expend labor at a lower point of productiveness while a higher is open to them. Thus the wages which an employer must pay will be measured by the lowest point of natural productiveness to which production extends, and wages will rise or fall as this point rises or falls. ”

“ But the industrial organization, as in all civilized countries, is such that labor and capital, and especially labor, must press for employment on any terms—the industrial organization is such that mere laborers are not in a position to demand their fair share in the new adjustment, and that any reduction in the application of labor to production will, at first, at least, take the form, not of giving each laborer the same amount of produce for less work, but of throwing some of the laborers out of work and giving them none of the produce. ”

“ Where the increased productivity of labour is largely due to the improved machinery or methods of production which are stimulated by high wages without a corresponding intensification of the labour itself, the gain to labour is clear. But the possibility that short hours and high wages may stimulate an injurious compression of the output of productive effort is one which must not be overlooked in considering the influence of new industrial methods upon labour. ”

“ A man is able in a work day to create wealth eguivalent to his necessaries for subsistence and something over. The employer gets together a number of laborers and receives all or part of this surplus for himself. His income is in proportion to the number of human labor hours which he controls and out of which he makes his profit. If the employer installs a machine which enables one man to produce in eight hours, let us say, the equivalent of 80 human labor hours, then the employer is in the same position with respect to income as if he had 10 men instead of one working for him. ”

“ With machinery growing more and more efficient, the day may be shortened with no diminution of wages; and the natural effect of increasing power to produce has always been some shortening of labor-time coupled with some enlargement of pay. Within the last one hundred years the period of daily labor in some types of manufacturing has come to cover only a little over one third of the twenty-four hours, instead of more nearly two thirds ”

“ That wages everywhere have not fallen but advanced, as a sequence to the introduction and use of cheaper and better machinery and processes, proves that labor, through various causes—probably by reason mainly of increased consumption—has not yet been supplanted or economized by such changes to a sufficient extent to reduce wages through any competition of the unemployed. ”

“ It is obvious that the less the rate of exploitation rises, the smaller is the rise in the rate of saving which the system has to digest, while the rise in real consumption by workers, which takes place when the rate of exploitation rises more slowly than productivity in the consumption good industries, creates an outlet for investment in productive capacity in those industries. ”

“ The mass of means of production which he thus transforms, increases with the productiveness of his labour. But those means of production play a double part. The increase of some is a consequence, that of the others a condition of the increasing productivity of labour. E.g., with the division of labour in manufacture, and with the use of machinery, more raw material is worked up in the same time and, therefore, a greater mass of raw material and auxiliary substances enter into the labour-process. That is the consequence of the increasing productivity of labour. ”

“ The general productivity of labour acts upon the rate of wages in two ways, immediately and mediately. Immediately, because, as is manifest, efficient labour is worth more to the employer than inefficient; and mediately, as I shall presently show, because it conduces to a greater diversion of wealth for productive purposes, and so increases the general demand for labour. In modern society, as in primitive, the labourer not only obtains a higher remuneration if he is efficient himself, but gathers a higher remuneration from the efficiency of his neighbours. ”

“ The steady rise has been owing partly to organization, in greater part to the larger average productiveness of human labor in connection with machinery—in one word, to the progress of civilization. As civilization has served to multiply and cheapen labor's products, it has at the same time served to enhance labor's earnings. It has thus secured to the laboring man, especially in this Republic, a double advantage—a greater number of dollars by way of wages, and for every dollar more of the things which the laboring man has to buy for the necessities and enjoyments of himself and his family. ”

“ Indeed, labor division does not stop at the gates of factories. The segmentation of life and labor, increased mediation, and expectations of high efficiency make mass production possible. Almost everything people need to feed themselves, in order to maintain their physical and mental productive powers with a minimum of investment, is provided in favor of productive cycles. In the pragmatic framework of the industrial age, this meant the reproduction of the productive forces of the worker in a context of permanency. ”

“ Besides the mass of necessaries required for his own maintenance, he wants another amount of necessaries to bring up a certain quota of children that are to replace him on the labor market and to perpetuate the race of laborers... It will be seen that the value of laboring-power is determined by the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain and perpetuate the laboring-power. ”