Labor question

“ We now approach a yet more thorny subject than the organisation of the workers. What should be the remuneration of labor—what the share of the product taken respectively by the individual, the municipality, and the State?
The answer depends on the answer to a previous question. Is the organisation of the unemployed to be undertaken in order to transform them into self-supporting, self-respecting citizens; or is it to be carried on as a form of exploitation, utilising pauper labor for the production of profit for non-paupers? ”

“ We cannot let pass without qualification the assertion that there is a considerable difference between the laborer's wages and the means of subsistence requisite for his scant maintenance. It is exactly this point, the rate of wages, upon which practically the whole great social question turns. ”

“ To the question how one kind of labor can be measured against another, how the labor of the artisan can be measured against the labor of the artist, how the labor of the strong can be measured against the labor of the weak, the communists can give no answer. ”

“ Let us do all we can to help labor. Give it a square deal—an honest and generous wage for an honest day's work. Labor is neither a commodity or a chapel; it's human. Let us inject more of the human element into our dealings with labor and with those of others. ”

“ Labor has awakened the state to a sense of responsibility for its great sins of neglect and has made it conscious of its social duties. Labor, like other elements of society, has often been selfish, narrow, vindictive ”

“ To analyze the particulars in the demands of labor is to admit the justice of their complaint in many matters that lie at their basis. The workman demands an adequate wage, sufficient to permit him to live in comfort, unhampered by the fear of poverty and want in his old age. ”

“ The task is far beyond our present opportunity. It is worth while, however, for present purposes, to delimit the task sharply, and to attempt a brief enumeration of the most important of the conditions which determine, on the one hand, the need of the productive system for labor, and, on the other hand, the supply of labor—that is, of the relative plenty or scarcity of labor. ”

“ It should be said at the outset of this chapter that, in a very true sense, practically all men are laborers. That into which a man puts his energy and by which he earns his living, is his labor, whether it be work of the hand or the head. But the labor we are to consider in this chapter is that of the men who work for wages; and we will also make the arbitrary distinction that it is that of the men who work for wages in some branch of manufacturing, mining, trade, or transportation, the great divisions of modern industry which we have thus far considered. ”

“ When we come to questions between labor and its employers, more than this is true. The employers of labor as a class are closely in sympathy with the honest desire of their men to better themselves, and the constant increase in the employment of arbitration to settle difficulties, the experiments in co-operation and profit-sharing, and the furnishing of cheap and good houses to the workers are all evidences of this fact. ”

“ In the most common tasks one has to watch the average workingman in order to prevent his bungling a job. Hands are worth little without some brains; as in the work done, so in the pay won. Our labor is quite as largely uninterested—having no more heart than brains back of the hands. Work is done mechanically by most workingmen, with little pride in doing it well, and little ambition to be continually doing it better.
2. There is too commonly as little sense of identity with the employer's interests, or of concern that any equivalent in work should be rendered for the pay received. ”

“ But the result, or the earnings of labor, as is readily seen in those primary and fundamental occupations in which labor first engages, and which, even in the most highly developed condition of society, still form the base of production, does not depend merely upon the intensity or quality of the labor itself. ”

“ Let consumable goods—either direct consumables or money—be the compensation of the laborer; and, further, let us assume for the moment that no man gets his subsistence, in the form of either consumable goods or money, without labor. Then the definition of work or labor is: that activity which is required, is compulsory, for all men in order for them to live or subsist and which therefore must be extrinsically compensated, that is, the laborer must earn by his labor the means of his subsistence. ”

“ This we may hope to do by several methods; for example, by reducing the daily hours of labor, by promoting vocational education, by the restriction of child employment, by a better organization of the labor market (see p. 418) , and by providing wholesome recreation for the workers.
Labor is a service. Is Labor a Commodity?—Labor, as a factor in production, receives its return in the form of wages. A generation ago it was customary to speak of labor as a commodity and to say that the worker “sold his labor” for wages. But labor is not a commodity. ”

“ “There is this difference— where a man works for himself, or where, when working for an employer, he takes his wages in kind, his wages depend upon the result of his labor. Should that, from any misadventure, prove futile, he gets nothing. When he works for an employer, however, he gets his wages anyhow—they depend upon the performance of the labor, not upon the result of the labor.” ”

“ The field is too great, the problem too complicated, for the human mind to grasp.
To fix the value of labor is to fix all values—labor being the foundation of all values. The value of labor cannot be fixed unless we understand the relations that all things bear to each other and to man. If labor were a legal tender—if a judgment for so many dollars could be discharged by so many days of labor,—and the law was that twelve hours of work should be reckoned as one day, then the law could change the hours to ten or eight, and the judgments could be paid in the shortened days. ”

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

“ Labor is here honored and respected, and great examples incite us to action. All around us in the professions, in the marts of commerce, on the exchange, where merchant-princes and capitalists do congregate; in these manufactories and workshops, where the products of every clime are fashioned into a thousand forms of utility and beauty; on these smiling farms, fertilized by the sweat of free labor; in every position of private and of public life, are our associates, who were but yesterday "hireling laborers," "mud-sills," "slaves." ”

“ But I must say this, that you and I may take counsel together and spend money; but if you forget the men whose labor gets all for you, you are acting ungratefully. I therefore, in three words say, 'Raise your wages.' I have done it myself, and I tell all my friends to do it. I tell you all to raise your wages, and I tell you this—there never was a man in your employ who ever struck a stroke for his master, but struck that stroke with redoubled force and energy (and if he does this, who profits?) when he knows he is well used. ”

“ We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency of labor throughout our whole industrial system by everywhere and in all occupations doing justice to the laborer, not only by paying a living wage but also by making all the conditions that surround labor what they ought to be. ”

“ If useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong to society -- and only so much therefrom accrues to the individual worker as is not required to maintain the "condition" of labor, society. ”

“ In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the divisions of labor, must naturally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry.
Labor is the one paramount force which develops the resources of the world. ”

“ With the extension of trade and the wider use of machinery the number and power of the adult employed workmen increased, and with their increase of power came a jealousy, on the one hand, toward the masters; on the other, toward the apprentices, who were regarded as cheapening labor when employed in too great numbers. The conflict which arose between employer and employed gradually merged into one between capital and labor. ”

“ We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. ”

“ What buyers and sellers, that is to say, the whole practical world, needs, is not disquisitions on Morals from Press or Pulpit, but an inner ear to hear the true click of Conscience, and the quick and open answer in honest action.
(2) A second general cause of the Labor-troubles of the past and present has been a strong tendency to neglect the special preparation for their peculiar functions by both capitalists and laborers. A successful employer of laborers year in and year out to their advantage and his own is always one who has been trained to that function by special preparations. ”

“ Recognition of this fact effectually destroys much criticism of the theory.
The interest of the wage-worker, as wage-worker, is to receive the largest wage possible for the least number of hours spent in labor. The interest of the employer, as employer, on the other hand, is to secure from the worker as many hours of service, as much labor power, as possible for the lowest wage which the worker can be induced to accept. The workers employed in a factory may be divided by a hundred different forces. ”

“ Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the latter part of the eighteenth century, labor has been working its way out of slavery into freedom.
As a result laborers have better wages, better conditions of life, more of material comforts, and a higher degree of intelligence than ever before. ”

“ But the organized workers, caring nothing for the interests of any particular employer, demand improved conditions of labor, though the inefficient employer be eliminated and all production be carried on by a few capable employers doing business on a large scale and able to pay the highest wages. ”

“ Never before did labor do these things. After the Great Plague in England, labor, finding itself in demand and innocently obeying the economic law, asked higher wages. But the masters set a maximum wage, restrained workingmen from moving about from place to place, refused to tolerate idlers, and by most barbarous legal methods punished those who disobeyed. But labor is accorded greater respect today. ”

“ As I hinted before, in the new order of things all branches of labor will be organized, similar to the arrangements we see to day in large factories, large estates, or institutions of the government. Unnecessary work will be avoided and the reward for work done will be greater. ”

“ The growth of population, the increase and extension of exchanges, the discoveries of science, the march of invention, the spread of education, the improvement of government, and the amelioration of manners, considered as material forces, have all a direct tendency to increase the productive power of labor—not281 of some labor, but of all labor; not in some departments of industry, but in all departments of industry; for the law of the production of wealth in society is the law of “each for all, and all for each.” ”

“ The Economics of Labor.—In complex society there are many divisions or groups of laborers—laborers of body and laborers of mind. Every one who is performing a legitimate service, which is sought for and remunerative to the laborer and serviceable to the public, is a laborer. At the base of all industry and social activity are the industrial wage-earners, who by their toil work the mines, the factories, the great steel and iron industries, the railroads, the electric-power plants and other industries. ”

“ Every one is a laborer who is not a person of leisure. Public men, or other workers, if any, who labor but receive no pay, might be excluded from the category, and we should immediately pass, by such a restriction, from a broad and philosophical to a technical definition of the labor class. But merchants, bankers, professional men, and all whose labor is, to an important degree, mental as well as manual, are excluded from this third use of the term labor. ”

“ LABOR PROBLEMS. The rise of capitalistic industry, creating a social class whose only resource is the sale of their labor, has brought to the front a new group of social problems, which are commonly known as labor problems, or, more simply, as the labor problem. ”

“ They, however, recognize the necessity of giving extra reward for the training and skill or natural ability required for particular kinds of work, for more than common danger or disagreeableness incurred in the performance of particular kinds of work, and the like—in short, for all those factors which elevate a job above what is called common labor. ”

“ Considering then that a society demands as the socially necessary labor within a definite time for the production of trousers 10,000 labor days and for suspenders 1,000, that is to say, this amount of labor is necessary in order to satisfy the social need for trousers and suspenders at the present stage of the productivity of labor. ”