Labour market

“ When trade's prosperous, and the demand for labour grows, and the masters compete one against another for hands, then wages rise. But when the market is overstocked, and the demand for labour gets less, and the men compete one against another for work, instead of the masters competing for men, there's a change. ”

“ The company only distributes salary’ is a quote from Henry Ford who was labelled as the biggest Capitalist in the world at one time. It is a right of employer to start the factory and is one who can decide to close it. To sell or withhold from selling labour is the. right of the Collective bargaining agent, the Union. Land, Machinery, raw materials and Management are other factors of production like labour. Labour is a factor of Production. Rise and fall in the prices of factors of production is inevitable in the marketplace. Flexibility enables the units to survive in the market. ”

“ The employer is bound, for the purposes of his business, to sell in the most favourable market he can find the goods that are produced. The sale of commodities depends, as you know, upon the demand at any given moment, and therefore, if the market demands can be met by employing, say, only two-thirds of the labour available, the remaining one-third will be out of work. ”

“ Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution. ”

“ In the market he stood as owner of the commodity "labour-power" face to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. ”

“ And, first, I premise that labour is, as I have already intimated, a commodity, and, as such, an article of trade. If I am right in this notion, then labour must be subject to all the laws and principles of trade, and not to regulation foreign to them, and that may be totally inconsistent with those principles and those laws. When any commodity is carried to market, it is not the necessity of the vender, but the necessity of the purchaser, that raises the price. The extreme want of the seller has rather (by the nature of things with which we shall in vain contend) ”

“ The rapidly changing processes and widening markets of English industry seemed to demand the sweeping away of all restrictions on the supply and employment of labour, a process which involved the levelling of all classes of wage-earners to their " natural wages." ”

“ The intense competition of modern industry, stimulated to the highest point by free trade, by the factory system, and by the vast development of machinery, has expelled the old and feeble from some of its most important fields; and the influence of trade-unions in enforcing, in each trade which they can control, a uniform and minimum wage, has obliged the employer to employ only the most efficient labour.
The old man who could once easily obtain a little work at low wages now finds it much more difficult ”

“ Has the value increased? Precisely the same methods of production prevail in the hoop and stave industry as formerly.
Also the wages of men and women working in the hundreds of small factories all over the United States have risen during the past year or two. There are many men and women out of employment, but they have not reduced wages at these points by competing for jobs, although they are always in the market offering to sell their labor-power. Even men out of work are asking MORE for their labor-power than they asked a few years ago. ”

“ If the productive organization has at its command a plentiful supply of capital; if in the community there are many men possessed of a high order of business ability; if then, 55 labor for the commoner tasks of production is relatively scarce, the work of the ordinary wage earner will be a means of adding considerably to the total of market values produced. Or, as it is sometimes put, each use of labor will be an important use. Labor will be in great demand, and wages will be high. ”

“ They might work sixteen hours a day instead of ten, and thus the competition for employment being increased among the same number of workmen, without any increase of demand, the price of labour might fall. But will any person contend that this state of affairs can long continue? The labourer must go to the parish, or turn to some more profitable employment, if by chance any can be found, or he must emigrate, or work himself out by overstrained exertion. The proportion being then altered between the demand for labour and the supply, its price will rise. ”

“ Hence we see a streaming of working-men toward the centers of great industries, large towns growing up, labor become scarce in the agricultural districts, and the industrial organizations undergoing a revolution. The labor market has undergone the same kind of extension as the market for goods; and skilled labor has become more and more a thing of merchandise, the price of which is regulated by the larger conjunctures of business. ”

“ We propose to show what Labour can effect, and how it is to be encouraged and economized and rewarded: to treat of Capital, its nature and operation, and the proportions of its increase; and to exhibit the union of these two mighty agents of Production. Under the second head, Distribution, occur the great questions of Rent, Profits, Wages, and Population, the various modes of Interchange at home and abroad, including the consideration of all Monopolies, domestic and foreign. Under the third head, Consumption, are considered the modes of Demand and Supply, and of Taxation. ”

“ Diversification of employment is absolutely necessary to produce competition for the purchase of labour. The shoemaker does not need to purchase shoes, nor does the miner need to buy coal, any more than the farmer needs to buy wheat or potatoes. Bring them together, and combine with them the hatter, the tanner, the cotton-spinner, the maker of woollen cloth, and the smelter and roller of iron, and each of them becomes a competitor for the purchase of the labour, or the products of the labour, of all the others, and the wages of all rise with the increase of competition. ”

“ Hardly less certain is it that before the beginning of the twenty-first century all manufactures and all commerce will be co-operative, the workers in every industry being paid, not by fixed wages, but by a share in the produce of their labour. Instead of the profit of all trade and manufacture being secured to the managers and owners of lands, machinery, transport and other commercial utilities; while labour, the equally necessary and indeed the preponderant element of production, is reckoned as a mere element of cost, in the form of wages ”

“ But there is no occasion to suppose any such slackness in the demand for labour. The proportion between the money, the productive and mechanical labour in the community, would remain the same: and the rise in the wages of the labouring manufacturer and mechanic to be real and effectual ought to be paid out of the profits of the master and proprietor. ”

“ Production had been overdone by most of the employers using their best efforts to keep their hands at work in the face of a falling market, or no market at all. Shelves were packed with goods everywhere. We were on the eve of a great change, and it would be some time before values would become stable again. If the balance of trade (high-sounding, but imperfectly understood term) could once more turn in our favor; if we could export our surplus goods, and find new markets,—as no doubt we would,—every shop and factory would soon be ringing with the cheerful sound of labor. ”

“ On the other hand, if they are called upon to produce commodities and services which people do want and are prepared to buy at a remunerative price, those goods and services can, and ought to, be [127] provided by the ordinary machinery of industry which is normally engaged upon their production; to put unemployed upon that work is merely to compete with, and undercut, those workers who are ordinarily engaged upon that species of output, and throw them out of employment, making the case no better than before. ”

“ An increase in the funds expended in employing labour, whether that labour be productive or unproductive, tends equally to raise wages. The condition of the whole labouring class is, so far, benefited. It is true that the labourers thus employed by sojourners are probably, in part or altogether, withdrawn from productive employment. ”

“ The power of permanently underselling can only, generally speaking, be derived from increased effectiveness of labour; and this, when obtained by a more extended division of employment, or by a classification tending to a better economy of skill, always implies a greater produce from the same labour, and not merely the same produce from less labour: it increases not the surplus only, but the gross produce of industry. ”

“ Now labor is a commodity whose price in the market is governed by the same laws of supply and demand that regulate the prices of all other things that are bought and sold. But it has this peculiar difference, that the sellers of labor are many, while the purchasers are few, as compared with the relative proportion of sellers and buyers of goods in general. Then, wherever there is little competition among purchasers of labor, we shall expect to find low wages; and where competition to secure workmen is active, high wages will be the rule. ”

“ The wages of the inferior classes of workmen, I have endeavoured to show in the first book are everywhere necessarily regulated by two different circumstances; the demand for labour, and the ordinary or average price of provisions. The demand for labour, according as it happens to be either increasing, stationary or declining; or to require an increasing, stationary, or declining population; regulates the subsistence of the labourer, and determines in what degree it shall be either liberal, moderate, or scanty. ”

“ Do they hope that when the coat is made cheaper the wages of the man or woman who makes it will be increased? The power of your labor organizations to secure increased wages is greatest when there is a large demand for the product you are making at fair prices. You do not strike for better wages on a falling market. When the mills are running full time, when there is a full demand at good prices for the product of your toil, and when warehouses are empty, then your organization may effectively insist upon increased wages. ”

“ The learned professions, art, science, and literature, and those branches of labour engaged in producing luxuries and luxurious services furnish a constantly increasing employment, though the supply of labour is so notoriously in excess of the demand in all such employments that a large percentage of unemployment is chronic. ”

“ They assumed that this ideal would be best secured by "perfect competition." The employer would choose the worker who would come for the lowest wage; the worker would choose the employer who would pay him the highest wage; and so, by a process similar to the higgling of a commodity market, the desirable uniform wage-level would become established. But in fact the conditions of the labor market differ greatly from those of a commodity market. ”

“ The fact that the earliest durable combinations of wage-earners in England precede the factory system by a whole century, and occur in trades carried on exclusively by hand labour, reminds us that the creation of a class of lifelong wage-servants came about in more than one way. ”

“ But law or custom may interfere to limit competition. If apprentice laws, or the regulations of corporate bodies, make the access to a particular employment slow, costly, or difficult, the wages of that employment may be kept much above their natural proportion to the wages of common labour. ”

“ With all these possibilities the eight hours day will not necessarily, suddenly, and in the long run, increase the demand for labour to such a degree that the employer will need to draw upon his interest, profits, and ground rents for a large and general rise of wages, or for the maintenance of the former rate of wage. ”

“ I speak to men who know that when the product of their toil is in demand in the market, when buyers are seeking it, wages advance; but when the market for your products is depressed, and the manufacturer is begging for buyers, then wages go down. Is it not clear, then, that that policy which secures the largest amount of work to be done at home is the policy which will secure to laboring men steady employment and the best wages? ”

“ These are almost always able to undersell the smaller tradesmen, partly, it is understood, by means of division of labour, and the economy occasioned by limiting the employment of skilled agency to cases where skill is required; and partly, no doubt, by the saving of labour arising from the great scale of the transactions; as it costs no more time, and not much more exertion of mind, to make a large purchase, for example, than a small one, and very much less than to make a number of small ones. ”

“ The abundant supply of cheap labour which they furnished had no doubt the effect of enabling our manufacturing industry to increase at a rate and, to a height which, without them, would have been unattainable ”