Self-employment

“ The heart of the problem, the cause, one might well say, of unemployment, is that the employment of men regularly or irregularly is at no time an important consideration of those minds which control industry. Social organization has ordered it that these minds shall be interested only in achieving a reasonable profit in the manufacture and the sale of goods. Society has never demanded that industries be run even in part to give men employment. ”

“ These are conditions which affect the man's right to large or small wage; but all of them presuppose that men are perfectly free to look over the whole industrial field and choose their own employment,—they presuppose the perfect mobility of labor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If there are any who do not see the relation of these facts, it is because they have become accustomed to think of labor as deriving employment from capital, instead of, which is the true and natural relation, capital being the product and tool of labor. The very term "scarcity of employment," and its opposite, "scarcity of labor," come to us from a state of society in which the idea of labor employing itself directly on land had been forgotten. ”

“ It was not in the character of a tramp, but as a wage-earner, that I made the journey; and the only notable fact about it was that I not only never lacked for labor, but I almost never had to ask for it, having scores of opportunities of work pressed upon me by employers hard up for hands. I am well aware of the abnormal in my experiment and of its little worth apart from the value of experience to myself, and I know how slight a connection with the deeper causes which give rise to congestion in labor centres the fact of ready employment in the country may have. ”

“ At any rate, in the United States, where any general law of wages must apply as fully as in Europe, and where in spite of the advance of manufactures a very large part of the people are yet self-employing farmers, the proportion of laborers who get their wages through an employer must be comparatively small. ”

“ Turning to the breadwinner as an employee, we are confronted with the gravest questions now occupying public attention: with the organization of labor, the strike, the lockout, the rights of capital, the problem of the unemployed, and of the unskilled laborer. The truth about these matters, even if one were so fortunate as to possess the truth about them, is not to be stated in a paragraph or a chapter. {29} Only in so far as they directly concern the friendly visitor to the families of the least fortunate class of workers, can questions of employment be even mentioned in these pages. ”

“ 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? ”

“ I doubt not that in God's good providence new resources will be ever opened before mankind for the employment of human industry; but when I see even a temporary superfluity of labour, I tremble to think of what vast power of grinding and oppressing that very circumstance places in the hands of the employer. ”

“ But the passing of such a measure as the above, is nevertheless a proof of the increasing demand for labour, and of the advance of regular industrial employment, which is always an important step in the progress of civilization. ”

“ Notwithstanding the frequency of cases of this sort, it is, we think, clear that a majority of those who, in any given state of trade, come into distress through long-continued unemployment or chronic "under-employment," are—with many individual exceptions—either the less strong or the less fit, the less skilled or the less capable, the less responsible or the less regular in their industry of the wage-earning community. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Teach working-men to live more economically, and practise self-restraint. Advise them to compete with each other in doing the most and best work they possibly can for their employer while in his employ. Teach them that they bring down their own wages, and that this is not their employer's doings. Show them that, if the wages descend slowly and steadily, it will avoid a crash of business, and, making goods correspondingly cheap, do them good rather than harm in the end. ”

“ I have stood beside men whom I knew, and have seen them miss the chance of employment because they were so far weakened by the strain of the sweating system that they were incapable of the strain of hard manual labor.
Even at the best, much of the real difficulty is often the subjective one summed up in the sentence of a man who has wide knowledge of wage-earners in America, to whom I once spoke of the surprising ease with which I found employment everywhere, except in larger towns. ”

“ The utter helpless condition of your workmen, as a class, is not entirely owing to their enforced scant share in the profits of industry. Whoever among them, by greater abstinence or otherwise, succeeds in saving any considerable portion of his earnings, hastens either to change his situation for that of employer, where self-interest inclines him to favor low wages, or to seek among the greater encouragements outside a change of occupation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And inasmuch as I know what it is to labour with the hands long hours, and for small wages, as well as any workman to whom I address myself, and to practise self-denial withal, I am emboldened to declare from experience that the gain of independence, or rather self-dependence, for which I plead, is worth infinitely more than all the cost of its attainment; and, moreover, that to attain it in a greater or less degree, according to circumstances, is within the power of by far the greater number of skilled workmen engaged in our manufactories. ”

“ Here the working mechanic is sure of employment; he can calculate with certainty on his earnings, and by being indispensably necessary he acquires a personal independence, totally unknown where labour is scarce, or population excessive. ”

“ The subjection of the workingmen to the owners of capital was insured by the existence at all times of a large class of the unemployed ready to underbid the workers and eager to get employment at any price and on any terms. ”

“ As America turned increasingly, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, from an agricultural nation into an industrial one, and as the size of business enterprises expanded, individual wage earners found themselves at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with their employers over terms of employment. ”

“ The primary cause of unemployment is want of work, the result of economic forces, but the cure of unemployment, according to Labour, is to be the provision of work by the Government in the teeth of adverse economic conditions. ”

“ The benefits of the Act, if doles of work can be called benefits, have gone mainly to the casual labourer. The practical impossibility of finding work which "will not compete with the work of those already in employment" has been proved up to the hilt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If capital and management think of nothing but their own narrowest, selfish self-interest, without a thought for labour, care nothing for the comfort or welfare of labour, care nothing whether labour is well or ill-housed, whether labour is provided with opportunity for reasonable and proper recreation and relief from toil or not, then capital and management are blind to their own highest interest.... ”

“ Proposed remedies for "Unemployment."--In discussing methods of dealing with "the unemployed," who represent an "over-supply" of labour at a given time, it is often found convenient to distinguish the temporary "unemployment" due to fluctuations rising from the nature of certain trades, and the permanent unemployment or half employment of large numbers of the least efficient town workers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ SECTION 4.—THE HOUSEHOLD SALVAGE BRIGADE. It is obvious that the moment you begin to find work for the unemployed labour of the community, no matter what you do by way of the registration and bringing together of those who want work and those who want workers, there will still remain a vast residuum of unemployed, and it will be the duty of those who undertake to deal with the question to devise means for securing them employment. ”

“ In order that each man may have the fruits of his own labor, it is important, as a general rule, that each man should be his own employer, or work directly for himself, and not for another for wages; because, in the latter case, a part of the fruits of his labor go to his em­ployer, instead of coming to himself.
Proposition 3. That each man may be his own employer, it is necessary that he have materials, or capital, upon which to bestow his labor. ”

“ The phenomena of day and night, and of the apparent motion of the celestial bodies, would yet remain unexplained, inevitably to reinstate the old theory unless a better one took its place. Our reasoning has led us to the conclusion that each productive laborer produces his own wages, and that increase in the number of laborers should increase the wages of each; whereas, the apparent facts are that there are many laborers who cannot obtain remunerative employment, and that increase in the number of laborers brings diminution of wages. ”

“ Industry, organized labor and individuals should interest themselves practically in private movements and plans to remedy unemployment situations, for these are matters that should not be left entirely to the State and charity. Employment and honest wages are in the long run to the advantage of employers as well as of employees, and are therefore good business as well as good morals. ”

“ Looking at the industry of our people as a whole, the main fact which stands out is want of security of employment. Nearly the whole of our industrial workers are earners of weekly wages, and of our sparse agricultural population but a small proportion are owners. ”

“ All they had to do in order to keep wages at a minimum was to leave a large number of applicants unemployed, and hence very poor, who at all times, would be ready to take the place of workmen who demanded more liberal wages. The self-employed farmers were but little better off than the wage workers, as they were forced to sell their products and purchase their supplies at prices fixed by the great financial, industrial and commercial combines which controlled the business of the country. ”

“ Few employers consider anything but the arithmetic of supply and demand in fixing wages, and workingmen who have the power, tend to act as selfishly as the male printers used to act in striking in an establishment which dared to give employment to women typesetters. ”

“ But if we shade our eyes from all this dazzle of detail; if we simply ask what has been the main feature, the upshot, the final fruit of the capitalist system, there is no doubt about the answer. The special and solid result of the reign of the employers has been--unemployment. Unemployment not only increasing, but becoming at last the very pivot upon which the whole process turns. ”

“ A third arises out of the greater trustiness and greater ability to labour of some than others, while all insist on an equal recompense. Abstracting however from all these disturbing causes, with which I am not now concerned, we may safely lay down the general proposition, that the channel of employment can always receive as many labourers as can live; from which it follows, that employment will be coextensive with the ability to labour, and may be considered simply as an appointed mean, for obtaining a ticket entitling the bearer to a proportional share of the general stock of subsistence. ”