Wage laborer

“ And, secondly, what may be called for a lack of a better name, the doctrine of special reward—by which is meant, that the wage differentials between the standard wage levels of different types of labor should be regarded as special rewards, given in order to make it reasonably certain that industry will be provided with at least the existing proportion of the more skilled grades of labor, and to make it reasonably certain also that the more arduous, irregular, dangerous and disagreeable work will command the service of as much labor as at present. ”

“ If the union is strong and has a good control over the labor supply, admission fees are higher and regulations as to apprentices and helpers are more stringent than if the union is fighting to gain a foothold.
Earnings
No industrial workers in the city are paid better wages than those employed in the building trades. More than one-half of the skilled workers are in trades that pay an hourly wage of 50 cents or over. ”

“ The 144 motives and sentiments of the various organized groups will govern the action of the wage earners, and produce almost the same result under any system of wage payment. The state of industrial relations, the satisfaction the workers feel in their position, the reasonableness shown by the different groups, the intelligence or ignorance of labor leadership—these and similar other factors will, at bottom, govern the effort put forth by the wage earners. These are the matters to which all who realize the need for steady and willing effort in production will have to attend. ”

“ These can only be understood by a study of the economic facts and arrangements which govern distribution, and by weighing many questions of social and economic expediency. To talk about basing wages solely on the effort of the worker is to ignore the obvious fact that much of the most laborious work is the worst paid.
The exponents of scientific management have not discovered a law of wages; they have simply elaborated a method of wage payment. ”

“ If the numbers in any group of wage earners are high relative to the uses in which the employment of the members of that group results in a considerable addition to the product of market values, the wages of that group will be low, and vice versa. The need of the productive system for any kind of labor, relative to the supply available to fill that need is an important factor in determining the reward paid for that labor. ”

“ That argument is that it will prove impossible to maintain uniform standard wage rates throughout an industry in which the various enterprises are distributed over a wide area; in the several parts of which area the cost of living, the general conditions of labor, and the demand and supply situation for labor differ considerably. ”

“ The labourer is worthy of his hire, and the hire is worthy of his labourer. But I can not see that any man is worthy of an unearned income. Let there be no unearned incomes. So much for the basic{347} wage. We know it is not the basic wage that wrecks industry. ”

“ It must not be supposed that all labor troubles are merely wage controversies—that is to say, that they are all incidental to the settlement of the wage incomes of the laborers. Many of them arise in whole or part from a shifting and conflict of ideas about various other aspects of the 2 industrial order. ”

“ Let us examine more closely this system for the remuneration of labor, as set forth by the English, French, German and Italian Collectivists. [1]
It comes very much to this: Every one works, be it in fields, in factories, in schools, in hospitals or what not. The working day is regulated by the state, to which belong the soil, factories, means of communication and all the rest. Each worker, having done a day's work, receives a labor note, stamped, let us say, with these words: eight hours of labor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the other, the wage earner is viewed primarily as a member of an occupational group or class, whose wages should be regulated by the standard of life of his group or class, rather than by strict measurement 142 of his own individual capacity. ”

“ The standard of life and comfort affects the wages of labor, and there is constant effort to make the wage correspond to this standard. It is an unending and often bitter struggle, nowhere better summed up than by Thorold Rogers in his "Six Centuries of Work and Wages,"—a work upon which economists, however different their conclusions, rely alike for facts and figures.
We must then admit in degree the tendency of wages to a minimum, especially those of unskilled labor, and accept it as one more motive for persistent effort to alter existing conditions and prevent any such culmination. ”

“ Where there exists a constant over-supply of labour competing for what must be regarded at any particular time as a fixed quantity of employment, wages are determined with tolerably close reference to the lowest standard of living among that class of workers, and not by any fixed or customary money wage. ”

“ Indeed it was so rapid that the new class of employers, the capitalists, found little time to think of anything but increasing their profits, and the new class of employees, now merely wage-earners, found that their long hours of monotonous toil gave them little leisure and no interest. ”

“ The labourer is paid by his employer a wage which represents the ‘exchange value’ of his ‘labour-force.’ But the employer has obtained the ‘use-value’ of the labour-force, and disposes of the newly-created product in the market at a selling price which, after making allowance for the costs of production before and after the application of labour-force, is higher than the wage paid to the labourer. ”

“ Among these is the influence of customary wage relationships upon the course of wage movements within an industry, and to a lesser extent throughout industry. Because of the existence of vague customary relationships, wage movements affecting some groups or classes of labor are likely to 83 stimulate similar movements among other groups; though it is plain that the efforts of different groups may not meet with equal success. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every part of the industrial system yields at some time and occasion to the impact of the human will. Even changes in the arts of production may result therefrom, as is well exemplified in Mr. Clay's analysis of the way in which the standard of life of the wage earners may exert an influence over wage rates.... ”

“ This is but to restate some of the important influences governing the wages of the lowest groups of industrial workers. But to restate them is to emphasize the fact that the living wage policy must be looked upon merely as one agency among many, directed to the same end. In economic affairs, as in political affairs, to bring about a change in one place it is necessary to bring about a change in many places. ”

“ Because some particular leader lacked tact or a sense of justice or some similar quality, many a labor maneuver has failed, and many a labor organization has suffered in the public esteem. No other class relies so much upon wise leadership as does the laboring class. The average wage-earner is 122 without experience in confronting a new situation or trained and superior minds. From his tasks he has learned only the routine of his craft. ”

“ The strained and too often disturbed relations existing between the employees and the employers in our great manufacturing establishments have not been favorable to a calm consideration by the wage earner of the effect upon wages of the protective system. The facts that his wages were the highest paid in like callings in the world and that a maintenance of this rate of wages in the absence of protective duties upon the product of his labor was impossible were obscured by the passion evoked by these contests. ”

“ There is nothing strange in the fact that, in spite of the enormous increase in productive power which this century has witnessed, and which is still going on, the wages of labor in the lower and wider strata of industry should everywhere tend to the wages of slavery—just enough to keep the laborer in working condition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Learned men have figured out that the worker receives as his wage only about one-tenth of what he produces. The other nine-tenths are divided among the landlord, the manufacturer, the railroad company, the wholesaler, the jobber, and other middlemen. ”

“ If labor organization has been able to increase the wages of certain groups of wage earners without doing equivalent harm in any other direction, there is reason for believing that a living wage policy can accomplish something of the same result for the lowest grades of industrial labor, which have been up to the present practically without organization. ”

“ It will be found usually that the abler, the more skilled or more experienced workers in particular occupations receive higher wages than the standard, because of the special value of their services. [73] Occasionally also agreements are 129 entered into for the employment of a small number of workers, who are acknowledged to be well below the ordinary level of efficiency in their trade or occupation, because of physical disability, old age or analogous causes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That presumption arises from the fact that, unless there is evidence to the contrary, the higher range of unstandardized wages indicates what wages may be enforced throughout the occupation without causing great disturbance and unemployment. ”

“ It is impossible to tell the extent to which differences in inborn capacity would lead to the formation of relatively separate groups of labor, if all the other assumptions underlying the theory of a general rate of wages were fulfilled in fact. ”

“ The actual amounts paid to the men and women who do the work of the industrial world are extremely small. Current wage rates, placed side by side with the expense accounts of thousands of families whose sole claim to income rests upon their ownership of property, are startling in their paucity. Five hundred dollars a year paid to an able-bodied man whose back was bent three hundred days of the year in his efforts to support a wife and four small children ”

“ On the verge of each occupation stand those to whom the inducements between one occupation and another are so nicely balanced that the slightest change is sufficient to determine their labour in one direction or another. Thus, any increase or decrease in the demand for labour of a certain kind cannot, except temporarily, raise wages in that occupation above, nor depress them below, the relative level of wages in other occupations, which is determined by the circumstances previously adverted to, such as relative agreeableness or continuity of employment, etc. ”

“ It results from this 73 limitation of the higher forms of natural ability, that the wages received for the more skilled forms of labor may be considerably higher than for the less skilled forms without such an increase of numbers in the more skilled groups as would bring down their wages to the general level. The competition for employment on the tasks demanding skill is limited ”

“ The trade 278 union leader fighting for a wage increase does not always see his demand as a plain group claim for greater reward; it frequently appears as an act of justice to his class, a step towards improving their position and power in industrial society. To the employer more often the struggle is merely to protect his profits. ”

“ Wages paid by an employer Production is always the mother of wages. Without production, wages would not and could not be. It is from the produce of labour, not from the advances of capital that wages come. Wherever we analyse the facts this will be found to be true. For labour always precedes wages. This is as universally true of wages received by the labourer from an employer as it is of wages taken directly by the labourer who is his own employer. In the one class of cases as in the other, reward is conditioned upon exertion. ”