which this subsistence and the normal development of the faculties demand?" I answer "The science of health." This problem, so often declared insoluble, is solved every day in the administration of the army in the different countries. This administration fixes the amount of nourishment and the quality of the clothes necessary to keep the soldier's powers in good condition. Ought not the labourer to be able to earn by his work at least the rations of a soldier?

§ 7. The Causes which fix the Rate of Wages.

Are wages, as some economists assert, in proportion to the productiveness of labour? It would seem that they ought to be so. If labour produced twice the amount of useful articles, surely the labourer ought to be twice as well off. This, however, is not the case, except when he is also the possessor of the capital, as in the instance of the peasant proprietor.

The pay given simply as wages is determined by other causes. The increase of production profits, in the first place, the manufacturer, and subsequently, by the fall of prices, the general public. A manufacturer sets up in his factory a machine which enables the workman to produce each day ten times as much as he could do by hand; if no greater dexterity is required from him his wages will not be increased. All the advantage of the machine will go to the manufacturer, until there comes a fall of prices consequent upon the increased ease and abundance of production. Again, by giving his

orchard a double layer of manure a market gardener may double his crop of apples. He will not make this a reason for paying high wages to the labourers who gather them, though their real wages may incidentally be increased by the fall in the price of apples.

It is plain that the productiveness of labour only acts indirectly on its market value by multiplying useful objects, and thus enabling the wage earners to buy more of them.

What regulates wages is the competition between the labourers offering their work and the masters in need of it. As Cobden said with great force, when two workmen are running after one master, wages fall; when two masters are running after one workman, wages rise. In other words, wages are subject to the great law of supply and demand which will be explained later on.

To this rise and fall of wages, however, there are certain limits. They cannot fall below what is absolutely necessary for the labourer to subsist; in that case he would disappear altogether. On the other hand they cannot rise beyond the total of the value added to the object. As has been well observed, the piece of work which is only just worth doing brings in very little, and if the wages to be paid exceed this little, the work will never be ordered or bought.

A journeyman shoemaker makes a pair of shoes worth eight shillings with leather worth three; under no circumstances can his pay exceed five shillings. From the increase of value created by

the wage-earner, something must be deducted to reward the employer and the capitalist, or the one would cease to employ workmen, and the other to advance money.

With the reward of his labour, say Proudhon and Karl Marx, the workman cannot buy back the product of his labour; he is therefore robbed by the capitalist. The socialists who talk thus make an error of calculation. The object has not been produced solely by the exertion of the workman, but by his exertions aided by tools and employed on raw materials. It is true that labour alone is active, but it only becomes productive by the cooperation of capital and nature. This cooperation has an equal right to reward. If the workman can make himself the proprietor of the tools and materials he requires in his work, he will be able to keep the whole of the product. The aim of the wage-earner must therefore be to become a proprietor.

Wages rise when a large number of workmen are required, and this is the case when industrious and enterprising persons abound, and there is plenty of capital. The way, therefore, to improve the condition of the working classes is to encourage the creation of capital by thrift and the development of education and the spirit of enterprise. On the other hand, wages diminish when the numbers of the workmen. are increasing more rapidly than the undertakings and capital which can employ them. Here we touch. on what is called the population question.

The competition between masters requiring workmen, on the one side, and workmen requiring masters, on the other, only influences each branch of labour separately. A demand for a number of tailors will raise the wages of tailors but not those of other trades. Nevertheless if several industries are simultaneously so prosperous as to require a large number of workmen, for a time the rise of wages will spread by degrees up to a certain point, inasmuch as the rush of workmen to these trades will cause a deficiency in others.

§ 8. Has the Condition of the Working Classes Improved?

No one will maintain that the condition of those who work with their hands is all that it should be, but it is certain that it has improved and is still improving every day. Let any one who has doubts on this subject enter the cottage of the worst paid agricultural labourer, and examine his food and clothing, utensils and furniture, and then let him read the famous passage in which La Bruyère described the French peasantry of the reign of Louis XIV.

"Spread over the country are to be seen certain wild animals, of either sex, black, livid and sunscorched, chained to the earth which they dig and turn with unyielding persistency. They have what may be called an articulate voice; when standing erect they show a human face; in fact they are men.

At night they retire to their dens, where they live on black bread, water and roots. They spare other men the trouble of sowing, digging and reaping for their food, and so ought not to lack this bread which they have sown."

In 1740 Massillon, Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, wrote to Cardinal Fleury, Prime Minister of Louis XV: "The country people live in frightful misery, without beds, without furniture; one half of the year, the greater part of them eat hay and barleybread, their only food, and this they are obliged to snatch from their children's mouths, to pay the taxes."

When we think of the time when men died of hunger in crowds along the high roads, we shall see no reason to despair of our own days, while we hope still better things for the next century.

CHAPTER VI.

MEANS OF IMPROVING THE CONDITION OF WAGE EARNERS.

IN past centuries the rich and powerful always sought to reduce the share of the labourers in order to increase their own. Our own century, however, appears to have undertaken the duty pointed out by the famous reformer, Saint-Simon, of improving the material, intellectual, and moral condition of the