Yet

sailor before the mast claim that he navigates the ship? such a sailor on board one of our large profit-earning steam-vessels, would be quite as wise in forgetting the important work done by his captain and officers, as in forgetting the equally important work of management done for captain, officers, and men, by the capitalists who own the ship.

The fallacy that wages are paid out of profit is another extraordinary blunder. Wages are paid whilst the work is going on, and, in the main, are being consumed as fast as they are paid. Profit is something to be attained in the future. It may be missed altogether, but the wages will have been paid. Workmen know well enough that wages are paid for doing work which may, and sometimes does, end in a loss. In such a case, what are the wages paid out of? Not the profit; not the loss: but out of that store of the products of past labour which we call capital. As at any moment of time on which we choose to fix, this store is a definite quantity, we see how the rate of wages will be great or small, in proportion as it is great or small compared with the numbers whom it is to support, and that in a community where there is but half enough food for the workmen, no profit which is hereafter to be made will enable the capitalist to distribute a sufficiency of food.

But here is an even more striking exposure of this folly. Profit is not great enough nor nearly great enough to pay the wages that are being distributed. An enormous portion of the work we are all doing is the work of reproduction. If happily we do our work well, we shall find that we have reproduced all that has been consumed, including wages, and that something remains over. This something, a small portion indeed compared with what has to be replaced, is profit. The hope of earning this profit induced the capitalist, in the first instance, to risk his capital in the payment of wages. The profit, after it has been earned and saved, may be turned into fresh capital, and so increase the fund out of which wages are to be paid in the future. But present wages cannot be paid except out of capital, and the profit hereafter to be made can neither raise nor lower them.

I shall illustrate what I have said above, and at the same time expose the fallacy, that wages and profit are antagonistic, by some instances from life. You have all heard of the attempt to connect England and America by telegraph. An immense proportion of

the expenditure on the Atlantic cable was for wages, paid at the rates current for such work. The company who found the capital submerged it, in the hope of making a profit. They have, it is to be feared, made a total loss. Surely you are not weak enough to believe that they paid the wages out of profit. Again, the Great Eastern steam-ship affords us another case in point. We know how great has been her cost, and we also know, that up to the present time she has earned nothing. Many of those who originally furnished the capital for her construction—capital, the great bulk of which has been expended in wages-have already sustained serious loss, and her future is still exceedingly uncertain. We hope the best; but we know that undertakings of an altogether novel character have very frequently indeed brought serious loss on their projectors, even when they have been the precursors of general benefit to mankind. The wages, however, for the construction of the ship have been paid-not always at the same rate, for during the years of her building, the rate of wages for shipwright's work has gone through extreme fluctuations, and the master ship-builder has been obliged to submit to the rise, and the workman ship-builder to the fall. But subject to these fluctuations, which neither the master, the workmen, nor the chance of the ship's hereafter making a profit or a loss could in any way control, the wages have been paid, and except any savings by the workmen, that quantity of capital has been consumed. The profit, if indeed any should at length be made, has yet to be earned. Other instances showing how the payment and the consumption of wages precede the earning of a profit, would be furnished in the history of every railway and dock, the cultivation of every farm, the sinking and working of every mine, and, indeed, of every considerable work that is now going on. Strange, indeed, it is, that men so deeply interested as are working men in understanding the laws which regulate wages, should shut their eyes to facts lying thus open to observation on every hand, and equally strange is it, that they have deluded themselves into believing in an antagonism between wages and profit; for here also they are contradicted by the facts, with which every day's newspaper is making them acquainted. Whilst they are talking of the large profits of the capitalist lowering wages, and an increase of wages lowering profit, such facts as we have referred to are known to everybody.

Further, in our Australian colonies the rate of profit is higher than with us; so also is the rate of wages. In Ireland, before the famine, when the rate of profit earned by the scant capital engaged in agriculture was small, the rate of wages was miserable. In the same country we have seen, within the last few years, a rapid increase in the productiveness of capital, attended by a considerable rise in wages. In Lincolnshire agricultural wages are comparatively high; in Dorsetshire they are lower than perhaps in any other part of England; yet we know, that if the farmers of the two counties differ in their rates of profit, it is to the enterprising and machinery-employing county of Lincoln we must look for the higher rate. We are thus taught that large profits may coexist with high wages, and small profits with low wages, and that profits and wages may both increase together, as if to warn us from assuming between wages and profit a connexion which does not exist.

Finally, the capitalist who by a long and costly education has been prepared for successfully conducting the business of a machinist, earns a rate of profit, which, compared with that in other businesses requiring equal skill and risk, cannot be called large; yet he pays his workmen a high rate of wages. The capitalist slop-seller, whose education for his business has been picked up almost wholly whilst he has himself been earning wages, makes a rate of profit which, compared with that in other businesses, cannot be considered small; yet he pays his work-people wages which scarcely suffice to keep them from starvation. So little connexion is there between profit and the current rate of wages. As was said above, the hope of profit incites the capitalist to pay wages: profit, when it has been earned, may, if he saved, be added to capital, and so increase the fund out of which wages are to be paid in the future; but the rate of wages now-the power of subsisting in the present -depends upon the stock that has been saved out of the products of labour in the past, divided by the number who must subsist out of that stock. So far, however, from profit being antagonistic to the workman, he should desire to see it increase. Whenever capital is small, compared with those who are to subsist out of it, wages must be small, for, rather than be out of work, that is, rather than be wholly without the means of subsistence, the workman will accept small wages, that is, he will put up with less than the desirable quantity of the necessaries and comforts of life. But

he will desire to alter this state of things, and there is but one way in which it can be done, that is, by increasing the capitalthe means of subsistence-faster than the numbers to be supported out of it.

There are two parties who can assist in this good work. The capitalist, by saving from his profit; the workman, by saving from his wages. When wages are so low as to furnish but an inadequate supply, the profit is the chief hope of raising wages. workmen rail against capital and profit whenever they see them increasing !

And yet

Distribution of Wages.-Up to this point, I have spoken of wages in the mass-of the whole wages which are being paid out of the whole capital by which they are furnished, and I have shown you the law by which wages on the average are ruled, viz., the quantity of capital or means of subsistence divided by the number of those to be subsisted.

We may turn now to the distribution of this wages fund-to individual wages. Notoriously, the wages of individuals differ. In different trades the rate of wages is different, and even in the same trade, different workmen earn widely different wages. We have now to explain these social facts. Let us as before fix our attention by selecting instances. The skilful workman employed today in the workshop of the machinist, in making a machine which is to assist in producing sugar for us in Brazil, will earn twice as much, at least, as the skilful ploughman who is preparing the land in Middlesex to grow us grain for next year's food. Why is this? Because the numbers subsisting on the capital devoted to machinery are far fewer in proportion to that capital than are the numbers subsisting on the capital devoted to agriculture, in proportion to that capital. This conclusion, you will see, is in perfect harmony with the laws before expounded. At first sight, it may appear strange that workmen should separate themselves thus unequally as regards the batches of capital which are to sustain them. little reflection will, however, explain to us how this is brought about.

A

Where labour is free, as (with the exception of some little interference on the part of workmen themselves) it is amongst us, there are two things which principally determine workmen in the choice

of their work. One is the kind of work to be done, and the second, the man's ability for undertaking the highly paid work. Under the first head, we notice the desirableness or undesirableness of the occupation, each man, of course, having his own notion of what he would desire. Some work is very hard, and requires great muscular strength and power of endurance. Some is very dangerous : some very unwholesome and disgusting. Less, however, is to be attributed to the characteristics of the work than we should beforehand expect. In practice, no peculiar difficulty is found in procuring work-people at low wages to do the hard work of the ballast-heaver and the navvy, and the dangerous work of making up cartridges, of filling percussion caps, or of going to sea, or to encountering the health-destroying atmosphere of the grinding-shed of the cutler, or the covered sewer of the great city. Very probably, as education renders workmen more capable of guiding themselves, we shall see wages rise in these and similar occupations, but at present it is notorious, that in some of the hardest, most dangerous, and most unwholesome occupations, wages are low.

The ability of workmen to do the more highly paid work is then, after all, the great cause of the unequal separation. A man's ability, depending in some measure, of course, on his natural gifts, is, as regards work, very mainly a question of expense in his industrial education. The farm labourer's son is earning wages whilst he "keeps birds," attends on the cattle, and is ready to wait on, or drive for the ploughman. He learns gradually to handle the plough, and bit by bit, picks up the knowledge necessary for making a straight furrow. The boy who enters the workshop of the machinist does so generally as an apprentice. At first he earns no wages, or almost none. Perhaps his father has had to pay a premium as inducement to the capitalist to take him at all. These circumstances thin the numbers who else would gladly learn the highly-paid business. The ploughman would be glad indeed to see his son on the road to receiving the high wages of a skilled artisan, but he needs the small wages the boy in his childhood can earn on the farm, and he sets him to work there. The boy is one of numbers who are receiving almost no special education. Meanwhile the son of wealthier parents has been introduced to the workshop. He gets the chance of handling tools; he learns to handle them without damaging them. The workmen instruct

M