United States or Poland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This combination had now taken the form of a federation of all or almost all the recognised wage-paid employments, and it was by its means that those betterments of the conditions of the workmen had been forced from the masters: and though they were not seldom mixed up with the rioting that happened, especially in the earlier days of their organization, it by no means formed an essential part of their tactics; indeed at the time I am now speaking of they had got to be so strong that most commonly the mere threat of a 'strike' was enough to gain any minor point: because they had given up the foolish tactics of the ancient trades unions of calling out of work a part only of the workers of such and such an industry, and supporting them while out of work on the labour of those that remained in.
After the monopolist has drawn up his account of cost, profit, and interest, the wage-paid consumer draws up his; and he finds that, though promised wages stated in the contract as one hundred, he has really been given but seventy- five. Monopoly, therefore, puts the wage-receivers into bankruptcy, and it is strictly true that it lives upon the spoils.
For the very essence of the position of the slave, as contrasted with the wage-paid labourer, is, so far as the direction of his industrial actions is concerned, that he has not to work as he is bidden in order to gain a livelihood, but that, his livelihood being assured him no matter how he behaves himself, he is obliged to work as he is bidden in order to avoid the lash, or some other form of equally effective punishment.
To return then to definite facts, since in the year 1800 an equal division of all the wealth of Great Britain would have yielded to each family an income of eighty pounds, and since eighty years later an equal division of the total which was actually appropriated as wages by wage-paid labour alone, would have yielded to each labourer's family some twenty-five pounds in addition, the labouring class as a whole in Great Britain to-day, instead of receiving less than its labour produces, receives on the lowest computation from thirty to thirty-three per cent. more.
Word Of The Day