It may not find a customer at all, and so he starves and with him his family, the future supply of labour.Or, left to the fluctuations of the market, it may sell at a price which is insufficient for his maintenance.The fluctuations of price in all other markets involve only the pecuniary profit or loss of those who sell, fluctuations of the price of labour involve the existence and well-being of human families and of the nation.Hence the attack of organised labour on this whole conception of the labour-market, and the demand that the remuneration of labour shall not be left to the higgling of a market.
The chief fight is for a secure weekly income, or for conditions of employment which lead up to this.A minimum or a living wage is the usual name given to this demand.Complaint is made of the vagueness of the demand.
But this vagueness does not make the demand unreasonable.A living wage indeed is elastic as life itself: it expands and will continue to expand, with the development of life for the workers.But what in effect is meant at the present by a living or subsistence wage is such a regular weekly sum as suffices to maintain the ordinary working family in health and economic efficiency.
It is contended that no purchase of labour should be permitted which entails the degradation of that standard.When a minimum rate of piece-wages is demanded, the implicit understanding is that it is such as will yield under normal conditions the ordinary weekly subsistence or standard wage.
Since piece-wages are so firmly established in many trades that it is impracticable to demand their immediate abolition, the actual struggle between employees and employers is as to whether these piece-wages shall be allowed to fluctuate indefinitely, being dragged at the heels of the prices of commodities, or whether an absolute limit shall be set upon their fall.The employer says, 'When trade is good and prices and profits high, labour will share the prosperity in high rates of wage and large weekly earnings: so, when trade is bad and prices and profits low, labour must share this adversity and take low.pay, Organised labour replies, 'No, there is no parity between the power of capital and of labour to bear depressions: capital is strong and can bear up against low profits without perishing, labour is weak and cannot bear up against low wages.We will only sell our labour-power on condition that a lower limit is set upon its price, such a limit as will enable the labourer to keep body and soul together, and to maintain that efficiency which constitutes his working capital.This minimum wage should be regarded as a fixed cost in your production.At present the prices of your goods oscillate without any assigned limit.You accept low contracts for work, and then adduce this low price as a reason for reducing wages.
Let a minimum wage once be adopted in the trade, and contract prices cannot be accepted on so low a level.The minimum wage will thus help to steady selling prices and to regulate employment and output.'
Both the economics and the social ethics of this labour contention are in substance sound.So long as the price of labour is left to higgling in a competitive market, there is nothing to prevent the wages falling to the lowest level at which a sufficient number of workers can be induced to consent to work, and that level may involve a reduction of the standard of living in their families below the true subsistence point.The fixing of wages by so-called free competition affords no security for a family wage of efficiency or even of subsistence.There should be no mistake upon this essential matter.The doctrine of 'economy of high wages' has no such general efficacy as is sometimes suggested.Though in many cases high wages are essential to maintain and evoke the energy and efficiency required, in other cases they are not.From the standpoint of the immediate profits of employers 'sweating' often pays.But from the standpoint of society it never pays.
Therefore, the policy of the organised workers, in seeking to enforce the doctrine of a minimum wage, is not only a policy of self-preservation for the working-classes but a salutary social policy.It is for this reason that the State intervenes in favour of the practice, establishing Trade Boards to enforce its application in so-called 'sweated trades', and acknowledges, in theory at any rate, its validity in all public employments and public contracts.
§5.Although this minimum wage is tolerably remote from the ideal of a fixed weekly salary in most trades, it is a true step in this direction.
