Chapter I. Influence Of The Progress Of Industry And Population On Values And Prices.

monopoly practically held by such executive ability as is competent to successfully manage large business interests. To the laborer this large payment to the manager seems to be paid for the possession of capital. This we now know to be wrong. The manager's wages are payments of exactly the same nature as any laborer's wages. It makes no difference whether wages are paid for manual or mental labor. The payment to capital, purely as such, known as interest (with insurance for risk), is unmistakably decreasing, even in the United States. And yet we see men gain by industrial operations enormous rewards; but these returns are in their essence solely manager's wages. For in many instances, as hitherto discussed, we have seen that the manager is not the owner of the capital he employs. To what does this lead us? Inevitably to the conclusion that the laborer, if he would become something more than a receiver of wages, in the ordinary sense, must himself move up in the scale of laborers until he reaches the skill and power also to command manager's wages. The importance of this principle to the working-man can not be exaggerated, and there flows from it important consequences to the whole social condition of the lower classes. It leads us directly to the means by which the lower classes may raise themselves to a higher position—the actual details of which, of course, are difficult, but, as they are not included in political economy, they must be left to sociology—and forms the essential basis of hope for any proper extension of productive co-operation. In short, co-operation owes its existence to the possibility of dividing the manager's wages, to a greater or less degree, among the so-called wages-receivers, or the “laboring-class.” And it is from this point of view that co-operation is seen more truly and fitly