less; * not more, because the capitalists, in the absence of competition among themselves, have no occasion to attract workingmen by
This standard of the average needs and the average civilisation of the workers has become very complicated by reason of the complications of English industry, and is different for different sorts of workers, as has been pointed out.
Most industrial occupations demand a certain skill and regularity, and for these qualities which involve a certain grade of civilisation, the rate of wages must be such as to induce the worker to acquire such skill and subject himself to such regularity.
Hence it is that the average wages of industrial workers are higher than those of mere porters, day labourers, etc. , higher especially than those of agricultural labourers, a fact to which the additional cost of the necessities of life in cities contributes somewhat.
In other words, the worker is, in law and in fact, the slave of the property-holding class, so effectually a slave that he is sold like a piece of goods, rises and falls in value like a commodity.
If the demand for workers increases, the price of workers rises; if it falls, their price falls. If it falls so greatly that a number of them become unsaleable, if they are left in stock, they are simply left idle; and as they cannot live upon that, they die of starvation.
For, to speak in the words of the economists, the expense incurred in maintaining them would not be reproduced, would be money thrown away, and to this end no man advances capital; and, so far, Malthus was perfectly right in his theory of population.
The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for