Essentials of Economic Theory Part 6

CHAPTER VIII

WAGES

_The Equilibrium of Industrial Groups._--The different industrial groups are in equilibrium when they attract labor and capital equally, and that occurs when these agents produce as much per unit employed in one group as in another. Such equalized productivity is the bottom fact of a static condition, and equalized pay follows from it. Wages and interest tend to be uniform in all the groups. Efficient labor, of course, gets in any employment more than inefficient; but labor of a given grade gets in all the groups that make up industrial society a uniform rate of pay, and nothing is to be gained by any capitalist or by any laborer by moving from one employment to another. They all therefore stay where they are, not because they cannot move freely if they wish to do so, but because no inducement to move is offered to them. This is a condition of perfect mobility without motion--of atoms ready to move at a touch without the touch that would move them. The paradox indeed holds that it is the ideally perfect mobility which has existed in the past which positively excludes motion in the present.

At some time in the past labor and capital have gone from group to group till they have brought about an adjustment in which they have no incentive for moving farther. The surface of a pool of water is kept tranquil, not because the water is not perfectly fluid, but because, in spite of the fact that it can flow with entire freedom in any direction if it is impelled more in that direction than in any other, each particle of it is impelled equally in all directions. It is the perfect equilibrium that keeps the particles from changing their places, and fluidity has caused the equilibrium. In like manner when labor and capital can create and get just as much in one place as in another, they are attracted as strongly in one direction as in another and therefore do not move. A young man of average capacity, who is deliberating upon the choice of an occupation, will find that he can do as well in a cotton mill as he can in a shoe factory, a machine shop, a lumber mill, a flouring mill, or any other industrial establishment requiring his particular grade of capacity. This is the picture of a perfectly static industrial condition. Economic science has to account for values, wages, and interest as they would be in such a condition, however impossible it is that society should ever reach exactly such a state. The values, wages, and interest in a real market are forever tending toward the rates that would be established if the static condition were realized.

_The Sign of a Static State._--The sign of the existence of a static condition is, therefore, that labor and capital, though they are perfectly free to move from one employment to another and would actually do so on the slightest inducement, still do not move. They stay where they are because they cannot find places where they can produce the slightest amount in excess of what they now produce, and no employer will anywhere offer any excess above the prevailing rate of pay.

_Profits and the Movements they induce the Sign of a Dynamic State._--_Entrepreneur's_ profits, when they exist, mean that this equilibrium is disturbed, and when it is so, mobility of labor and capital affords the guaranty that a new equilibrium will be established if no further disturbances follow. As we have said, profits attract labor and capital, increase the output of those goods which yield the profit, and reduce the prices of them to the no-profit level. Workmen and capitalists then get from the _entrepreneur_ as wages and interest all that he gets from the public as the price of his goods, except what he pays for raw materials.[1] In other words, the employer sells his goods at cost.

[1] The _entrepreneur_ of A' of our table must buy the A in order to impart to it that utility which is his own particular contribution. He pays as wages and interest all that he gets for this contribution. The true product of the _entrepreneur_ is not the entire price of the A', but is the difference between that and the price of the A. The entire amount received for the A' resolves itself into wages, interest, and cost of A; but as a rule the price of A resolves itself practically into wages and interest only, and when it does so, all that is paid for the A' ultimately takes these forms. The same is then true of the finished product A'''. The entire price of it is ultimately resolvable into wages and interest; and in speaking of the product of an entire group we do not need to make any reservation for raw materials.

The case in which this statement requires qualification is that in which the material in its rawest state still has value, as is the case with ore and mineral oil contained in the earth but not a true part of land in the economic sense, since they are exhausted in the using. The price of a product into which these elements enter includes something that represents the value which they have _in situ_ and before any labor has been expended on them. It is true even in these cases that the value of the product is measured in terms of wages and interest, provided that the exhaustible elements such as ore, oil, etc., are capable of being replenished, or provided that an effective subst.i.tute for them is in process of production by means of labor and capital. The natural raw material is then worth what the artificial subst.i.tute costs in terms of capital and labor, and the finished product which contains some of the natural material sells for the amount which the finished product costs, which is made altogether by labor and capital applied to valueless elements in nature.

_How Costs are Determined._--The early studies of "natural" values, or values which conform to costs of production, were unconscious and imperfect attempts to attain the laws of value in a static state. In such a state costs resolve themselves into wages and interest, and the conception of such a static state is therefore not complete unless we know how wages and interest themselves are determined. What we have already said implies that they fluctuate about certain standards, just as do the prices of goods, and that they would remain at these standards if society were reduced to a static condition.

_Significance of Static Law in a Dynamic State._--An actual society is undergoing constant disturbances. It is very far from being static; and yet values of goods, on the one hand, and the earnings of labor and capital, on the other, hover within a certain distance of the standards which would be realized if the society became static. In spite of active dynamic movements the general returns of labor and capital can never range so far from these theoretical amounts that the distance from them cannot in some way be measured and accounted for.

The sea, when gales are blowing and tides are rising and falling, is anything but a static object, and yet it keeps a general level in spite of storms and tides, and the surface of it as a whole is surprisingly near to the ideal mathematical surface that would be presented if all disturbances were to cease. In like manner there are certain influences that are disturbing the economic equilibrium just as storms and tidal waves disturb the equilibrium of the sea. We cannot actually stop these influences any more than we can stay the winds and the lunar attraction; but we can create an imaginary static state for scientific purposes, just as a physicist by a process of calculation can create a hypothetical static condition of the sea and discover the level from which heights and depths should be measured.

No more than the economist can he actually bring the subject he is dealing with to a motionless condition. The economic ocean will defy any modern Canute who may try to stop its movements; but it is necessary to know what shape and level it would take if this were done.

_Influences that disturb the Static Equilibrium._--The influences that disturb the economic equilibrium are, in general, five. The population of the world increases, and this is one influence which prevents values, wages, and interest from subsiding to perfectly "natural"

standards. Capital is increasing, and this influence also acts as a disturbing factor. The methods of producing things change, and the changes have a very powerful effect in preventing the attainment of a static equilibrium. New modes of organizing different industries are coming into vogue, and this causes a further disturbance of the economic adjustment. The wants of men are by no means fixed; they change, multiply, and act on the economic condition of society in a way that affects the static adjustment. Even physical nature undergoes change, and the perishable part of the earth does so in a disquieting way. We are using up much of our natural inheritance. As the effect of this appears chiefly in forcing us to change our processes of production, we shall, for convenience, limit our study to the five changes here enumerated.

_Movement Inevitable in the Dynamic State._--These influences reveal their presence by making labor and capital more productive in some places than they are in others, and by causing them ever and anon to move from places of less productiveness to places where gains are greater. As we have said, this moving of labor and capital to and fro is, like currents in the sea, a sign of a dynamic condition. As in the static state these agents would not thus move, however fluid and mobile they might be, so in a dynamic state they are bound to move, because their earning powers do not remain long exactly equal in any two employments, and they go now hither and now yon, as, in the changeful system, openings for increased gains present themselves. If commodities were everywhere selling at cost prices and if wages and interest were everywhere normal and uniform, labor and capital would not move to and fro, and this would be a proof that dynamic influences were absent.

_How an Imaginary Static Society is Created._--If we wish to discover to what standard the values of goods, on the one hand, and the rewards of labor and capital, on the other, continually tend to conform, we must create an imaginary society in which population neither increases nor diminishes, in which capital is fixed in amount, in which the method of making goods does not change, in which the mode of organizing industry continues without alteration, and in which the wants of consumers never vary in number, in kind, or in intensity.

_Costs of Production in a Static State._--We have said that in such a static state the prices of different products are just high enough to cover the wages and interest which are generally paid. There are uniform or all-around rates of pay for labor and for capital, and every man who hires workmen or gets loans from a bank has to pay them.

In the real world, full as it is of disturbances, and given over as it is to forces of change and progress, we find that values, wages, and interest are in general surprisingly near to these standards. In a particular business products may for a time sell for enough to afford a large surplus above prevailing wages and interest, and business as a whole may, for a time, yield some such surplus; but in the absence of monopolistic privileges no one business yields a large surplus for a long time, and still less does business as a whole do so, though profits may always be found somewhere within the system.

_The Final Productivity of Labor._--If we a.s.sume that the capital of society is a fixed amount, we may perform an imaginary experiment which will show how much labor really produces. We may set men at work, a few at a time, until they are all employed, and we may measure the product of each of the detachments. We should make the different sections of the working force as similar to each other as it is possible to make them and call each section a unit of labor. If there were ten such divisions and if the quant.i.ty of capital were sufficient to equip them all on the scale on which laborers are at present actually equipped, it is clear that this amount of capital, when it was lavished on one single section, must have supplied it with instruments of production in nearly inconceivable profusion. What we should to-day regard as a fair complement of capital for a thousand men would nearly glut the wants of a hundred, and yet it is thinkable that it should take such forms that they would be able to use it.

_Productivity of the First Unit of Labor._--We will set at work one section which we have called one unit of labor and will put into the hands of its members the whole capital which is designed ultimately to equip the ten sections. It is very clear that the forms that this capital will take cannot be the same that it will have to take when the entire working force is using it. Indeed, we shall have to tax our ingenuity to devise ways in which one unit of labor can utilize the capital that will ultimately be used by ten. The tools and machines will have to be few in number but very costly and perfect. We shall have to resort to every device that will make a machine nearly automatic and cause it to exact very little attention from the person who tends it. The buildings will have to be of the most substantial and durable kind. We shall have to spend money without stint wherever the spending of it will make labor more productive than it would otherwise be. If we do this, however, the product of the labor and its equipment will be a very large one. The industry will succeed in turning out indefinitely more goods than a modern industry actually does, and the reason for it will be that the workmen have capital placed in their hands in unparalleled profusion.

_The Product of the Second Unit of Labor._--We will now introduce a second unit of labor, by doubling the number of workers, without changing the amount of the capital. We must, of course, change the forms of the capital, or it cannot be advantageously used by the larger working force. The buildings will have to be larger, and if they are to be erected with about the same amount of capital as was formerly used, they must be built in a cheaper way. Tools of every sort must be more numerous, and this larger number of tools, if it is to represent the same investment of capital that the former number embodied, must also be simpler and cheaper. The whole equipment of _capital goods_ will have to undergo a complete trans.m.u.tation; but the essential thing is that the amount of the capital should not be changed.

_A Provisional Mode of Measuring Capital._--In measuring the amount of the capital we are obliged to use a unit of cost, and in the ill.u.s.tration we have a.s.sumed that the cost can be measured in dollars.

The productive fund consisted at the outset of a certain number of dollars invested in productive operations. This is only a provisional mode of measuring it. The money spent really represents sacrifice incurred, and we shall find that the only kind of sacrifice that is available for measuring the cost of goods of any kind is that which is incurred by labor. Ultimate measurements of wealth in all its forms have to be made in terms of labor. Such measurements have presented difficulties, and the attempt to make them has led to serious fallacies. We shall see, in due time, how these fallacies can be avoided.

_The Law of Diminishing Productivity._--Under these conditions the second unit of labor will add something to the amount that was produced by the first unit, but it will not cause the product to become double what it was. It could not do that unless the capital also were doubled. Each unit of labor is now cooperating with one half of the original capital, and the total product is less than it would have been if the new labor, on entering the field, had brought with it as full an equipment of productive instruments as was possessed by the labor that preceded it. Adding to the industry a second unit of labor without adding anything to the capital makes the total product somewhat larger, but falls short of doubling it. If we credit to this second unit of labor what it adds to the product that was created before it came into the field, we shall find that it is a certain positive amount, but obviously less than the total product which was realized by the first unit _and all the capital_. It is even less than a half of the product of the two units using all the capital. Perhaps the first unit of labor, when it used all the capital, created ten units of product; while the two units of labor, using this same original amount of capital, produce sixteen units of product. The clear addition to the original product which is caused by the added labor of the second squad of workmen is only six units, while a half of the total product after the addition to the labor has been made is eight. This figure represents the amount we may attribute to one unit of labor and a half of the total capital, while six represent what is _causally_ due to one unit of bare labor only. With all the capital and one unit of labor we get ten units of product, while the addition of one unit of bare labor brings the total amount up to sixteen. Six units find the cause of their existence in the presence of the second unit of labor, and the second unit therefore shows, as compared with the first, a diminished productivity.

_Product of the Third Unit of Labor._--We will now introduce a third unit of labor, leaving the amount of capital still unchanged, but again altering the forms of it so as to adapt them to the needs of a still larger working force. We will make the buildings larger and therefore, of necessity, cheaper in their forms and materials. We will make the tools and machines more numerous and simple, and will do everything that is necessary in order to make the fixed amount of capital--the fund amounting to a given number of "dollars"--embody itself in the number and the kinds of capital goods that are requisite in order to supply three times the original number of workmen. The third unit of labor now adds something to the product realized by the first two, but the addition is smaller than it was in the case of the second unit.

_Products of a Series of Units of Labor._--If we continue this process till we have ten units of labor, employing the same amount of capital as was formerly used by one, we shall find that each unit as it begins to work adds less to the previous product than did the unit which preceded it, and that the tenth unit adds the least of all.

Care must be taken not to confound the addition that is made to the product in consequence of the additional working force with the amount which, after the enlargement of the force, is created by the last unit of labor _and its pro rata share of the capital_. When the tenth unit of labor is working, it is using a tenth of the capital and the two together create a tenth of the product. This is more than the amount which is _added_ to the product by the advent of the tenth unit of labor. That addition is merely the difference between the product of all the capital and nine units of labor and that of all the capital and ten units of labor. This extra product can be attributed entirely to the increment of labor.

It is also carefully to be noted that when the units are all working together, their products are equal and the particular one which happened to arrive last is not less productive than the others. Each one of them is _now_ less productive than each one of the force of nine _was under the earlier conditions_. In like manner each unit of the nine is less productive than was, in the still earlier period, each unit of the force of eight. At any one period, all units produce the same amount. At any one period, then, what any one unit of labor produces by the aid of its _pro rata_ share of the capital is a larger amount than what each can be regarded as producing by itself. Though one of ten units creates, with the aid of a tenth of the capital, a tenth of the product, of itself it creates less; for we can only regard as its own product what it adds to the product that was creating before it arrived on the scene. It is the bare product of a unit of labor alone that we are seeking to distinguish from other elements in the general output of the industry, and that consists in the difference between what nine units of labor and all the capital can produce, and what ten units of labor and all the capital can produce.

We will consider the amount of capital fixed and let the amount of labor increase along the line _AE_, and we will let the product of successive units of labor be measured by the vertical distance from the points on the line _AE_ to the descending curve _CD_. _AC_ is the product of the first unit of labor. The product of later units is measured by lines to the right of _AC_ and parallel with it, which grow shorter as the number of units increases. _ED_ is the product of the last unit. In each case we impute to an increment of labor whatever amount of product its presence adds to that which was created before.

_Summary of Essential Facts._--The facts that are to be remembered then are: first, that the capital remains fixed in amount, though the forms of it change as the number of units of labor increases; secondly, that that which we call the product of a unit of labor is what that unit, coming into the field without any capital, can add to the product of the labor and capital that were there before; and thirdly, that this specific product of labor grows smaller as the amount of labor grows larger, rendering the product of the last unit the smallest of all. When the tenth and last unit is working, each one of the nine earlier units is, of itself, producing no more than does the final one, though it formerly produced more because of the larger quota of capital with which it was formerly supplied.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_The Test of Final Productivity._--There are now at work ten units of capital and ten of labor, and we cannot go through the process of building up the working force from the beginning. How, then, do we measure the true product of a single unit of labor? By withdrawing that unit, letting the industry go on by the aid of all the capital and one unit of labor the less. Whatever one of the ten units of labor we take away we leave only nine working. If the forms of the capital change so as to allow the nine units to use it advantageously, the product will not be reduced to nine tenths of its former size, but it will still be reduced; and the amount of the diminution measures the amount of product that can be attributed to one unit of bare labor. Or we may add a certain number of workmen to a social force already at work, making no change in the amount of the capital,--though changing its forms,--and see how much additional product we get. That also is a test of final productivity. It gives the same measurement as does the experiment of taking away the little detachment of men and seeing how much the product shrinks. By either process we measure an amount that is attributable altogether to bare labor and not to capital.

The whole area _BCD_ in the diagram is an amount of product that is attributable to capital and not to labor. It represents the total surplus produced by labor and capital over the amount that can be traced to the labor alone. The product of all the capital and all the labor minus ten times the product of a single unit of labor is the amount that is attributable to the productive fund only.

The area _ABDE_ represents this amount. The last unit of labor creates the amount _DE_ and the number of units is represented by the amount _AE_. All of them are now equally productive and what all create, as apart from what capital creates, is the amount _ABDE_.

_Only the Final Part of this Mode of gathering a Working Force practically resorted To._--The process of building up the working force from a single unit is imaginary. In practical life we see the process only in its final stage. _Entrepreneurs_ do continually have to test the effect of making their working forces a little larger or a little smaller, and in so doing they test the final productivity of labor; and this is all that is necessary. Tracing the process of building up the force of labor unit by unit reveals a law which is important, namely, that of the diminishing productivity of single units of labor as the number of units increases. If we crowd the world full of people but do not proportionately multiply working appliances of every kind, we shall make labor poorer.

_Why a Detachment of Laborers rather than One Man is treated as a Unit of Labor._--In making up the force of workers we might have treated each individual as a unit; but we have preferred to call a detachment a unit in order that the symmetry of the force might be preserved.

Even though we were studying only a single mill it would have its departments, and it would be desirable that, when we enlarge the force of men, we should be able without difficulty to give to each part of the mill its fair share of the new laborers. If it were a shoe factory, we should need to add lasters, welters, sewers of uppers, etc., in a certain proportionate way, in order that one part of the mill might not get ahead of another and pile up unfinished products faster than they could be taken and completed.

In the last a.n.a.lysis the law applies to the industry of all society.

The final unit in the case consists of shoemakers, cotton spinners, builders, foundrymen, miners, cultivators, etc., and of men of all subtrades included in the general callings. As the composite detachments come into the field, they apportion themselves among all the occupations that are represented, and that too in nicely adjusted proportions. We shall see in due time how this adjustment of the several shares of the social force of laborers is practically made.

_The Law of Final Productivity Applicable to the Labor of Society._--The law of final productivity applies to every mill, shop, or mine separately considered. If its capital remains fixed in amount, units of labor produce less and less as they become more numerous. The product of any unit at any one time may be measured by taking it away and seeing how much the output of the establishment is reduced. The law, however, applies to all the mills, shops, mines, etc., considered as a social complex of working establishments. As the working society grows larger without growing richer in the aggregate, the power of labor to produce goods of all kinds grows less. At any one time this producing power is measured by taking away from every working establishment a number of its operatives and ascertaining how much less is produced after the withdrawal. Such a test on the social scale is never made consciously. Each employer can test in an approximate way the effect of reducing his own force, and the effect of gradually enlarging it, and there are influences at work which result in enlarging one industry when others are enlarged and in causing the final productivity of labor to be uniform in all. A shoe manufacturer can tell, in a general way, how much an extra man or two will be worth to him. It is possible to ascertain by experience about what number of shoes that additional labor will, in a year, add to the output of the shoe factory or the number of tons of steel it will add to the present annual output of a furnace. When these products vary in the case of different shops, the men are called to the points where the apparent additions are largest, and the constant tendency is toward a level of productive power. The building up of an imaginary force from the beginning presents, in a clear and emphatic way, the fact that the specific productivity of labor grows less as, other things remaining the same, workers become more numerous. We should know on _a priori_ grounds that this must be the fact; but we can verify it by observation and statistical inquiry. Where men are numerous and land and tools are scarce, labor is comparatively unproductive; and it is highly productive where land and tools are plentiful. There is no doubt that crowding the world full of people, without providing the world with capital in a proportionate way, would impoverish everybody whose income depends on labor.

_The Law of Wages._--Even though labor creates the amount _ABDE_, it is not yet perfectly clear that it will be able to get that amount.

For aught we now know the _entrepreneur_ may keep some of it, and for aught we know he may keep some of the quant.i.ty _BCD_ which is distinctly the product of capital. Let us see whether he can in reality withhold any part of _ABDE_, which is the product of labor.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_Wages under Perfect Compet.i.tion._--In the static state that we have a.s.sumed, compet.i.tion works without let or hindrance. It does not work thus in the actual world, and we shall in due time take account of the obstacles it encounters; but what we are now studying is the standards to which such compet.i.tion as there is--and it is in reality very active--is tending to make wages conform. We want to know what would happen in case this compet.i.tion encountered no hindrance at all. This would require that a workman should be able to set employers bidding against each other for his services just as actively as an employer can make laborers bid against each other in selling their services. If this were the case, every unit of labor could get what it produces, no more and no less. Even a single man, offering himself to one employer after another, would virtually carry in his hands a potential product for sale. His coming to any man's mill would mean more goods turned out in a year by the mill; and if one employer would not pay him for them at their market value, another one would. The final unit of social labor can get, under perfectly free compet.i.tion, the value of whatever things that labor, considered apart from capital, brings into existence. Moreover, each unit of labor by itself alone now produces, as we have seen, the same amount of commodity as the final unit, and can get the price of it. Now that they are all working together each one of them can place itself in the position of the final unit by leaving its present employment and offering its services elsewhere.

_Wages regarded as Prices of Fractional Products adjusted by Perfect Compet.i.tion._--Under the hypothesis of perfect compet.i.tion, as the term has been used in our discussion, the venders of goods can get their market values. These values are fixed by the final utility law.

Free compet.i.tion means, then, not only that any average laborer who offers himself for hire virtually carries in his hands a potential but definite product for sale, but that he may confidently offer it at the price that is fixed by its final utility. Like other venders, the laborer can get the true value of his product and he can get no more.

In an ideally perfect society organized on the compet.i.tive plan a man would be as dependent on his own productive power as he would be if he were alone in a wilderness. His pay would be his product; but that would be indefinitely larger than it could be in a wilderness or in any primitive state. The capital of other men and the organization that they maintain enable a worker to create and get far more than he could if he lived alone, even though, like Crusoe, he were monarch of his whole environment. It would be a losing bargain for the worker to surrender the product of mere labor in a state of civilization in exchange for what both labor and capital create in a state of savagery.

CHAPTER IX

THE LAW OF INTEREST

The product of the final unit of labor--an amount which in practice is measured without any tracing of the previous growth of the working force--sets the standard of the rate of wages. We have now to see that the rate of interest has a similar basis; and yet it is worth while to build up, wholly in imagination, a fund of capital, just as we have made up the force of laborers, increment by increment. This will have the incidental effect of ill.u.s.trating another way in which wages may be determined.

_Interest as a Residual Amount._--The area _BCD_ in our former figure represents the difference between the total product of an industry and the wages paid to laborers. If there is no net profit accruing to the _entrepreneur_, this area must represent interest. It is what is left for the capitalist on the supposition that he and the laborer together get all that there is. If the goods sell for what they cost, this must be the fact, and the amount represented by _BCD_ has thus to go to capital, since, by a rule of exclusion, it cannot go to the _entrepreneur_ nor to the laborer. The mill and its contents earn for their operator nothing but simple interest on the money they have cost. Paying the laborers discharges the first claim on the product, and there then remains only enough of the product to pay the remaining claim, that of capital.

The question still remains to be answered, how the capitalist, if he is a different person from the _entrepreneur_, or operator of the mill, can make this functionary pay over to him all that he has in his hands after paying the wages of labor.