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ECONOMIC EQUITIES:
A
COMPEND OF THE NATURAL LAWS
OF
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION AND
EXCHANGE.
BY J. K. INGALLS,
Author of " Social Wealth."
NEW YORK:
SOCIAL SCIENCE PUBLISHING CO.,

28 LAFAYETTE PLACE.




Copyrighted 1887
BY
J. K. IN(*AILS.




CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY,     -      -       -      -      -        5
CHAPTER II.
ALL PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY CO- OPERATIVE,    -       -    9
CHAPTER III.
NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CAPITAL,        -      -       13
RENT.-INTEREST.-PROFITS.
CHAPTER IV.
CONSERVED WEALTH, -         -      -      -       -   20
CHAPTER V.
MOTIVES TO INDUSTRY,    -       -      -      -       23
CHAPTER VI.
OF WAGES,    -      -       -      -      -       -   26
CHAPTER VII.
ECONOMIC VALUES,        -       -      -      -       33
ARTIFICIAL VALUES.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAW OF USE,     -       -      -      -      -   42
CHAPTER IX.
M1ACLEOD'S ELEMENTS OF ECONOMICS, VOL. II., -        48
CONCLUSION.
REFORMS INDICATED, -        -      -      -       -   53







PREFACE.

I make no apology for intruding this little study
upon public notice. If the subject and treatment
entitle it to respect, it is well; if not, no explanation
or excuse can avail it.
It seems evident that no mere partisan is qualified
to explain general economical principles. The advocate of protection, or of free trade, has each a distinct
purpose and aim, wholly inconsistent with the scientific spirit. The champion of a caste or class has
a predetermined result to which all his reasonings are subordinated. Political economy has thus
far been little more than a series of ingenious attempts to reconcile class prerogative and arbitrary
capitalistic control with the principles of exchange.
No proper solution of the problem of social indus-.
try and wealth can ever be reached while deferring
to the traditions and institutions of barbarous ages,
or to the prejudices and sordid maxims of the very
rich and powerful. To consider the interests of only
the class of employers or business men is quite as ineffectual, and to vindicate the interests of the wageworkers, as a class, leads to no permanent improvement in human conditions. Neither the pronounced
Communist nor the State Socialist can make an im



4                    PREFACE.
partial investigation, since each is committed to an
ultimate conclusion.
Leaving out all schemes for political or legislative
remedies, I have sought to ascertain the true nature
of the relation of earth and man to social industry
and reciprocal exchange; or at least to call attention
to these problems as far as they are capable of
exact and scientific treatment. When the truth is
comprehended we shall be able to ascertain what
people or class of people, if any, are desirous of promoting justice and honest dealing.
Glenora, N. Y., 1887.




ECONOMIC EQUITIES.
CHAPTER       I.
PRELIMINARY.
Without any election of his own, the child of industry finds himself ushered into this world, subject to
the necessity of supplying himself with food, raiment,
and shelter. These may for a time be furnished by
the love and care of parents, friends, or guardians;
and conditions of birth or fortune may shorten or
greatly lengthen this period of dependence. Instances wherein the support of one's life is wholly
a gratuity from favor, accident of birth, or class
prerogative, can have no economical importance,
and need no consideration.
Under every circumstance, however, the truth remains unquestioned that human life, with all its comforts, meager or abundant, is sustained by human
labor, of the person's own or of another's, and that,
consequently, whatever is not furnished by himself
has to be taken from the labor product of some other.
As he grows to manhood, moreover, the worker learns
that place, opportunity to work, and the raw material
to work upon are essential to his life and to the procurement of its necessities. To the production of




6

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

any wealth whatever these two and only these two
requisites are necessary-the man and the material
to be wrought with or upon.
At the very inception of the industrial problem, he
has, therefore, to face a condition of social arrangements, or institution, which not only invites but
compels attack, in the sheerest self-justice and selfdefense. In modern society and in the accepted
commercial customs, he finds his complemental factor,
the land, with all opportunities and facilities to employ his labor, already appropriated and controlled,
to his exclusion, by persons comparatively few in
numbers, whose advent into the world has been
in no essential feature different from his own, and
whose wants have to be supplied in the same manner
as his own-never otherwise than through the toil
of some worker.
In tracing the subject further he finds that this
arbitrary control of the land has been derived from
an original "common ownership," as it once existed
among all nations and tribes whose history is known.
And what appears surprising to him is that this
change of proprietorship has been brought about
through forceful conquest at times, but more generally by betrayals of public trusts, by the gradual assertion of privileges through class laws, and the
grossest assumption of arbitrary power; and that
this exclusion of himself and class from the common
right to life, necessarily dependent upon the right to
land, is destitute of any excuse in morals, civil polity,
or industrial economy.   He sees that rent, that
synonym of all subjective tribute and outrage, has
arisen in no such way as economists teach, but




ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

through a private claim to ownership of the common
domain, by the appropriation of the original public
tax to personal use. His first and paramount duty
to himself and fellows, then, is to question this prejudgment of the matter, and to demand a new hearing on the merits and on the now ascertained facts
and newly-developed reasons. But whether he will
intelligently do this, or fail to do it, does not relieve
us from our duty of stating the relation which the
worker holds to the earth, his physical mother, in
every economic, equitable, and ethical sense.
One of nature's children can have no more rights
than another-certainly none    wholly to exclude
another. If any such, like the exclusive control of
the land, are attempted to be exercised, through the
force of custom, misapprehension of "civil law," or
perversion of the "law of exchange," the first moral
duty, as well as the first economic suggestion, is to
rectify these errors, and establish equity and, at
least, to repeal and revoke all such violations of natural right and natural equity as work to the subjection of the man, to the impoverishment of the soil,
the destruction of civil rule, the debasement of public
morals, and the derangement of productive industry
and equitable exchange.
Private property in or commercial ownership of
the land can give no valid title against the inheritance nature bestows, and upon the recognition of
which all principles of justifiable property or ownership depend. "The earth belongs in usufruct to the
living."  No title which gives the present holder
"the right to its future products forever" and so
subverts this principle, can have any just force or




ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

application; because the very law of property depends upon "the right to control that which our labor
has effected." And since labor is absolutely powerless to create or effect the production of any property
without access to the raw material, the earth and its
substances and forces, any ownership of these which
debars labor from their use destroys the right to produce property, and thus strikes at the fundamental
principle upon which all true property in human
society rests.
In treating our subject, then, we find ourselves
unable to make a single economic equation except
upon the ground that the earth as well as the man is
free. Without such freedom of the producing factors, we can have only forced exchanges, and to use
the terms, "equitable exchange," or "free competition," is calculated, then, only to delude and insnare.
That this principle is recognized but partially in our
civil institutions is no more areason why we should
defer to imperfect conditions than why a trade economist should treat an existing protective tariff as a
natural factor in exchange; or why a chemist should
designate as component parts of a purely chemical
composition the adulterations which a tricky dealer
has added to cheapen the production and defraud
his customers.
It must be understood, then, that when we speak of
the equities of production, division, and exchange,
we assume the freedom of "man and the soil."




CHAPTER II.

ALL PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY CO-OPERATIVE.
Pursuing his investigations, the worker finds that
the production of the things necessary to supply
human needs is not only accomplished by human industry, but that such industry is invariably co-operative, or social, in its nature. What can be done by
an individual alone is trifling. It may barely sustain
individual life, but cannot achieve any considerable
results in the way of storing up provision for time of
inactivity and the unproductive season. Any advantage he might enjoy would largely depend on what
he had inherited from parents, or from some one
who had wrought before him, and so partakes of the
social character in its relation to past labor.
It is usual for the successful man of affairs to pride
himself upon what he has personally accomplished.
Really, as an individual, he has done no more than
Juan Fernandez did upon his ocean island. It is the
social force of which he has been an agent and director which has accomplished all. It has required a
mind capable of organizing those forces, and faculties
fitted to the work; but these faculties are not exceptional. There are often soldiers in the ranks
more capable of directing an army than the appointed




10

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

leader, and ability for the administration of affairs is
readily developed in ordinary men or women.
It is the convergence of the social forces and their
concentration upon the line of industrial or commercial development, not exceptional capacities, which
bring individuals to the front, and enable them to
appropriate undue proportions of the industrial production. The co-operation of the industrious is
essential in every step, in the largest manufactory or
in the small shop, in the mammoth farming enterprise, or in the more modest endeavor. Production
in any comprehensive sense is thQ result of the association, division, and combination of the labors of
many. The manufacturer, or director of labor, gives
laborers employment, directly, and pays the wages;
but there is always first a social demand for the commodity produced, and the other things produced
which 'beget the demand are "equally the result of
other co-operative industries.
Even the individual who produces some commodity
wholly by himself does not escape the principle, for
whatever he needs beyond his own product he has
to exchange his product for, and so enters tacitly
into a co-operative circle. And since labor (present
as well as past labor, or capital) is essential in any
business whatever, such business belongs in fact to
the laborer as much as to the furnisher of plant and
material. And although the buildings, tools, machinery, etc., may be the property of, and be held in
possession under the enterprise, and so be said to
belong to the capitalist or contributor of stock, the
product of former labor, still, without the application
of the living labor, the business must cease, and the




ALL PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY CO-OPERATIVE.

11

plant go to waste, as certainly as if it should be withdrawn or destroyed.
The logic of this position is recognized by many
employing capitalists, and indeed by every employer
who has listened to the proposition to arbitrate differences with his workmen. If the position of
worker and employer were simply one of buyer and
seller, as our superficial political economy would
teach, there could be no place for arbitration, for
neither the buyer nor seller could submit to any arbitration to buy what he did not want or sell what he
wanted to keep, or at prices unsatisfactory. For it is
not a matter of trade, of bargain and sale, at all; but
a question of equitable division between co-workers.
For the conclusion is inevitable that as the business
belongs to worker and owner of plant or other funds
alike, the products belong to both as partners, and
the subject is therefore, on this ground alone, one
proper for arbitration whenever the directors and
the performers of labor find themselves in disagreement as to division of the results of their mutual
effort.
It is obvious that where these principles are fully
recognized, co-operation in a broad and exact sense
is possible-indeed, certain-of realization, since the
rational basis already exists.  The only peaceful
solution to the antagonisms which disturb present
industrial relations lies, then, in this direction, and
every effort to harmonize "labor and capital" tends
to make these principles known and respected by
worker and director alike. When it is understood
that all industry, whether combined or isolated, aid
under the most unfavorable as under the most favor



12

ECONOMIIC EQUITIES.

able conditions, is co-operative, and that it is an
equitable division of its products alone which needs
to be sought, and not greater freedom or facilities to
"buy and sell and get gain," general co-operative industry will necessarily develop itself with a result
surpassing the most utopian conceptions.
A most preposterous claim is put forth for amassed
wealth, that only when controlled in large amounts
and in few hands can it be made effective in yet
untried or extensive enterprises. We have only to
consider how requisite in all such undertakings is
the presence and skill of the worker. The real
wealth stored in his muscle and brain, and in his
rearing, training, and education to do effective work,
and make any undertaking possible, is much greater
than that in the metal or paper dollars of the millionaire, which perform no service but to exchange
the material wealth produced by earlier labor into
new forms. The worker, even as a representative of
conserved wealth, is a partner of the capitalist. But
of all this the trade economist takes no account.




CHAPTER III.

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CAPITAL.
In the production of any wealth we find an active
and a passive factor, (1) Man, and (2) The Land, embracing all raw material and every natural force
tending to the procurement of all goods. Without
land neither matter nor opportunity is available to
the activities of the man. Any attempt to effect an
exchange with his labor is a pure absurdity. He
owns nothing in which it can be embodied; and
where the full power of the monopoly of the land is
exerted, he can make no terms but such as the holder
of the material dictates, and at whose pleasure he
must vacate even a place in which to live or labor,
as exigencies may occur. And the land is but the
base or passive factor in production. Until acted
upon by the human energy it is unproductive in any
economic sense. Locations of great fertility, or possessing minerals, may be held in esteem for purposes
of monopoly; but, however rich in natural resources,
under pure economic law they are only turned to
exchangeable account by human toil, and in a normal
system of industry will yield only the same return as
labor employed in other fields and occupations.
Man is the active agent; complemented with the
13




14

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

land, he is the only productive agent; and thus complemented it may be truly said, "Labor creates all
"wealth." Under class law many things may appear
as capital, and so secure for their holders much of
the wealth produced by the general industry. But
this arises from the working of no economic principle, but from the operation of class law, barbaric
custom, and. institutions derived from ages of unscientific and despotic rule.  Interpreted by the
more recent school of economists "as the spring or
source of the increase of wealth," land and labor constitute the only capital, the true and only factors in
the production of wealth.
It now appears that income or the procurement of
material goods, or rights to the same, may arise in
several distinct ways, only one of which, however,
can have any recognition in economic law: that
which converts natural into social wealth, through
industry. The gathering of wild fruits, the capture
of game, and garnering of the natural productions,
are some of the simple forms of this process. The
other extreme is represented where great complication and combination of labor are involved. All
legitimate, ethical, and economical methods are herein embraced. Gift, inheritance, and other means of
acquiring wealth are outside of either equitable exchange or industrial ethics.
But a civil rule which has grown out of chattelism,
feudalism, and the "law of the market," has resulted
in giving a number of processes whereby the wealth
produced by human industry, always social or cooperative, can be converted to private use, and to
yield its possessor income without labor or care.




RENT.

15

Three of these processes only need special notice,
since the grosser form, chattelism, has disappeared in
all civilized communities.
RENT.
Rent proper is that side of an assumed exchange
which represents the inequality enforced by an exclusive control of the land required by the worker
to live and labor upon. It is to that extent without
the shadow of compensation or equivalent, and the
exchange of which it claims to be a part is without
equivalent, compulsory, and therefore excluded from
any equation.
From the promulgation of the "Rent Theory " by
Malthus and Ricardo until the rise of the recent
school, no attempt was made to reduce rent to economic terms. It was, in fact, claimed that "rent of
land is a fund that exists wholly through external
causes, and over which the holder exercises no control." Now, to attempt to compensate labor from
such a fund is simply to appropriate so much of the
results of such labor without any compensation whatever; for since the fund arises from nothing which
the holder has done, the labor thus given for its use
is without return on the part of the landlord.
Mr. Macleod, the leader of the more recent school,
attempts to define rent as "the mere right to demand
compensation for use," and "the purchase of a use
for a limited period." But he makes no effort to
show how the right to charge for the use of the natural forces is derived, nor how any equity in the exchange can possibly exist. He satisfies himself with
reference of all values to "a desire of the mind," and




16

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

to demand and supply, which determine the market
price. The rationale of trading upon the desire of
mankind to occupy the inheritance furnished by
nature, and forcing payment for that which costs
nothing to one party, he declines to grapple with,
and so leaves rent as far from any economic explanation as the elder school. It is simply a matter
without any economical explanation. It is tax, an
exaction, dependent wholly on inverted civil rule, and
depends on no commercial principle whatever.*
INTEREST.
Interest no more than rent can enter as a permanent quantity into any equitable exchange. It is payment for a use which costs the holder nothing, and
can play a part only in a forced or fraudulent exchange. This may be seen from the sources from
which the borrower derives it, viz.:
1st. From the principal borrowed, in which case it
results in bankruptcy of the borrower, and perhaps
loss to the lender.
2d. From the stock of the borrower, resulting in
his impoverishment.
3d. From the wages or equitable compensation of
the borrower, or from that of his employees, or from
profits from those with whom he has dealt.
PROFITS
are impossible of explanation on any principle of
exchange whatever. They are over and above a true
*The subject of Rent, Interest, and Profits will be found dis.
cussed at length in " Social Wealth," pp. 48-75.




PROFITS.

17

equation, and represent nothing but the excess of one
side over the other. To state an equation with profits
is to show their absurdity, thus: a= a 4-+ x, or a-=
a-x. There can be only one value to x in such
equation, and that is 0.
Compensation for service in exchange is a wholly
different thing from pure profit, and it is found on
investigation that the merchant of average honesty
and success receives only a fair compensation for his
labor, compared with other employments. The system of percentage is a very uncertain method, and
yet in the absence of class law, corporate monopolies, and devices to shield parties from healthy competition, it would operate with comparative equity.
Rent, interest, and profits, which represent no service rendered, are of the same nature, and affect industry in similar ways. Thus rent may be said to be
the interest of the money value of the land, or the
annual profit on the same.
Interest may be said to be the rent of such land
as the money would buy; or the profit of so much
capital as it represents.
Profit may be said to be the rent of so much land
as the capital would exchange for, or the interest of
so much money as is invested in the stock.
It is hence evident that no such distinction exists
between rent, interest, and profits as a recent popular
writer insists upon. They not only accord with each
other, but are interchangeable, maintain a very uniform rate with each other, and affect industry in precisely the same manner. They are but different forms
of expression for the same thing, and depend wholly




18

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

upon the power to enforce consent to unequal exchanges.
A seeming distinction exists in the fact that profit
is more generally connected with services than either
rent or interest; but it only needs in any case to distinguish between what is properly balanced by service, in order to determine what part is purely profit
or interest or rent. It is possible, also, to conceive of
service in the control of the land, in its care and administration, and such service, of course, has an equivalent compensation, the same as service in exchange.
An appreciable service is recognized even in matters
of finance, and the calling of the banker is not without labor to be equitably rewarded. Such service,
however, is mainly rendered to the money-lender
rather than to the money-borrower, as we shall see,
since it enables the lender to secure the conservation
of the values he possesses. But the lender of money
on proper security renders no service of any kind,
and his interest, above proportional taxation, is
wholly a gratuity, for which no return can be shown,
since the borrower, in furnishing security, takes all
risks upon himself.
Trade for profit, where each party charges the same
rate or amount, comes to the same thing as if each
party traded at cost and for purposes of mutual advantage merely. It is only where the rate is excessive on one side that advantage is obtained by one
party over the other. It is from the fact that profits
in a measure equalize themselves that such trade is
at all endurable.
It is thought by many business men as well as
taught in our current political economy, that rent,




PROFIT.

19

interest, and profits constitute the Alpha and Omega
of all business transactions. But the truth is that
they are the destruction of all serviceable production
and of all honest exchange, and but for the large
equalization of profit which takes place, and to some
extent of rent and interest as well, and but for periodical bankruptcies and   failures, by which   large
amounts of capital are annually wiped out, and rents,
interests, and profits canceled, any exchange of commodities would be as difficult under their rule as
between hostile armies.
Trade for profit necessarily involves chicanery, deception, adulteration, and cheating, and to it their
general prevalence in business is due. Equitable
commerce implies the direct opposite of all these.
Yet it is difficult for the ordinary mind, educated in
profit-making, to understand how any person should
seek an exchange without actually lying or prevaricating, or should do any useful service to another
without seeking a greater service in return. Such is
the logic of our economic teaching, though the least
reflection should show one that the main service in
all production and in all exchanges must of necessity
be not only devoid of profit, but minus the profits
which go to the scheming and dishonest.




CHAPTER IV.

CONSERVED WEALTH.
What is made the sole economic principle by the
later schools of economists, viz., The right to unearned income, is now found to be destitute of any natural basis, and wholly dependent on statutes and
customs as barbarous as the ages from which they
have been derived.
Increase of wealth occurs only through the application of labor to the land. Such increase is greatly
facilitated by a combination and division of labor.
This relates also to such combination as is made by
joining present labor to the product of past effort.
The concentration of force is also promotive of
results. And thus it is made to appear that the possessor of the existing product is an accessory, merely
as the holder of such material, to the new production. And in connection with the exclusive ownership of the land, a necessity for the concurrence of
the landlord and of the capitalist is made so great
that they are, to a certain extent, able to limit production, and to prevent it wholly whenever their
terms as to a share of the increase are not complied
with. In the absence of class law and exclusive
privilege, such result could not possibly occur. For
20




CONSERVED WEALTH.

21

all forms of wealth constantly diminish by natural
decay and waste, by the use of improved methods, and
by the changes of fashion.
The necessity one finds to provide for rearing offspring, the approach of old age and decay of active
power, beget a constant demand for new labor to
conserve wealth through change of form and production of enduring goods. Thus the desire to associate
the products of past labor with new enterprises must
be mutual, and, under normal civil and social conditions, could not possibly command a premium other
than transient and inconsiderable and alternate upon
either side.
The mere fact that such stored products of labor
can be used to furnish improved tools and machines,
so far from justifying interest or profit, only makes
more urgent the necessity of having such products
conserved without delay, since such improvements
tend constantly to reduce the value of many existing
forms of wealth. Interest for use of created wealth
could not be maintained, since it tends constantly to
decrease in value and so force the employment constantly of more labor in its conservation.
To determine the economic equity of this question
it is only necessary to consider the entire amount of
labor, past and present, and the entire product arising from any industrial proceeding, and the matter
of division readily appears. Whatever as at present
goes to the owner of the land, or as interest on
money or profit to capital, is so much for which no
economical account can be rendered; because if at
one time there appeared an unusual demand for
forms of wealth already existing, in order to employ




22

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

present labor, such demand, resulting in a premium,
must in itself, under a system of free competition,
beget an increase in conserved wealth, and tend in an
equal degree to increase the demand for present labor
to reconvert and recreate such values. The mean or
equilibrium toward which demand and supply would
constantly tend would be the equality of compensation between the holder of past products of labor
and the doer of present labor. And fluctuations in
the relative price of each would extend to as far upon
one side of the mean as upon the other. This now
takes place to a considerable eNtent under our very
imperfect system of wages, in the relative price
which is maintained between the wages of labor, at a
particular time, and the price of materials upon which
such labor is employed, tending from extremes, caused
by whatever disturbing force, to a relative mean.
What obstructs effectively the natural working of
the law is the monopoly of the raw material, the
land; the monopoly of money, which results from
class law; and of commodities, resulting from control
of land and money by a legally privileged few, and
from the ignorance of the industrious in economic
law, which permits the childish desire for immediate
gratification to outweigh in their estimate the more
distant and substantial satisfaction.




CHAPTER V.

MOTIVES TO INDUSTRY.
The impulse to all human activity is the gratification of some desire of the mind. This desire is
modified and limited by the ability to acquire, and
by the relation which the individual, or collectively
the society, sustains to other individuals, or societies,
and by the degree of utility embraced in the desired
thing.
Our first reflection, on noticing any material object
of desire, relates to the exertion necessary to secure
it. If it be in the possession of another, we shall
consider whether we may take it by force, compass
it by cunning, or, lastly, obtain it by equitably exchanging for it some product of our own labor with
which we are willing to part. The first and second
are mere uncultured animal suggestions; the last is
the only one which is recognizable either in ethics
or economics.
What next challenges our attention is the fact that
others besides ourselves are in the world, and that
some explainable relation between ourselves and
every other human being exists and requires definition. Thus we have discovered two kinds of relations to things desired by us, in one of which we
23




24

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

have a common interest with others, and in the other
of which we find certain things already appropriated
by others, and which we can only obtain by purchase.
As a means of distinguishing between the things
thus differently related to us, we may call the one
class natural, and the other artificial wealth. And
since "the land," in its broader sense, means all natural things and forces, we may employ that term in
preference to natural wealth.  Now it must be
obvious that very different principles of ownership
attach to the land than attach to those things which
have been produced or rendered useful by human
labor, although the land may still be said to be contained in every material thing, however modified or
changed by human labor. But ownership of such
things is so restricted, through the natural limitations to which labor is always subject in its application to the land, that no serious engrossment of natural wealth could possibly take place in the absence
of arbitrary and unequal laws. For to the production of things of general utility there appears no
limit. And no institutional limit is needed. To the
occupancy of the land there is a natural and very positive limit, since no considerable multiplication of its
area is conceivable, and the individual worker is limted to what he can personally occupy and make productive. Any extension of personal dominion is in
disregard of economical law as well as of social right.
The desire for things serviceable to ourselves involves also the desire to increase our possessions,
without especial reference to the estimate put upon
individual things. We come thus to esteem certain
things, not because they furnish a particular gratifi



MOTIVES TO INDUSTRY.

25

cation, but because their possession enables us to
command in exchange at will whatever other things
we may at any time have a desire for.
Thus stable values and the current, and especially
the legal, tender become objects of paramount desire.
Finding that the control of persons and of lands enables one to command services and commodities without direct personal effort, the right to own these
early became objects of insatiable desire, since such
desires were not counterbalanced by toil or any sacrifice of ease in the procurement of gratification. The
desire, then, for means to save ourselves the labor
necessary to supply our wants begets a passion for
control over the persons of those who will labor
directly, or for engrossment of the land and opportunity to labor, so that we can gratify the desires of
the mind by compulsory exchanges with those so
unfavorably situated as to require our assent to the
application of their labor to produce desirable things
for themselves.
To treat economics, therefore, as the "science of
exchanges," without regard to the relation in which
the exchangers stand to each other and to the land
from which all values are to be created, must prove
a totally barren as well as a "dismal science." With
the vast inequalities in condition, and the arbitrary
control of a few over the material and forces of nature, and through them of the worker himself, no
equitable or other than a forced exchange is possible.
A slave or tenant can only exchange with his master
or landlord under duress, and at such disadvantage
as to set at defiance not only the ethics and equities, but also the true economics of life.




CHAPTER VI.

OF WAGES.
The term wages, as commonly employed, has a very
different meaning from the natural sequences to the
application of industry, and which, as noticed by
Adam Smith, constitutes the entire product resulting
therefrom. The term in this sense only is capable
of scientific use.
As used to denote the purchase of labor, by the
day or other period, it gives but the most uncertain
indication of any equitable or economic principle.
All that can be said of it with exactness is that it
followed, and is in some respects preferable to, serfdom or slavery. Only under peculiar conditions,
which rarely occur, can it possibly have any just
operation or tend to develop industry with any favorable economic result.
At the best, as a daily stipend to manual labor, as
salary to the directors of labor, to government and
corporation officials, and to all who derive a stated
income from any source whatever, it effects the most
absurdly unequal compensation for equally useful
service we can possibly conceive.
Now, that this disparity mainly results from arbitrary and unequal legislation, and from a misunder26




OF WAGES.

27

standing and misapplication of economic law, seems
too palpable to be seriously discussed. My purpose
here is to show what the wages system is economically, and not to dwell upon its monstrous inequalities.
Nor can I more than refer to the old fallacy of the
"wages fund." The payment of wages from a fund
is confined to the money or current funds used to
meet the periodic settlement, and has no application
to the general stock or plant of the employer. Usually the wages are first earned, and the amount at
any timepaid is more than equaled by the amount
already added to the stock; and generally the employer is in debt to the employee for the day's, week's,
or month's service.
The payment of wages is but the return, then, full
or partial, of the capital of the worker, which he has
invested in food, clothing, shelter, and culture, necessary to enable him to do the work, and which
through his service he has transferred to the stock
of the employer before such payment is made. Such
is the true wages fund. It is derived from the fund
of the laborer, not that of the employer. When
equitable, the wages constitute an exchange, and
can have no other significance. Nor do the more
recent school of economists attempt to treat it as anything else. How imperfect and deceptive an exchange it usually is; how devoid of anything like
equity; how detrimental to useful production, and
how promotive of favoritism and sinecures, seems to
need no illustration.
It is conceivable that the method of wages, under
truly natural relations, might be and at times does




ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

become a tolerable approximation to a just division
of the industrial production, and would under such
circumstances give no justification to the antagonism
which often exists between workmen and their immediate employers. Where the worker has a home
and opportunity to employ himself, in the fields and
with the forces of nature, he could not be taken advantage of or greatly wronged, and what is absurdly
called "the iron law of wages" could have no application. Wages are usually paid in money, and a
high or low money rate determines nothing, because
there is usually a correspondence between the rate
of wages and the cost of commodities needed by the
worker. To raise or to lower the money rate of
wages has often a very different effect from what
either worker or employer anticipates.
When there seems danger of over-production, low
prices and dull sales suggest to the employer a reduction of wages. And this might give a temporary
relief if other trades maintained their former rates.
But reduction in one line causes the workmen in that
line to decrease the consumption of other than their
own produce, and this begets an appearance of glut
in other products, and so the work of cheapening
products and lowering wages goes on and repeats
itself in all but exceptional lines. And yet proportional cost of living will remain unchanged. And the
same thing may occur when wages are raised. But
if wages were upheld or even increased generally in
all lines of industry in times of depression, this would
correspoildingly increase the power of the workers
to purchase, and so promote demand for all useful




OF WAGES.

29

commodities, and thus revive the circulation of goods
and business generally.
To shorten the hours of labor, if it reduced the
amount of goods produced which were over-supplied,
would have a like tendency to increase demand as
related to supply. The worker, unfortunately, does
not appreciate the fact that the money rate and the
rate it furnishes of the necessaries of life are varying; nor the employer that to reduce the money rate
of wages does not necessarily change the proportion
between the cost and the marketable value of his
product.
Another, and the only correct view of wages, is
that it is the earnest of ultimate division in the cooperative industry. That this is indeed the general
nature of such payments there can exist no doubt,
when we consider that all social industry is co-operative, and that it is only through inferred contract, or
bargain and sale, that the worker's share in the production is assumed to be transferrect to the employer,
capitalist, or director of labor. But since under exclusion from the raw material such contracts are
made under duress, such exchanges are forced, and
such payment of wages does not destroy the laborer's rightful claim to that which constitutes really
the only accumulations of capital. These accumulations are generally absorbed by landlord and usurer,
who carry off the prize while the laborer and employer are struggling to see which shall suffer least
from the spoliation neither can avoid.
What has been termed the "iron law of wages"
has no relation to any true economic principle. Payment of wages is not made from any fund set apart,




30

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

as assumed by the early school, for no such fund
exists. The laborer not only effects the production
from which the wages are derived, but desires to
consume those things for which it is exchanged and
which beget the demand.
Natural wages are what labor produces or that for
which the produce will exchange. Hence the payment or enjoyment of the natural wages can never
beget a surfeit of labor products, but, on the contrary,
an ever-increasing demand. Under any intelligent
and equitable direction product would call for product, so that, except in special fields and in employments requiring special skill and ingenuity, no serious
competitive strife could arise; nor until the utmost
limit of productive capability had been reached
could there occur any pressure of population upon
the means of subsistence, since each combination and
division of labor or facility for exchange would increase proportional production. In any normal system of exchange,'competition would be developed at
the top of the industrial scale, and not as now by
compulsory force at the very bottom.
But when wages, under monopoly of the raw material, become reduced to a fraction of the labor
product, and it is thus rendered possible to withhold
from the many the means of self-employment, the
result ascribed to the "iron law" is effected, and the
laborers not only are reduced to the verge of bare
subsistence, but in many cases are denied employment altogether; and that, too, when but a small portion of the land of a country is occupied or put to
productive use. Thus all the dismal results of the
"iron law" and of the Malthusian pressure are




OF WAGES.

31

reached, although not one of the natural conditions
exists which it is alleged constitute the producing
cause.
As found in existing society, both the depression
of wages and the lack of employment are the result of
pernicious artificial institutions, and of the ignorant
or purposed violations of economic law, and not of
the operation of any natural force or principle whatever. Natural wages is the whole product of one's
effort. Conventional wages under forced competition, as shown by Ricardo, is the amount which it
costs to maintain the laborers and keep up a supply
of them; differing in no important particular from the
phenomena which attends the sustaining of a stock
of chattel-slave laborers, with this advantage to the
employer, however, that these wage slaves take from
off his hands the trouble of keeping up the stock, so
that he is always enabled to obtain or to dispense
with their services, according as the exigencies of
business or other circumstance may require. He
is thus able to buy labor at cost, though he always
tries to sell it at a profit. And it is this difference
between what labor costs and what it produces which
constitutes or creates the fund from which it is pretended wages are paid, and from which all rent, interest, or profit to capital is derived. So far from
its being true, then, that capital sets apart a fund from
which the wages of labor are paid, it is absolutely
certain that the only source of increase from which
the incomes of landlords, capitalists, and the speculative class generally are derived is the legalized
devices by which they are enabled to withhold from
the producer the natural wages of labor, through con



d^          ECONOMIC EQUITIES.
trol of the natural elements and opportunities which
belong of right to all.
The glaring inconsistency and brazen impudence
with which it is asserted that capitalized wealth begets incomes and pays wages in accordance with any
law of equitable exchange, is evidenced in the fact
that at the same time in which capital "goes on
increasing and increasing while labor remains stationary," it is assumed that industry is not able to
produce enough to keep its rank and file from
starvation.




CHAPTER VII.

ECONOMIC VALUES.
We have seen that the impulse to action must
spring from some desire of the mind. Love of action
itself may invite exertion. Usually, however, there
is the attainment of some external object, in addition
to that which incites to activity. The governing
principle which serves as a regulator to the development of this impulse is the waste of energy, the personal sacrifice which the attainment of the desired
object requires.
In the intercourse and exchanges which take place
between one's self and others, there is one standard,
more or less clearly recognized by all, and in every
transaction. It is the standard of utility, which
economists term "the cause of value." For however
erroneous may be our estimate of what will promote
our own well-being, or that of others through which
we seek to promote our own, no action capable of
rational explanation can be conceived in which this
result is not proposed to one's self. Acts of revenge
or malice are doubtless misestimates of what will
promote the personal well-being, and are not brought
under either ethical or economic rule, being the result of uncultured and ungoverned will. The delib93




34

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

erate and rational desire is unquestionably based
upon the conception of what will result in the greatest good.
In a rude state human desire is subject to a law
which seems to correspond to the attraction of physical bodies. An object excites or repels desire inversely in proportion as the squares of its distance
from us in space or time, and the difficulties intervening. This fact gives explanation to certain phenomena in morals and trade, which otherwise appear
to disprove the theory of utility, and accounts for
the facts which seem to contradict it. Thus the passionate man elects to gratify hatred or lust, because
the gratification is near and the atonement distant.
The borrower, to obtain immediate possession, discounts the future payment, and braves the multiplication of debt through submission to interest. The
laws of health are constantly disregarded, because
the gratification of the appetite is present, while the
consequences are remote. How great this tendency
becomes is shown in the lapses of public morals, in
the ruin of personal health, and in the disasters to
business. I notice them merely to show that these
instances which appear to conflict with the doctrine
of utility are really explainable by it when fully
comprehended.
VALUEs are of two kindsThose which are positive and invariable, including
all values of utility;
And those which are speculative, as in exchange.
There are also values wholly artificial, arbitrarily
"created out of nothing, and liable at any time to be
as arbitrarily decreated into nothing," by the mere




ECONOMIC VALUES.

35

fiat of the individual will, or by that of a ruler or of
a state. These are phrases not invented by me, but
sagely put forth by the leader of the modern economic
school, Henry Duncan Macleod. These values arise
wholly from the exercise of "rights and powers,"
under the rule of despotic and unreasoning will,
whether as a prerogative of absolutism or of delegated power, with pretended popular sanction.
All "rights of property," distinct from occupation
or possessory right, are of this artificial description,
and their commercial value is created, not by labor
or through the working of any economical principle,
but by the customs or institutions which absorb the
substantial productions of industry without returnas a bill of sale to a slave, or a deed to land.
THE VALUE OF UTILITY is a constant quantity or proportion.
Ex.: An article of food will always under similar
conditions give the same life-sustaining result. A
ton of coal of same quality will give uniformly the
same amount of heat, and furnish the same amount of
motive power. This has no direct relation to the
money price or to the "labor cost" of a thing.
VALUE IN EXCHANGE is a variable quantity or proportion. It is determined primarily by the amount
of labor or sacrifice required in the procurement or
in the reproduction of a thing.
VALUE IN SERVICE may be regarded as the mean of
exchange, since service relates to such effort as is
required to produce or procure things of use. The
compensation of such service is the consequent award
to the doer of such service, the whole product thereof.
Economic values are then reducible to exact ratios




36

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

or proportions: To ratios in utility, in service, and
in exchange.
The first is determined with entire exactness, and
forms the basis of all economic problems.
The second is also determined with exactness sufficient for all practical calculations. In it is comprised
the degree of energy exerted in any service, the
length of time through'which such energy is exerted,
and the proportionate utility of the resultant product.
Now, both the time and the utility are capable of
mathematical measurement. The degree of energy
is the only variable proportion, and this is capable
of quite exact estimate. In the different trades, professions, and callings, the amount of labor required
to accomplish a specific use is everywhere readily
and confidently calculated.
We have, then, in the simple matter of value, the
"key to a sufficiently exact system for the division and
exchange of the products of the social industry.
For it is obvious that only a division which is in proportion to service, and an exchange which transfers
equivalents, can consist with either moral or economic law.
Ex.: Two men, exchanging gold and rendering unequal amounts, would soon transfer the whole amount
which the one held who gave constantly the larger
sum, into the possession of the other, while this other
would also retain all of his own.
But if two exchange services or other values
unequal to each other, a similar result follows. Unequal pay for equal service, so conspicuous in our
industrial system, can have no other issue. When the
service of a "director of labor," a banker, railroad




ECONOMIC VALUES.

37

king or wrecker, a stock gambler, or millionaire, is
compensated, per diem, for such service as he renders,
at a rate equal to that paid one thousand men for
productive labor, it is plain that a large share of their
production must have been taken to effect it. A
science of exchanges which merely takes note of what
occurs under deceptive trade, and the unjust operation of crude class legislation, has as little claim to
serious attention as would a science of chemistry,
which merely sought to foist upon public credence
the notion that the wholesale adulterations of drugs
and goods were in accordance with the law of "combining proportion."
The ratio of exchange fluctuates from a mean, the
labor cost of production, to either extreme from several causes:
Inequality of production from same application of
labor; excess of labor applied to specific industries;
changing fashions and custdms.
There are also artificial fluctuations quite independent of natural causes. Manipulation of market is
one means of depressing or raising prices. Special
legislation is largely resorted to to effect change, and
to shield interested parties from the operation of
supply and demand, while subjecting the producers
to all the injustice and burden of a compulsory competition.
What works great extremes, especially in the price
of commodities incapable of large production, is the
very inequality of means effected by unequal compensation. The man who earns one dollar per day
stands no chance in bidding for a desirable object
against one whose income amounts to hundreds or




38

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

thousands. Such inequality enables certain employments to command higher remuneration, without
reference to their utility, and thus difference of compensation proceeds from the simplest serviceable employment, usually rewarded the poorest, up through
every grade of real service to such as is predatory
and destructive, and to which our semi-savage sys-.
tem gives the highest award of all. This is barbarism, not civilization. This is brutal, not human. It
is the piracy and plunder of trade, not the development of equitable commerce.*
Any tolerable analysis exposes its crude absurdities, and any effort to generalize it is only an attempt
to synthesize dishonesty or nescience.
The only variable value is value in exchange, and
this is found to depend upon the desires, rational or
otherwise, of the exchangers. But these estimates
are controlled and governed mainly by the utility
which is embraced in the thing desired, and in the
expenditure of energy in     their production. The
utility and the time through which the requisite
energy is exerted are subjects of exact calculation.
ARTIFICIAL VALUES.
These have no proportion or relation to "values
in service." They depend wholly upon arbitrary
will, ill-adjusted custom, and class legislation. To
*" The law does not compel a seller to disclose all that he knows;
if it did, it would sap the foundation of trade " (Judge Deming, of
Connecticut, in his decision against a buyer who had purchased
goods, under a complete misapprehension, and which the seller
knew but did not correct until after sale). Evidently the judge
was thinking of "trade for profit," not reciprocal exchange.




ARTIFICIAL VALUES.

89

associate these in any way with the division or exchanges of labor products can only result in subverting and destroying the values which labor creates.
The man who is stronger or more cunning than
another may subject that other to his will, and, without the interference of his fellows, may make him a
thing and chattel. The right to command his labor
will then become valuable, and can be exchanged
with others who have the desire to live by slave
labor, as long as such transactions are protected by
law. But this right to labor involves the right to the
control of the person, and potentially to his life.
Now, the impossibility of classing such values with
values of service in exchange needs no showing.
Exclusive ownership of the land, of the forces of
nature, and of opportunity to labor, gives a similar result, and becomes, as John C. Calhoun showed, a mere
question as to whether the opeTatives who produce
wealth shall be bought and sold, and so become
property, or become hirelings and the result of their
labor only become property.
Incomes from the one system are no more in violation of the laws of equity and economy than from
the other. And the values so created are wholly
different from any which involve labor compensation.
It is from these sources that increase without service springs. For the power to absorb increase necessarily involves the control both of the land and of
the labor of a country. The ownership of the laborer
made possible and necessary the control of the land,
and the control of the land compels the acquiescence
of the laborer with any terms offered which prolong existence.




40

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

It is plain that the value of such private right to
exclude labor from the land, and to tax or appropriate the earnings of the social industry, must depend upon the increase it will thus be enabled to
realize. True economic value is that which relates
to the utilities produced by labor, and which yields
satisfaction to desire in appropriation and consumption. Artificial or speculative values refer alone to
the ability of any property or right to derive income
without work. These values have no reference to
the intrinsic character of the thing, or to its ability
to yield satisfaction in consumption; but simply depend upon a calculation of "the present value of a
series of products forever" (Macleod). In other
words, upon the sum which, at interest at current
rates, will yield the specific income derived from
productive labor for time indefinite.
To such values there is no logical explanation but
the rule of unreasoning will, and no limit within the
ability of labor to produce the income. Values of
this description are not mere exaggerations; they are,
as Macleod says, "created out of nothing." They
are not mere "watered stock," but are stock composed
wholly of water. For in this class of values it is not
the principal which begets the interest, but the interest which creates the principal; not the value
which earns the income, but the income which begets
the value. And this income or interest is not the reward of any industry or the outgrowth of anything
which can have relation to manly service or mutual
benefit; but is merely the fruit of a usurped right
to demand from the land and from the labor a large




ARTIFICIAL VALUES.

41

share of their annual production, without any return
whatever.
For all money values placed upon the land are
fictitious, and yet in consequence of the control
which exclusive ownership gives over labor, such
values now quite equal the economic values of the
entire wealth of this country. Our other devices of
debts, shares, bonds, etc., equal again the same
amount; so that dealing in these artificial values constitutes, as Macleod says, "the most colossal commerce
of modern times." Hence labor is paying tribute, not
upon the use of any real wealth, but upon twice its
entire amount of artificial values. How much farther
can this " science of wealth " extend? A breath can
and will unmake this colossal commerce, "as a breath
has made," whenever labor becomes enlightened and
learns to reason, or the public conscience shall require the abrogation of this subtle form of involuntary servitude.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE LAW OF USE.
The single ground on which it is contended that
an equitable exchange can become involved in rent,
interest, or profit, is that "a use " is parted with by
the landlord, usurer, or profit-monger. Now, uses are
impossible to be parted with or to be exchanged with
labor, or with any product of labor, since they cost
no labor, but are the fruits of the operation of natural forces and opportunities upon natural objects.
Even if it were admitted that they could be reciprocally enjoyed, it would still be impossible that one
man should be able to compensate another's labor,
and so be justified in consuming its product by pretense of yielding the use of some material existing
in nature, or of some elemental force. No logical
connection can be shown between my taking the fish
from the fisherman who had taken them from the
sea, and the paying him in the privilege of using the
wind and tide in the furtherance of his pursuit.
The person who uses nature's wealth and nature's
forces enjoys them. The enjoyment he cannot transfer the use of, nor do the duty by proxy. Nor can he
more than supply his personal wants from such
source, without adding to the store of social wealth,
42




THE LAW OF USE.

43

which will benefit all who have dealings in the circle
to which it applies.
He who breathes the air, appropriates the captured oxygen. Who drinks from the spring, moistens his own lips and dilutes his own blood. To
sell or exchange such use is not only unjust, but impossible, and the pretense is too palpable for statement. And the sale of the use of land or of any force
of nature has no better basis. It is rendered possible only by arbitrary laws of ownership, which pervert the power of civil government so as to exclude
the many from the enjoyment of natural privilege,
till tribute is rendered for its exercise to the pretended owner. And it is from this base that monopolized control of all things produced by labor arises.
Exclusive ownership of the land carries with it dominion over labor,.over production and exchange,
and over all human rights and interests whatever.
But may not the holder be protected in the improvements he may make upon his land, and in the
fruits his labor may have effected? Undoubtedly.
Their use belongs to him. But the use of a thing as
generally understood does not embrace the right to
consume it without replacing it. To pay the proper
value of a thing is not paying for a use, for the use
is additional to its ascertained value. If I take a
place of a man valued at $1,000, and at the end of a
year return it to him at an equal valuation, whatever
I pay for use is in addition to what I have contributed
to replace consumed values. This payment for use
is not for anything I have consumed, nor for anything he has produced; but wholly for the privilege
of being in possession for a certain period. The use




44

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

may or may not have been advantageous; but it was
I, not he, who did the use, and to whom it belongs.
If it had been a thousand gold dollars he had
allowed me to keep, and I had placed them in my safe,
returning them at the end of the year, by what
alchemy could I have added sixty dollars to the pile?
If risk or wear had been involved in my use, it would
be proper I should bear whatever expense arose;
and there all equity and social recognition of the
matter ends. Economically the same is true.
The use of natural objects and forces are necessarily social. After the miner has dug the coals
necessary for his own consumption, his personal use
of the mine ends. He can only use it farther for the
social good. If he be allowed, however, to exclude all
others from doing what he has done, he can require
payment for use, or rent, not otherwise. It is the
same with all forms of usance. It is the payment
for the privilege of access to natural productions and
for the use of the forces in nature. Only usurped
dominion of these can beget or maintain a claim to
exchange them for the toilsome productions created
by labor.
This fraudulent claim lies not so much against the
individual who immediately pays the tribute, since
he may often repay himself by a corresponding overcharge, as against the whole of society, who find every
commodity taxed with the exaction and difficulties
interposed in the satisfaction of every desire. Every
avenue of trade and exchange becomes vitiated, and
a desperate struggle arises, in which every sense of
truth and honesty is sacrificed, in order to escape
the payment of this unnatural imposition; it falling




THE LAW OF USE.

45

at last upon the weakest and perhaps most industrious portion of society.
Contributing to the success of this imposition is
also that shortsightedness of the ignorant and improvident, who choose the immediate gratification of
desire, and stupidly sacrifice the more permanent but
distant satisfaction; as the more stupid of animals
consume in the present every choice thing, and leave
the future without provision. It is no part of a true
economic system to encourage or fail to point out the
dangerous and deceptive character of such estimates.
Prohibitory laws, or the utterance of moral platitudes, are uncalled for here. It is merely necessary
to point out the economic bearing of the principle,
and to repeal all legislative sanction to customs so
destructive of social right.
In a truly normal condition of social industry, in a
community of passable intelligence, the desire for
immediate satisfaction would be modified by the
more permanent good attained by abstinence and prolonged effort. The love of accumulation, and desire
to provide for periods unproductive, and for offspring,
would correct the spendthrift and vagrant tendency
begotten of the ungoverned indulgence, which unearned wealth makes possible and popular. The
necessity to conserve decaying productions and depreciating values, would always create demand for
labor depending on more immediate compensation,
so that if the accumulated wealth should be in
greater demand at any particular period, it would be
so increased as to produce excess; and if at times it
would be able to command a premium over the productions of current labor, it would at others be com



46

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

pelled to pay a premium to have its values conserved,.
so that the interest rate would as often become a
minus as a plus ratio.
But the necessity to borrow or hire the use of land,
and to pay tribute for the opportunity to labor, begetting in fact the main necessity to borrow funds or
goods of any kind, precludes the law of use from any
natural play; so that the laborer has always to pay
for their use in addition to paying for their consumption. The mean rate of interest would be zero, by
the very law of supply and demand, were it not for
the exclusion of labor from the land and natural
forces, and for various shrewd class devices in regard
to finance and legal tender made in the interest of
usurers, bankers, etc. No logical application of the
law of supply and demand can be made of the subject without involving this result, since the principle
is based upon the fact that increased demand begets
increased supply. It is only, therefore, through interference with this principle and the free competition under it, that a charge is maintained for use,
and that it comes to have a place in our corrupted
system of exchange.
The advantages of plant, seed, young animals, or
any other form of wealth wherein the ability to grow
and multiply is embraced, where freedom of access
to natural substances and forces, and freedom of exchange prevailed, would be quite equaled by other
and ordinary results of labor; since all would be
free to raise and preserve seed corn, young stock, or
new wine, if that paid better than to sell for actual
consumption. The fact that upon the seed might
depend sometimes the question of plenty or famine,




THE LAW OF USE.             47
would not give a monopoly to the seed raiser, or any
permanent superiority. And the same is true with
regard to the producer of young stock, the maker of
tools, machines, etc. And it would prove equally
true of wealth in every form, whether reserved or
put into the circulations of commerce. Only a monopoly which prevented a free supply could for any
length of time command tribute for the use of land,
money, plant, or commodities.




CHAPTER IX,
MACLEOD'S ELEMENTS OF ECONOMICS, SECOND VOLUME.
Since the matter for the principal chapters was
sent to the printer, the second volume of Macleod's
"Elements of Economics" has made its appearance.
Mainly it but elaborates the positions taken in his
first volume, that all property consists of rights, not
things-rights to material things, rights to one's
labor, and rights to the future profit or production
from any undertaking or estate. And since evidences
of debt can be indefinitely multiplied, and bought
and sold, he makes them not merely a representative
of wealth existing in material form, but a distinct
addition to it.
Now, as the money value of such property depends
wholly upon such "right of action," and property of
all kinds upon some civil right, it becomes quite
plain that "pure economics," as he has defined the
science, gives no insight into any question of social,
political, or civil administration. For he draws no
distinction between legal rights and natural rights;
between the "rule of reason" and blind custom, the
arbitrary will of a human potentate, or the purchasable franchise of a corrupt legislator.
For, although under a tolerable civil system the




MACLEOD'S ELEMENTS OF ECONOMICS.

49

right to one's labor, for instance, would inhere in
one's self, under a more crude or barbaric one such
right would inhere in the master or slave-lord, or
yet in the employer or landlord. Under the "rule
of the market," however, such distinctions have no
significance. Really Macleod bases his science of
wealth upon rights solely, and yet relegates all questions of rights from out the science. He accepts all
rights, exercised by whatever despotic power, as of
the same natural force and validity. What kind of a
scientific quantity the will of an autocrat, or the vote
of a bought legislator, is, he wisely attempts no explanation.
His utter exclusion of all questions of natural
right, of all suggestions of equity or honesty in exchange, emphasize the value of his system in any
attempt to explain social and industrial phenomenaphenomena which can have no existence where good
faith and reciprocity in dealing are wanting. And
yet, limited to the mere question of the cause of the
money value of things or rights in the markets as
they are, and under existing civil inequities, he logically and consistently reasons out several wide departures from the elder school of economists. Notably, he demolishes their " wages fund" theory, showing conclusively that wages of labor are paid from
the production of labor, the selling of the labor being
a simple exchange.
Also, as to the rent theory, he occupies the same
ground as the present writer, and regards Ricardo
as having uniformly inverted cause and effect. The
rent of land he makes the interest merely, or annual
profit on the purchase price, and which under com



50

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

mercial ownership of the land it truly is. The right
of the holder of any land to its "future products forever"-which is not only an artificial right, but
wholly an impious legal fiction, and operative through
arbitrary force alone-he assumes as a scientific fact,
without any attempt to explain or justify it, or effort
to show that there is, or could be in the absence of
arbitrary legality, any future products not the natural wages of the labor effecting them. For there is
nothing in all he has shown or can show which
proves that land has any product beyond what nature
awards to the worker. Such apparent product, interest, or profit is the creature of class law, or
of crooked dealing, as I think I have abundantly
proved.
"A right to future products" of the land, or of any
profit-bearing property, is baldly a right to the results of future industry, and differs in no essential
particular from a right to the person of the laborer.
The "unilateral contract," as he very properly designates it, where "on one side there is simply the
right to collect rent, and on the other simply the
duty to pay rent," has no less potency over the
laborer than where, under chattelism, there is "on
one side simply the right to exact service, and on the
other simply the duty to render service." The
reader will observe that in each case the rights are
all on one side, while the duties are all upon the
other. Exchange under such relations can have no
meaning, as rights are not exchangeable with duties,
and no equation can be made between a plus and a
minus quantity. He is simply consistent with himself in supposing that one's own debts tan be counted




MACLEOD'S- ELEMENTS OF ECONOMICS:

51

to him as wealth; the surprising thing is that anyone professing to teach a science should confound
phenomena occurring under such forced and unnatural conditions with any natural "freedom of contract," or designate such forcible taking upon the
one side, and such forced yielding upon the other,
an exchange at all, to say nothing as to its equity or
justice.
It is not strange that, seeking to impose upon the
world the idea that slave laws, land laws, and class
legislation generally confer natural rights and create
natural duties, from which exchangeable quantities
are produced, he should be able "to offer nothing
hopeful to wage-workers, but admonish them to keep
down their numbers."
Even so questionable a suggestion as this-virtually
to reduce one of the prime factors in production in
order to alleviate want-might possibly have a salutary effect under our inverted system of division were
it not that the tendency of commercial monopoly of
the land is to gradually reduce the self-employing
class to the dependent condition of wage-seekers.
No check, therefore, even if practicable, among the
class who now work for wages could lessen the constant reinforcement of their numbers from those
more independent who are being constantly forced
to that level by the engrossment in few hands of the
material source of all production, the land.




"Nowhere are the intentions of men so often and so utterly
frustrated as in legislation. * * * Laws intended to limit the
power of corporations end with putting bribes into the pockets of
the leaders of the legislators, or of the judges.  *  *  *  Laws
intended to prevent gambling only drive gambling into commerce"
Prof. (R. J. Wright: Principia of Social Science).
" The most dangerous class in any society are those who make
and execute the laws" (Charles O'Conor).
" The system (of natural government) prevailed among the
Indians whose villages dotted the Genesee Valley in my youth.
* * * Yet I never saw an uncivil word or gesture used among
the Senecas toward one another; never heard of their stealing or
taking liberties with each other's goods. * * * The other or
artificial principle is powerfully illustrated in the present government of England, which costs its subjects three times as much,
exclusive of local rates and taxes, as all the agricultural laborers
of England and Wales receive for their labor" (J. H. Hunt:
Honest Man's Book).




CONCLUSION.

REFORMS INDICATED.
Whether the influence of more liberal forms of
government, of improved machinery, and new methods
of trade has been to relatively improve the condition
of labor, is not of essential importance. The question has been ably dicussed pro and con by Mr.
Mallock, affirmatively, and by Messrs. George, Hyndman, and others, negatively. It is unquestioned that
no proportionate advancement has been made in the
condition of labor, corresponding to the material
advancement of the class active in the accumulation
of wealth, and in the absorption of the dominion of
the land.
That general material prosperity would somewhat
improve the condition of labor, even under slavery,
there can be little doubt; but no one could possibly
imagine that it alone would ever result in abolishing slavery. Private dominion of the land could
never become otherwise than the oppressor and
plunderer of labor, however production might be
multiplied and facilitated by the application of
science and invention in the industrial fields; or
whatever changes might be made in matters of trade
or finance. There can be but one direct road to progress, and that is through complete industrial free



54

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

dom. Freedom of the person alone is not sufficient
to effect any substantial change, except in the tendency it has to promote the ultimate freedom of the
environment, on which the labor of the person must
be exerted.
The utter futility of many of the attempts at labor
and financial reform cannot fail to be seen when we
consider that they are at best but temporary expedients to escape the pressure caused by this fundamental wrong; but which they have no power to remove, or more than momentarily to evade.
With such we must class nearly all the efforts of
the "Labor Organizations," which, however necessary
for protection and relief from immediate evil, look
to nothing further than a mitigation, never to a removal, of the causes so clearly pointed out by economic law. Nor can we class as higher in the scale
those schemes at financial tinkering which periodically sway a large class of minds normally progressive.
The question of money, or of credit, for they are
the same, is only of superficial importance, and'
really does not interest the wage worker, being
wholly a question between the debtor and the creditor classes. When the creditor lends his money, he
wants it cheap, or rather plenty, with minimum
purchasing power. When he collects it, he wants it
dear, with maximum purchasing power. The interest of the debtor class is just the reverse of this.
Whether it is credit or commodity money has little
to do with the question, and the only interest the
worker has in the matter is to understand that whoever gains or loses by the change in money from




IREFORMS INDICATED.

55

dear to cheap and cheap to dear as well, the whole
loss falls at last upon him, since in the last analysis
it is he who must produce the means, both to meet
the losses and to pay the interest.
Just now the debtor class, are clamoring for fiat
money, so that they can borrow at one per cent., and
pay debts which are bearing five to ten per cent. interest. This the state, with unlimited power, can do;
but the state is not likely to benefit debtors at the
expense of creditors. Its traditions mainly point in
the opposite direction. But if otherwise inclined,
neither the public nor the laborer would be permanently benefited thereby. Even the debtors as a
class would not. For it would greatly promote. the
temptation to obtain and extend credits, and vastly
increase the amounts required to be borrowed. As
regards the land, subject as now to private monopoly, it would increase its money price fivefold, so
that, to the man who had to purchase on credit, the
amount of the interest would be the same as now.
That is, if he wished to buy a farm which would
yield him $500 annually clear of expense and labor,
he could purchase it for $10,000, when interest was
at five per cent.; but if money was "so cheap" that
he could hire it for one per cent., he would then have
to pay $50,000 for the same farm, and the amount of
the low rate would be the same as of the high rate;
with this disadvantage, that if the rate of interest
should again advance to five per cent., he would be
able then to sell his farm  for only $10,000, which
cost him $50,000, and so could pay only one-fifth of
his debt if it became necessary to sell his farm.
It is only stupidity which prevents the currency




56

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

reformer from  seeing that these fantastic tricks
wrought with money values are mainly due to the
ability of a class, through pliant legislators, to play
"fast and loose" with the instruments of commerce,
so as to effect a sliding fulcrum to the economic
balance; and by which even the "legal tender" may
be made to mean a day or a half day's work, accordingly as a class are to pay it out, or to have it paid
to them. While labor remains unable to employ itself, or.to have its rights in the general production of
the social wealth recognized, metallic, fiat, or commodity money can only modify, not essentially
change, the fundamental injustice; because, however
scarce or plenty the money, he has nothing to obtain
it with.
Money and finance are the very last elements in
the industrial course, and can no more affect the
basic injustice of our system than can the form or
fashion of the hand upon the clock correct a radical
defect in the general movement, or a branch or leaf
upon a tree sustain it when uprooted. No scarcity
or plenty of the circulating medium can emancipate
the slave, or redeem the plundered inheritance of
the people. Any system of production or industry
which involves these wrongs can only work injustice,
and which superficial expedients can only serve to
develop with a greater or a less celerity.
All looking to legislation to establish justice and
equity in our industrial relations is simply the gaze
of imbecility, except in as far as it looks to the repeal of class laws and the reduction of the powers of
the legislators: The truth is that our system is
mainly artificial and unnatural, and.many expedients




SREFORMS INDICATED.

57

that under more normal conditions might have a
salutary effect can now only work iniquitous results.
To show how completely capitalism has perverted
the natural procession of the industrial laws, I herewith compare the natural and the inverted orders,
that at a glance we may see the folly of attempting
to reform matters of substance by mere resorts of

expediency.
NATURAL ORDER.
1
Productive Agents:
(a) The Human Energies.
(b) The Land and the Forces.
of Nature.
2.
Results:
Private and Social Wealth.
3.
Natural Awards:
(a) To Labor: Uses.
(b) To the Land: Return of
the elements of fertility.
4.
Apportionment in Severalty:
By Ratio of Service (to infants
and disabled by ratio of need).
5.
Reciprocal Exchange:
Transfer of equivalents in service.
6.
Finance:
Money, by general consent; an
instrument to measure and balance exchanges.

INVERTED ORDER.
1.
Finance:
Money: Legal Tender determining price and the material in
which debts may be paid.
2.
Trade Exchange:
Transfers of non-equivalents;
of privilege for service.
3.
Unequal Apportionment:
By Ratio of privilege; inversely as to useful service.
4.
Capitalistic Awards:
(a) Uses, to privilege and to
labor.
(b) Elements, to privilege and
to the Land.
5.
Result:
Private Property and exclusive Rights.
6.
Prodisctive Agents:
(a) Dependence and enslavement of labor.
(b) Dominion of the Land by
the few.




58

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

By comparing the above it will be seen that not
only the general order is inverted, but that each step
is regularly inverted from the natural order. The
later economists, it is true, make the "Science of Exchange" the substance of economy; but then they
define "Wealth" to be "anything whatever whose
value can be measured in Money;" thus making
money the ruling factor, determining all values and
dominating every transaction. By the aid of the law
only has it this power; and by its control of indebtedness, and the confining of payment to a particular
tender, it determines all dealings and governs all
exchanges. From being the servant of commerce, it
has become its master. From being an instrument,
law has made it a king. To unmake the law will
not unmake the money, but simply abrogate its
kingly prerogative.
It may be claimed with truth that since money is
last and at the top of our inverted system, it should
therefore claim our first attention. I do not object
to this, but to the absurdity of directing the whole
force of thought to it to the exclusion of the more
important matters of exchange and ownership; particularly to invoking legislation--instead of asking it
to undo what it has blunderingly or corruptly donein further experiments, and in a field, too, where
there is so much conjecture, and where so much depends on controlling to honest purposes a system of
law-making which long ago parted with all honesty
or decency. Not that politicians are in themselves
worse than other men, but that they have become
subjected to the "law of the market," and so reduced
to "purchasable commodities."




REFORMS INDICATED.

59

For reasons not always sound or cogent, the older
labor organizations have generally eschewed political
action. The result has been that their strength has
been dissipated, by being quite evenly divided between the two prominent political parties, and so
simply neutralized, by having the one half voted
against the other half. Other combinations to be
sold or traded by designing leaders to the one or to
the other party, have served also to strengthen rather
than change the general purpose to keep out of
politics.
But their methods are too exclusive, arbitrary, and
despotic to secure the sympathy of refined and progressive minds. The strike, the attempt to exclude
other than union men from work, the boycott, and
denial of freedom to contract, are essentially monopolistic, and can only be justified on the ground of
self-defense against the grosser monopoly, and more
powerful combinations, of employers.
Within a few years an order has been established
which seemed at first to promise great good, as an
institution to educate labor into a knowledge of fundamental economical science. It had many dangers
to encounter; a chief one of which should have been
sufficiently indicated by the experience of the "Order
of Unit.ed Americans," whose brilliant and evanescent
history is within the memory of many now living, and
which fully illustrates the difficulty of changing an
educational to an adminstrative function and the
utter idiocy of essaying salutary reforms through
political dicker. It is to be feared that a too rapid
growth has developed a similar weakness in the later
order; but it may not be yet beyond the control of




60

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

the original impulse which inaugurated it, and which
proposed no less a task than the instruction of both
the worker and the director of labor as well, to the
mutual advantage of all those who seek the satisfaction of personal wants through honest purpose and
useful service, in the laws of industrial economy and
equitable exchange.
If the diversion from these purposes, through
political intrigue, agitation, and excitement, is to be
deplored, far more is the insane thought that the
interests of labor and social justice can be promoted
by violence and bloodshed. Supposing such attempt
possible of success, is the boycotter more capable of
doing justice than the boycotted? Is the exclusive
rule of a union any less arbitrary and despotic than
the capitalist corporation? If Bourbon king is dethroned and beheaded by a successful revolution,
who shall save us from the misrule of a Danton or
Marat? Who will forecast the chances through
which a Washington or even a Cromwell may be
evolved from a carnival of blood?
But no success is possible. The proletariat, who
are now voted at the polls by political leaders, will
be led to any civil conflict which may arise as policemen, soldiers, or militia, hnd as the minions of capital and privilege. Laborers suffering enforced idleness will gladly enlist for a monthly stipend to guard
accumulated wealth. It is folly to suppose that those
who cannot vote, or refrain voting, from conviction,
can be brought to shoot, or to refuse to shoot, through
any sense of right, or "eternal justice."
And yet it will not be well for those who rely for
the perpetuation of wrongful privilege upon the cus



REFORMS INDICATED.

61

tomary motives which sway mankind, to presume too
far upon this security. Insanity proceeds under law,
as well as sanity. It is begotten of unnatural and
forced conditions, and although it may affect but a
few, it will affect them all the more deeply. And
similar excesses on the part of the dominant power,
and the purposed forcing of labor strikes and enwuftes,
may develop erratic champions of labor, like John
Brown, with sufficient method in their madness to fire
the hearts imbruted by despair and greatly damage
property and life, if they do nothing effective toward
the emancipation of labor.
England is learning, though late, that repression
and coercion do not remedy, but increase, disorders.
Surely it must be possible that the intelligence and
good judgment of our managers of affairs, our directors of labor, and our workingmen of thought, will,
without many more fatal blunders, discover that true
progress, order, and material prosperity depend
upon the general liberty to labor, clear conceptions
of economic law, and the honest purpose to establish
equity and justice in all relations involving human
industry.
What is to be apprehended, and, if possible,
avoided, is the diversion of the minds of the workers
themselves. They are liable to be drawn into superficial movements for the adoption of specious remedies for minor evils, and so be made the dupes of
political aspirants. Political power is sought mainly
for personal or class aims, seldom from a desire to
promote the public good. Its attainment is at the
expense of industry, and it is idle to suppose that it
will be wielded in the interest of labor. In any




62

ECONOMIC EQUITIES.

question as between the worker and the holder of
privilege, it is certain to throw itself into the scale
with the latter, for it is itself the source of privilege,
the creator of class rule. Accumulated in whatever
hands, whether politician, capitalist, or ex-workingman, it is certain to be employed to increase itself at
the expense of society.
Control of others has a single motive-that of
gain in goods or fame. Slavery has a single purpose-that of obtaining the result for which another
works. Exclusive land-holding has a single aimthat of reaping its fruits through the compulsory
toil of others. The economic underlies, then, the
civil and political impulse to govern and legislate
for mankind. For, however great his desire or ambition, the aspiring potenate of any grade or kind
could not greatly endanger the liberties or happiness of a people if he could not command their service or gather the products of their labor without
returning an equivalent service or product.
Power once conceded to a czar, king and parliament, president and congress, governor and legislature, or any coercive rule, opens the Pandora's box
of all wrongs and despotisms. For, although occasionally rulers are animated' by a sense of justice
and a regard for the general good, few can resist the
ever-present temptation to use power to promote
personal uses, and still fewer can deny the constant
importunities of greedy and unscrupulous hangerson, who see in the possession of power only a means
for the obtaining of unearned wages, and the appropriating of the wealth produced by unpaid toil.
If the intelligent wealth-producer has a well



REFORMS INDICATED.              63
defined desire to have the condition of the laborer
improved, he will direct his thought and that of his
fellows to the economic rather than to the political
aspect of affairs, even if he do not refuse all participation in politics until the "land and labor
question" has been exhaustively canvassed in its relation to economic values and equities, and until all
power to create artificial values, enforce rent, interest, or inequitable contract of any kind, has been
withdrawn from the legislature and eliminated from
the functions of government altogether.




SOCIAL - WEALTH:
The Sole Factors and
Exact Ratios in its Acquirement and Apportionment.
In proceeding toward any given point, there is always one line which is
shortest-THE STRAIGHT; so, in the conduct of human affairs, there is always
one course which is best-THE JUST.
BY   J. K. INCALLS.
12mo, 820pp., large type, good paper, silk cloth, $1.
CONTENTS.-Economic Schools-A Brief Review of their Origin and Growth;
Rise and Growth of Capitalism; Unearned Increase-Profit, Interest, Rent; Conservation of Wealth; TIools and Improved Mlachinery; The Nature of Wages; Private and Social Wealth; Land Ownership; Private Property in Land; Capital and
the Productive Factors; Partnership and Co-operation; Law of Contracts; Money
and Credit; Of Value, or Economic Ratios; Taxation as a Remedy; Reforms,
not Remedies; Suggestions to Legislators; Summary of Definitions-Economic
and Isonomic.
EXTRACT.-From conquests with bludgeons, swords, and spears, as in the
earlier ages, civilism has inaugurated a war of cunning and fraud, whose
weapons are technical terms, shrewd devices, class legislation, and forms of
law recognizing no rights as supreme but those of property and the law of the
market.
EXTRACT.-To get something for nothing becomes a habit and a cultus, which,
as a man grows in years, he tries to reduce to an art. If, by shrewd device or
subtle pretense, he can wholly escape work, and saddle the expense of life upon
others, he learns that, under the teachings of our exact economy and reformed
theology, he will be entiled to social distinction and respect and to have his
position defended by learned professor and titled dignitary, both secular and
religious.
Shows throughout a complete mastery of the subject.-Sociologist.
Very radical in his views. Written with force and evident thought.-Kansas
City Times.
A work of inestimable value in the new field of thought, and very clearly
written.- Worla.
A critical review of the various systems of property and labor in vogue for
many ages.-Altruist.
A study in political economy, and evinces wide erudition and deep thought.Yates Co. (N. Y.) Chronicle.
All who can should read it, particularly the very wealthy, who are in the
greatest danger.-The Liberal.
The author evinces a mind free from bias, canvassing the subjects treated
with vigor and clearness.-Truth Seeker (N. Y.).
The result of profound investigation, careful reading, and deep thought. Embodies the most advanced ideas of economics.-Washington Post.
Every workingman should read it, and every thinking man may obtain enlightenment and food for thought from it.-Easton Labor Journal.
Takes radical ground and contains matter that not only a'dvanced thinkers,
but the public generally, may well consider with care.-Day Star (N. Y.).
The argument is directed toward points of investigation which often escape
the economist, but which, when settled, serve to make the rest clear.-John
Swinton's Paper.
Intelligence-an exact and systematized knowledge of the great governing
laws of life-he considers to be the only solvent of the great problems of the age.
-Banner of Light.
One of the best publications on this subject. Able, thorough, and logical.
Many of the chapters are remarkable for their depth of thought, and are worth
three times the price of the book.-Sunaay Gazetteer.
BWThe highest praise any book on this subject could receive has been accorded this work, the policy of silence in regard to it having been pursued by
nearly all of the capitalistic press.-3
Social Science Publishing Co., 28 Lafayette Place, New York.










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STIONAL COMMUNISM,
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE REPUBLIC OF
NORTH AMERICA.
BY A CAPITALIST.
498pp., large type, People's ed., pap., 50c.; fine paper, silk cloth, $1.
rENTs.-The titles of some of the chapters are: Present External Appearf Our Republic; Government and Laws; Finance; Public Improvements;
ction and Distribution; Education; Morality and Religion; Marriage and
e*e Life in the New Republic; Life in the Existing Republic; Examination
Objections to Communism; Methods Proposed for the Transition from the
a of Individual Property to a System of Collective Property; Danger.
dvocates Associate Life as a Remedy for Poverty, Vice, and Crime. It
with the present conditions of society in this country, pointing out their
rections, and showing how it is almost impossible that the people should
er than poor and vicious under our present system. The remedy, the
r thinks, is in communal life, and he has drawn a vivid picture of the
Republic of North America, as it will be when society shall be organized
principles of Rational Communism.
Future Republic has no custom-houses or bonded warehouses; no banking
a and brokers' offices, Wall street being literally wiped out; no respectable
ing houses, such as stock and produce exchanges andboards of trade; no
ealth, and fire insurance companies; no court buildings nor prisons, with
rs, judges, juries, sheriffs, clerks, and other hangers-on; no grog-shops.
work of a master mind.--Winstea Press.
b admirably adapted to the times.-Stephen Pearl Anarews.
book for the solution of all the labor problems.--W. E. Scott.
)rk of high merit, and will stimulate thought.-John Swinton's Paper.
Lnk you a thousand times for your brave, true words.-Letter to the Author.
vs how rational Communism will bring about the ideal state.-Kansas
inmes..ses the barbarism of civilized society, and points out methods of escape
t.-Prof. Wf: S. Bell.
ngly written. The author undoubtedly proves himself a complete master
theme.--Sunaapy Gazetteer.
author is not a dreamer, but a man of action, who has won success in the
of life.-Truth Seeker (N. Y.).
actical picture worked out by a practical man, who is to be congratulated
als success.-T. B. Wakeman.
author draws some startling contrasts between the actual and the possible
)f society.- Washington Post.
millennium is described as brought about by the abolition of the system
ividual property.-N. Y. Herald.
writer has a keen eye for practical evils, and a practical way for remedyem.-London (Eng.) Truth Seeker.
reader is not only interested, but is held by a fascination. It is written
interests of the people.-NIocontformist.
3hes and stirs the moral sentiments of man by pointing to a heaven on
which is some day to dawn.-Prof.. S. B.etl.
t readable book yet issued on the questions it discusses. We have read
word with increasing interest from first to last.-New Thought.
picture of the evils of the competitive system, it is certainly a success.
ýsting and useful, and should meet with a large sale.-Sociologist.
author is evidently a man of superior intellectual strength-one who has
I active experience in the " struggle for existence."----Idependent Pulpit.
I written, and the portrayals of strife and poverty are drawn with graphic
y to truth. He does not propose bloodshed, but peace; not a sword, but
t c fort, to accomplish his designs.-Day Star.
TI  caitalistic press have almost uniformly ignored the existence of
-w No higher praise could be given any work on this subject.a.&
al Selence Pub. Co., 28 Lafayette PI., New                 York.
i-~