That it should be necessary, at this time of day, to set forth such elementary truths as these may
well seem strange; but no one who consults that interesting museum of political delusions, "Progress and Poverty," some of the treasures of which I have already brought to light, will doubt the fact, if he bestows proper attention upon the first book of that widely-read work. At page 15 it is thus written:
"The proposition I shall endeavour to prove is: that wages, instead of being drawn from capital, are, in reality, drawn from the product of the labour for which they are paid."
Again at page 18:—
"In every case in which labour is exchanged for commodities, production really precedes enjoyment . . . wages are the earnings—that is to say, the makings—of labour—not the advances of capital."
And the proposition which the author endeavours to disprove is the hitherto generally accepted doctrine
..."that labour is maintained and paid out of existing capital,
before the product which constitutes the ultimate object is
secured" (p. 16).
The doctrine respecting the relation of capital and wages, which is thus opposed in "Progress and Poverty," is that illustrated in the foregoing pages; the truth of which, I conceive, must be plain to any one who has apprehended the very simple arguments by which I have endeavoured to