[177-8] In Switzerland, the trades-unions have shown themselves very powerful against the employers of tradesmen, but rather powerless against manufacturing employers, and thus materially increased the already existing inferiority of the former. (Böhmert, II, 401.) They may, however, by further successful development, constitute the basis of a new smaller middle class, similar to the tradesmen's[TN 17] guilds at the end of the middle ages; and indeed by a new exclusiveness, in a downward direction. This would be a bulwark against the destructive inroads of socialism similar to that which the freed peasantry in France were and still are. While this is also Brentano's view, R. Meyer, Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes, 1874, I, 254 ff., calls the trades-unions a practical preparation for socialism to which the English "morally went over" in 1869 (I, 751); which indeed loses much of the appearance of truth from the fact that Marx (Brentano, Arbeitergilden, II, 332) and the disciples of Lassalle (Meyer, I, 312) hold the trades-unions in contempt. John Stuart Mill approves of all trades-unions that seek to effect the better remuneration of labor, and opposes all which would bring the wages paid for good work and bad work to the same level. (Principles, II, ch. 14, 6; V, ch. 10, 5.) Compare Tooke, History of Prices, VI, 176. Reports of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Organization and Rules of Trades-Unions, 1857.
WAGES-POLICY.—MINIMUM OF WAGES.
The demand[178-1] so frequently heard recently, that the state should guaranty an "equitable" minimum of wages, could be granted where the natural rate of wages has fallen below that minimum, only on condition that some of the working class in the distribution of the wages capital (no longer sufficient in all the less profitable branches of business) should go away entirely empty handed. Hence, as a rule, in addition to that wages-guaranty, the guaranty of the right to labor is also required. But as useful labor always finds purchasers (the word "useful" being here employed in the sense of the entire economy of a people, and understood in the light of the proper gradation of wants and the means of satisfying them), such a right to labor means no more and no less than that the state should force labor which no one can use, upon others.[178-2] Something similar is true of Louis Blanc's proposition that the rate of wages of the workmen should be determined and regulated by their own votes and among themselves.[178-3]
All such measures are injurious in proportion as they, by extending aid and the amount of the minimum, go beyond the limits of benevolence, and approach those of a community of goods. (§ 81 ff.) However, if they would be lasting and not pull workmen rapidly down to the very depths of universal and irremediable misery, these measures should be accompanied by the bestowal of power on the guarantor to hold the further increase of the human family within bounds.[178-4]
The condition of workmen can be continued good or materially improved only on condition that their numbers increase less rapidly than the capital destined for wages. The latter increases usually and most surely by savings. But only the middle classes are really saving. In England, for instance, the national capital increases every year by at least £50,000,000, while the working classes spend at least £60,000,000 in tobacco and spirituous liquors, i. e., in numberless instances, only for a momentary injurious enjoyment by the adult males of the class, one in which their families have almost no share. According to this, every compulsory rise in wages would be a taking away from the saving class and a giving to a class that effect no savings. Is not this to act after the manner of the savages who cut down a fruit tree in order more conveniently to relish its fruit?[178-5]
Benjamin Franklin calls out to workmen and says: If any one tells you that you can become rich in any other way than through industry and frugality, do not listen to him; he is a poisoner! And, in fact, only those changes permanently improve the condition of the working classes which are useful to the whole people: enhanced productiveness of every branch of business in the country, increased capital, the growth (also relative) of the industrial middle classes, the greater education, strength of character, skill and fidelity in labor of workmen themselves. Much especially depends upon their foresight and self-control as regards bringing children into the world. Without this latter virtue even the favorable circumstances would be soon trifled away.[178-6] ]
[178-1] Compare, besides, the Prussian A. L. R., II, 19, 2. In Turgot, droit du travail, and droit au travail are still confounded one with the other. Œuvres éd. Daire, II, 302 ff; especially 306. In such questions, people generally think only of factory hands. But have not writers just as good a droit au travail to readers whom the state should provide them with, lawyers to clients and doctors to patients?
[178-2] L. Faucher calls the droit au travail worse than the equal and compulsory distribution of all goods, because it lays hands on not only present products but even on the productive forces. It supposes that unlimited production is possible; that the state may regulate the market at pleasure to serve its purposes; that, in fact, the state can give without having first taken what it gave. (Mélanges d'Economie politique, II, 148 ff.) The French national assembly rejected the "right to labor" on the 15th of September, 1848, by 596 ayes to 187 nays, after the provisional government had proclaimed it, February 25. Le Droit au Travail à l'Assemblée nationale avec des Observations de Faucher, Wolowski, Bastiat etc., by J. Garnier, Paris, 1848.
[178-3] L. Blanc, De L'Organization du Travail, 1849.