EVOLUTION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM.* 



This is essentially the era for testing systems. The 

 time was, and not long since, when the laboring classes, 

 and even the more intelligent advocates of industrial re- 

 form, regarded the capitalist as responsible for all indus- 

 trial disadvantages to which they were subjected ; whether 

 it was a reduction of wages, the refusal to grant an 

 increase of wages, or whatsoever, the individual employer 

 or employers in general were held responsible. We have 

 now reached the stage however where that mode of discus- 

 sion is largely dispensed with. Among the more intelligent 

 laborers, the subject is no longer discussed on purely per- 

 sonal grounds, but is considered from the standpoint of the 

 constitutional tendency of existing economic and social 

 institutions. In a word, the discussion of the industrial 

 question has been transferred from the sphere of individual 

 responsibility to that of economic and social law. 



This is a great advance towards a scientific consideration 

 of the subject. It compels the laborer to look beyond the 

 employer for the cause of the industrial hardships he 

 encounters. Accordingly, to-day, all shades of social re- 

 formers, though they differ upon everything else, practically 

 agree that tlie evils of society are due to the inherent 

 nature of our industrial system as a system. The tyran- 

 nous exactions of the ''heartless employer," the fraud of 

 the " unscrupulous trader " and the vicious practices of the 

 speculator are all pointed to as the necessary results of 

 the present industrial organization of society the wages 

 system. It is held, and this view seems to be increasing, 

 that the system of wages is a system of bondage, that the 

 existence of wage-receivers implies the existence of capital- 

 istic masters, that it is a system which enables the rich 

 to grow richer by increasing the poverty of the poor. In 

 short, that it is essentially a system of industrial servitude 



* COPYKIGHT, 1890, by James H. West. 



