Evolution of the Wages System. 219 



product, but that which is actually and consciously given 

 in exchange for the service per se. Therefore, for the 

 same reason that there can be no price without exchange 

 or sale, there can be no wages unless labor as such is bought 

 and sold. It will be observed that this definition of wages 

 includes the incomes not only of laborers who work by the 

 day, by the week, or by the month, but the income of all 

 without regard to sex or social status who sell their ser- 

 vice as service. Wages include all stipulated incomes, 

 whether great or small, which are received in direct pay- 

 ment for personal service. 



The distinctive feature therefore of the wages system is 

 that it distributes wealth in the form of fixed or previously 

 stipulated payments. It differs from the individual self- 

 employing system in two ways. (1) Because the man who 

 works for himself sells only the product of his labor, while 

 he who works for wages sells only his labor or service. (2) 

 Because the amount the self-employed laborer receives is 

 determined by the quantity he produces, while that of the 

 wage-receiver depends entirely upon what another will 

 consent in advance to give for his labor. It may be said 

 that the slave-system was a stipulated-income system for 

 the laborer. Indeed, one of the most prominent objections 

 urged against- the wages system is that it is a species of 

 slavery. It is held that the slave worked for the master 

 and so does the wage-laborer ; the slave received what the 

 master gave him and so does the wage-laborer. The slave 

 did not own the product of his labor, neither does the wage 

 laborer. 



Since the wages system is the outgrowth of slavery, it 

 naturally possesses some of the same characteristics ; but 

 it has also some radically different features, and it is these 

 different features that distinguish it from slavery. It is 

 true that under both systems the laborer receives his 

 income from the employer ; that under both systems the 

 product belongs to the employer and not to the laborer. 

 But here the similarity ceases and a new element enters 

 the industrial relations. Under the slave system the 

 laborer was a commodity, while under the wages system it is 

 only his service that is bought and sold. Thus, under the 

 wages system, instead of buying and selling laborers as 

 under slavery, the employer buys service and sells prod- 

 ucts. By this change the price was transferred from the 



