224 Evolution of the Wages System. 



social freedom ; that it originated in tlie social and indus- 

 trial centers which developed character ; that it was born 

 of the very struggles for individual rights, and that the 

 history of the wages system is the history of all the 

 industrial, social, political and religious freedom modern 

 civilization affords. 



THK kp:lation of thk wages system to material 



IMPKOVEMENT, SOCIAL FREEDOM, AND A 

 PROGRESSIVE CIVILIZATION. 



Although it is generally admitted that the wages system 

 is superior to the slave system which preceded it, those 

 who regard its abolition as necessary to progress insist that, 

 instead of being fundamentally different from slavery, it 

 is but a modified form of it, and therefore the final aboli- 

 tion of slavery and the establishment of industrial and 

 social freedom involves the abolition of the wages system. 

 Those who take this view, and they are very numerous, lay 

 great stress upon the fact that, under tlie present system, 

 the laborer is an employee. To them the very stipulation 

 of income means limitation of freedom. Of all the ob- 

 jections urged against the wages system this is probably 

 the most universal, and is regarded as the most funda- 

 mental. They think the only conditions under which 

 social freedom is possible is where the laborers employ 

 themselves. This idea underlies all the impractical schemes 

 ever attempted for introducing the social millennium. The 

 scheme of early communism, the socialism (New Christian- 

 ity) of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen, the Christian 

 socialism of Maurice and Kiugsley, the scientific socialism 

 of Rodbertus and Karl Marx, the land nationalization of 

 Henry George, and the military socialism of Bellamy, are 

 all practically based upon this assumption. 



The fallacy in this position arises from a misconception 

 of the idea of freedom. Freedom is not a mere theoretic 

 form, but a sturdy fact. It does not consist in the formal 

 l)erinission, but in the actual power, to go or to do. 

 Nothing can give social and political ffeedom but wealth ; 

 the freedom that wealth affords does not depend upon 

 whether the laborer works for himself or for another, but 

 it depends entirely ujwn how much wealth he receives. 

 There is no power in Nature, Society, or Government that 

 can make a poor man free. Poverty is the essence of weak- 



