Evolution of the Wages System. 225 



ness, it is the source of slavery, and the background of all 

 despotism. I repeat, it is not the fact that the laborer's in- 

 come is stipulated that limits his freedom, but the fact 

 that it is small. The difference between the Pennsylvania 

 miner and the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad is 

 not in the form, but in the size of their incomes. A stipu- 

 lated dollar gives more freedom than a stipulated cent. Let 

 it never be forgotten, then, that it is the quantity and not 

 the form of wealth that gives freedom. 



Can the amount of wealth the laborer receives be in- 

 creased under the stipulated-income wages system ? I 

 answer yes, emphatically yes ! The evidence of history is 

 conclusive upon this point. When the statute of laborers 

 was enacted (1350), wages in England were three pence 

 (six cents) a day, or about the same as they were and still 

 are in Asia. Since that time they have risen many hundred 

 per cent., and all under the wages system. And what is 

 more, the rise in wages has increased as the wages system 

 has become more general and permanent. Indeed, all the 

 advantages of modern civilization, the discovery of the art 

 of printing, the use of steam and electricity, the develop- 

 ment of the factory system, the right of religious freedom, 

 representative government, the development of the arts 

 and sciences which enable the common laborer to obtain 

 comforts, luxuries and freedom formerly unknown even to 

 the wealthy, have come under the wages system. 



Nor is this progress in spite of the wages system, as 

 some would have us believe. On the contrary it is largely 

 due to it. The growth of material prosperity and intel- 

 ligence among the masses was an indispensable condition to 

 this development. The art of printing has finally given us 

 our cheap books and the daily press, which would have been 

 impossible without the growth of intelligence among the 

 common people which enabled them to both purchase and to 

 appreciate literature. Nor would the mechanical inventions 

 of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the de- 

 velopment of the modern factory and railroad have been 

 possible but for the increasing consumption of the products 

 by the masses. 



The wages system promoted this progress in many ways. 

 In the first place, the stipulation of incomes tends to 

 increase their permanence, and the certainty of getting a 

 living. In proportion as the income of any class becomes 



