Evolution of the Wages System. 227 



his little patch of land, and puts him into the factory. 

 When it does this, it relegates him into a large specialized 

 class, in doing which it makes him an inseparable part 

 of a larger human aggregate. His interests are no longer 

 isolated; his success is bound up with that of his fellows, 

 and all the socializing influences of close intercourse and 

 common interest at once set in. He then sees that he can- 

 not fly away and leave his class, and therefore directs his 

 efforts towards lifting that class. This is a fact which 

 many of our leading writers and statesmen have not yet 

 fully recognized. 



It is a common thing to see the editors of the daily press 

 advising the workingmen to save their pennies and become 

 capitalists, to leave their class and become employers. 

 Such advice is very much like telling every boy that he 

 can be president of the United States, a thing that never 

 was possible, and is becoming more and more impossible as 

 the population increases. So the advice to the laborer to 

 leave his class becomes more impracticable as civilization 

 advances. 



The tendency of industrial progress is constantly to- 

 wards a relatively smaller number of employers, and more 

 and more towards a stipulated income in the form of sala- 

 ries and wages. The laborer feels this if he does not see it, 

 and instead of trying to take wings and fly from his class, 

 he endeavors to organize it. He sees that with the divis- 

 ion and concentration of labor and stipulated incomes, the 

 amount of wages, the number of hours' labor a day, the 

 sanitary and other conditions under which he works, are not 

 fixed separately for each laborer, but that they are regulated 

 on a large scale for all. Consequently, in order to improve 

 his own condition, whether by raising his wages, reducing 

 his hours of labor, increasing the educational advantages 

 for his children, or whatsoever, he is forced to demand the 

 benefit for his class, as the only way of getting it for him- 

 self. This fact has brought the labor organizations into 

 existence, which have done so much to raise the wages and 

 improve the social and political status of the laboring 

 classes during the present century. 



There is nothing so saving to the human race, nothing 

 that so surely promotes the advancement of civilization, 

 as that which makes it necessary for millions to rise to- 



