230 Evolution of the Wages Si/stem. 



the concentration of capital that the larger the concern, the 

 smaller is the margin of profit, the greater is the risk of 

 loss J and expertness of management is more necessary to 

 success. Indeed, with the small margin of profits and 

 close competition between large concerns to-day, slight 

 mistakes may involve the loss of thousands of dollars. So 

 true is this that in all well-established industries the con- 

 stant employment of capital is now practically indispensable 

 to success. For example, in the manufacture of cotton 

 cloth to-day an eighth of a cent a yard will make the dif- 

 ference between success and failure. The loss involved in 

 the short stoppage of a large factory will soon be more 

 than equal to the profit of a year's business. Whatever 

 increases permanence in the use of capital necessarily in- 

 creases the constancy of employment. Thus, as the wages 

 system and factory methods develop, the capitalist has to 

 pay the penalty through loss or bankruptcy for enforced 

 idleness ; and hence permanent employment becomes one of 

 the features of the industrial expertness of capitalistic 

 management. Under the individual or self-employing 

 regime this was not the case. When the hand-weaver failed 

 to sell his cloth or make a living he could starve, beg, go 

 to jail or die, as the case might be. His poverty involved 

 nobody else, while under the wages system the great ca})- 

 italist, nay, the whole community, is involved with the en- 

 forced idleness of the laborer. This is inevitable, because 

 of the dependence of the employing class upon the con- 

 sumption of the laborers, which the colossalizing of pro- 

 ductive methods has made necessary. Thus, the inherent 

 tendency of the wages system is to increase the permanence 

 of employment and diminish enforced idleness. 



Accordingly, the world over, we find that permanence of 

 employment increases and enforced idleness diminishes 

 where the wages system is most developed and capital most 

 concentrated. If you have any doubts upon this point, 

 watch the currents of emigration. People always leave 

 those localjjiies and countries where employment is the most 

 precarious and least remunerative, and move towards those 

 where it is most permanent and best rewarded. Hence we 

 see that emigration everywhere tends from those countries 

 where the wages system and factory methods are least 

 developed, to those where they are most highly developed. 



