THE COMING SLAVERY. 725 



" make- wages " is between the kinds of satisfactions obtained ; and 

 this difference does not in the least affect the nature of the arrange- 

 ment. 



Moreover, the two are pervaded by substantially the same illusion. 

 In the one case, as in the other, what looks like a gratis benefit is not 

 a gratis benefit. The amount which, under the old poor-law, the half- 

 pauperized laborer received from the parish to eke out his weekly in- 

 come was not really, as it appeared, a bonus, for it was accompanied 

 by a substantially equivalent decrease of his wages, as was quickly 

 proved when the system was abolished and the wages rose. Just so 

 is it with these seeming boons received by working-people in towns. 

 I do not refer only to the fact that they unawares pay in part through 

 the raised rents of their dwellings (when they are not actual rate- 

 payers) ; but I refer to the fact that the wages received by them are, 

 like the wages of the farm-laborer, diminished by these public burdens 

 falling on employers. Read the accounts coming of late from Lan- 

 cashire concerning the cotton-strike, containing proofs, given by arti- 

 sans themselves, that the margin of profit is so narrow that the less 

 skillful manufacturers, as well as those with deficient capital, fail, and 

 that the companies of co-operators who compete with them can rarely 

 hold their own ; and then consider what is the implication respecting 

 wages. Among the costs of production have to be reckoned taxes, 

 general and local. If, as in our large towns, the local rates now amount 

 to one third of the rental or more — if the employer has to pay this, 

 not on his private dwelling only, but on his business-premises, facto- 

 ries, warehouses, or the like, it results that the interest on his capital 

 must be diminished by that amount, or the amount must be taken 

 from the wages-fund, or partly one and partly the other. And if 

 competition among capitalists in the same business and in other busi- 

 nesses has the effect of so keeping down interests that, while some 

 gain, others lose, and not a few are ruined — if capital, not getting 

 adequate interest, flows elsewhere and leaves labor unemployed — then 

 it is manifest that the choice for the artisan under such conditions lies 

 between diminished amount of work or diminished rate of payment 

 for it. Moreover, for kindred reasons these local burdens raise the 

 costs of the things he consumes. The charges made by distributors, 

 too, are, on the average, determined by the current rates of interest 

 on capital used in distributing businesses ; and the extra costs of carry- 

 ing on such businesses have to be paid for by extra prices. So that 

 as in the past the rural worker lost in one way what he gained in an- 

 other, so in the present does the urban worker ; there being, too, in 

 both cases, the loss entailed on him by the cost of administration and 

 the waste accompanying it. 



" But what has all this to do with * the coming slavery ' ? " will per- 

 haps be asked. Nothing directly, but a good deal indirectly, as we 

 shall see after yet another preliminary section. 



