ON SLIDING SCALES AND ECONOMIC THEORY. 531 



the extreme point of the maximtiin limit might be parted, as Roscher 

 has shown, from the extreme point of the minimum, and the causes which 

 might contribute to bring wages further away from the one extreme and 

 nearer the other. He identified, in short, the maximum and the mini- 

 mum ; and this is not misleading when we consider only the question of 

 ' natural,' or, as we should now call them, ' normal ' wages. But it is 

 misleading to give so rigid a character as a rapid perusal of Ricardo 

 might easily suggest to this identified maximum and minimum ; and, 

 with the exception of some brief passages, he did not examine at all into 

 the causes affecting what we may term ' market wages.' 



A later and more comprehensive analysis — assisted in its turn by the 

 altered and altering circumstances of the times — has endeavoured to 

 supply these deficiencies. It has shown how the maximum may be ex- 

 tended as civilisation advances, as invention and knowledge progress, as 

 distribution itself reacts on production by increasing the efficiency of 

 labour, and generally aiding in the augmentation of wealth. It has 

 replaced the suggested rigidity of the Ricardian conceptions by elasticity ; 

 and it has also investigated the causes of market wages as distinct from, 

 and yet connected with, normal or natural wages. It has shown how the 

 strength the workmen have gained by the aid of public sympathy and of 

 legal enactment has affected both the market and the normal wages, and 

 has elevated alike what we have called the competitive minimum and the 

 competitive maximum limit. And it has also shown — and this is, per- 

 haps, the most important point for us — how the power of combination 

 has enabled them to raise wages in the market at any particular time 

 from the extreme of the minimum towards the extreme of the maximum. 

 They have become strong sellers, and they have secured the advantage 

 which will always. accrue to strong sellers in a market. They have not 

 emancipated themselves from the influence of competition ; but they have 

 retarded and modified its action. 



In time, no doubt, the influence of competition would effect — as 

 Ricardo, confining his examination almost exclusively to normal wages, 

 held that it did — an identification between the competitive maximum and 

 the competitive minimum limit. But the reflex action of the market 

 wages might cause this identification to be made at a higher or a lower 

 point in the area covered by these two elastic expressions. It might 

 raise the old minimum nearer to a new maximum ; it might depress the 

 old maximum nearer to a new minimum. And — as Marx in his discus- 

 sion of the iron law of wages has shown, although strangely enough 

 he has neglected to draw the natural inference from his argument — it 

 would take time to do this ; and during the interval the market influences 

 would bring about many fluctuations in market wages, while the moment 

 the identification had taken place — nay, even while it was going on — new 

 market influences would be at work producing new fluctuations. The 

 identification, then, is theoretical, and refers to normal wages ; and the 

 theory of market wages allows us to suppose at any particular time in 

 any particular market an interval between the lowest possible point of 

 the competitive minimum and the highest possible point of the competi- 

 tive maximum. The minimum, in short, which is to be found, as it was 

 in Ricardo's time, in the cost of production of labour, is an elastic idea, 

 and may cover a wide area ; and the maximum, which is also to be found, 

 as it was in Ricardo's time, in the average rate of profits, is also an elastic 

 idea, and may also cover a wide area. There is nothing, then, to prevent 



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