I.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 105 
pursued further, it may be concluded that the normal wage of each 
occupation is constantly interfered with by monopolistic action, whether 
_ on the part of employers or employed, in other occupations. 
But it is not profitable to pursue this subject further without dis- 
cussing the third aspect of wages, and considering not merely the wage 
that a man is worth but the wage that he needs. The section of modern 
economic literature devoted to the dependence of labour on wages on the 
one hand. and to the dependence of wages on the needs of labour on the 
other, is growing in volume and importance. Wages, in addition to 
directing labour and being a return of goods and services to labour in 
exchange for the goods and services it supplies, are expected to maintain 
the worker. The owner of labour alone among owners of any agent of 
production is supposed to live on the product of the thing he owns. The 
economic fact that to a great extent he does so has been exalted, like 
many other economic facts, into a moral obligation. And when the 
normal wage is low without any discernible fault on the part of those 
who earn it, the moral obligation is shifted and it is said that the wage 
ought to be large enough for the worker to live on. No one suggests that 
landlords ought to live on their rents. We know that some of the larger 
landlords do and that some of the smaller ones do not, and we are aware, 
as was suggested earlier, that if improvements in methods of production 
or transport facilities lower the prices of agricultural produce and land- 
lords’ rents it will be more difficult than before for landlords to live on 
their rents. From the economic view we should care not at all. There 
would be plenty in the land, and though we might be sorry for individual 
landlords who had formerly subsisted on their rents, there are many 
who are capable of saying that it will be good for landowners to have to 
do a little honest work. So it is with capital. Certain owners of capital 
live on their dividends, a fact that many resent. But the bulk of 
capitalists, those with small savings, do not depend on interest. Their 
dividends do not make their income, but are an addition to it. 
But, it being assumed that the worker lives on his wage, with what 
truth we shall discuss later, we concern ourselves greatly with the question 
of how far wages do or can be made to respond to needs. Our concern 
may take the form of a demand, like that put forward by Mr. Clifford Allen 
in his Presidential Address to the Conference of the Independent Labour 
Party last April, for ‘a universal living wage, dictated by the needs of a 
civilised existence and not dependent on the varying fortunes of each 
industry.’ Ora problem may be presented as in the opening words of the 
Teport of the International Labour Office on Family Allowances: ‘In 
the determination of wages two somewhat conflicting principles may be 
etected—“‘ equal pay for equal work” or “to each according to his 
needs.’’’ Or we may find the assumption, as expressed in Miss Rathbone’s 
book on the ‘ Disinherited Family,’ that needs are an active factor in the 
determination of wages. Bachelors, she tells us, are enabled by the 
uniform wage system’ ‘at one moment to fight the battle of higher wages 
from behind the petticoats of their hypothetical wives and children, and 
_ the next to claim the wages thus won as their exclusive property.’ ‘And, 
a speaking of the jealousy of women felt by the male worker, she 
Ss 1 The Disinherited Family, Eleanor Rathbone, p. 56. 
