BY K. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 227 



It follows clearly from this that strikes for higher wages 

 among those who already earn above the standard level of 5s. 

 6d. per day cannot justify their claims by the appeal indicated 

 by Mr. Ogilvy that it "is a movement of the underpaid 

 against the overpaid." It is not a fact. So far as the 

 majority is concerned, it really would be a movement of the 

 overpaid, against the underpaid, or more specifically, it would 

 be a movement of the lower grade of the privileged classes 

 against the masses forming the unprivileged, i.e., all those 

 whose earnings are now below 5s. 6d. a day, or the standard 

 level of equality. Nor can the lower grade of the privileged 

 classes contend with justice that their higher wages are in 

 proportion to greater expenditure of time or muscular energy. 

 On the contrary it can be easily demonstrated that the lowly 

 paid agricultural labourer or common lumper expends far 

 more of his time and muscular energy than the better-paid 

 carpenter, engine fitter, or mason. 



Active Agents in the Production of Wealth. 



Finally let us examine what truth there may be in Mr. 

 Ogilvy's statement in which he leads us to infer that the 

 "toil" of "the masses," " the lower 10 millions," alone "is 

 the active factor that produces all wealth." Entertaining such a 

 view, it is not remarkable that Mr. Ogilvy should regard the 

 riches of the " upper 10 thousand " as a hoard mysteriously 

 and wrongfully abstracted from the forces actively engaged in 

 producing wealth. 



If by the toil of the masses he means that all the physical 

 forces requisite to transport and transform natural materials 

 to suit the needs of man, he is manifestly wrong. For 

 (exclusive of the more gratuitous forces of nature, such as 

 natural chemical changes, multiplication by the mysterious 

 forces of life, sunlight and heat forces, gravitation, the rain, 

 dew and the fertile soils, and the animal, vegetable, and 

 mineral products in their natural state and position) 

 there are the active forces set in motion — not of the expendi- 

 ture of muscular energy — but of mental and moral force, 

 exerted by men of 'forethought, of skill, of invention, and of the 

 provident who designedly saved from immediate personal 

 consumption and devoted such savings purposely to the 

 construction of mechanical and other aids, devised or 

 discovered by skilled minds, whereby the forces of nature, such 

 as gravitation, chemistry, steam, water, wind, electricity, 

 leverage, lower animals are so captured, tamed, and drilled, 

 that they now exert a physical force in the production of 

 man's wealth — whether in the way of transporting from place 

 to place, or in transforming materials from the natural raw 

 state to the highly finished — compared with which the brute 



