MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
263 
steel industry now probably presents the most serious result in regard 
to hours of labor. The seriousness of this problem is divisible into two 
parts: The exhaustion of the laborer due to long hours, a labor prob- 
lem; and reduced wages in correspondence to reduction of hours, a wage 
problem. Doubtless the significance of this problem is greater in the 
latter case. Employers would have no reason to refuse shorter hours 
provided the wages per hour remained the same. The significance of 
this is wages, not labor. 
II.— CONDITIONS OF THE PAYMENT FOR THE SERVICE OF LABOR. 
1. Statement of the Case — It is to be observed that although the 
questions just considered are temporary and curable, when they are cured 
others are always present; so that there is that distinct feature of the 
place of emydovment, that it is not curable. We may remove all of the 
evils that confront us at present, but that would not be a solution of 
the labor problem in the place of employment; for as long as men asso- 
ciate with each other in work there will be some problem for them to 
solve. That, however, is not the case with the question of the payment 
for the service of labor, or wages. The present wage system is the 
natural outcome of the development which industry has gone through in 
the last few centuries. When men found that they could not produce 
enough separated from each other in industry, and it was found nec- 
essary for them to associate themselves together in the factory system 
so that they could produce more, there was no other way for them to 
divide up than to divide according to the product of each man’s labor, 
as measured by competition between individuals producing the same 
thing. I understand that men sold their labor for money before tbe 
beginning of the Industrial Revolution ; but take from Arnold Toynbee 
that such wages were always supplemented by land holdings and little 
was thus sold. 
The development of the factory system extended the group of wage 
earners until now it is altogether the predominant group, in which group 
almost every man can be classified at some period of life or in some 
activity, and a very large number of men are to be always classified 
there. 
2. The Direct Evils of the Wage System as the Result of the Factory 
System — It has brought about a severe class struggle on the part of the 
wage earners. This has increased in intensity year by year in propor- 
tion as the difference between the accumulations of the wealth of the 
wage earners and the reward to capital increases; that is, as wealth be- 
comes more and more concentrated the laborers and poorer classes feel 
more clearly the contrast between their economic dependence and the 
economic independence of the rich class. The ill feeling and jealousy 
which is felt on the part of the laborer toward capital represents a 
great social struggle. It is distinctly a struggle of one class against 
another. This is expressed in our strikes, general industrial wars, in- 
dividual antagonism between members of different classes, and local 
feuds as expressed at present in the wide spread “Black Hand” activi- 
ties. 
The day laborer is economically dependent upon one commodity, the 
most perishable of all commodities — labor. Under the present wage 
