Workmen's advocate., 1890-07-05
why, then each can command what wages he wants

why, then each can command what
 wages he wants.
 In the first place, machinery is steadi- ly eliminating the skill which would be acquired in the training schools. The tendency of things is such that the gradu- ate of those schools will find himself, in all probability, possessed of worthless capacity A minimum of skill being daily more and more all that is required of the operator, the skilled graduate will, for all wage earning purposes, be at a par with the unskilled non. graduate.
 Secondly, even though the skill of a graduate should not yet have been elim- mated by machinery, then, if he has not the means to purchase the most i'm proved machinery, h,s product will be almost worthless, seeing that it will be worth only what a similar product is worth that consumes only the labor made socially necessary by the most improved appliances. Moreover, even though he should be able to purchase the most improved implements of pro- duc-ion, the day of his doom has only been put off little. Production on a large scale is the method of our day. One. or two, or three machines, or even dozen, will not do his turn. The mammoth factory, with hundred or a thousand. such machines, can produce so much more economically that our skilled graduate will be irresistibly driven to the wall. Only in case he has at command large capital, enabling him to buy large number of such frs class machinery. will he be able to hold out-but then he will do so not by reason of his graduate skill but by req son of his capital.
 Thirdly, granted that here and there, in some trade or other, mechanic without capital, but with skill superior to the average, could command higher wages and would be raised above con- peting for the wages of his less fortunate brothers, the reason of his capacity to do so will not be his manual skill only; that will come in for its share; but an equally important factor in the proceed ing will be the existence and presence of large number of unskilled operatives. Raise all these unskilled operatives to his own level through manual training and the result will be that he and all of them -so far as wages are cOncerned-will have been lowered to the level at which they all had been at first.
 To them who have only their labor to sell, skill, manual or intellectual, may and surely does broaden their horizon. but adds nothing to their income; it only increases the surplus which the capitalist can appropriate. They would be nothing but improved machin. cry. Like machinery their greater skill would render labor more productive; and this result-under the capitalist system-would go only to increase the bulk of withheld wages upon which the capitalist lives, and by means of which he enslaves, frequently stays, his em' ployes.
 The second of these books has just come out; it is
 AMERICAN SOCIALISM AND MONOPOLY. By CHARLES CANDEE GREEN.
 The panacea here offered is Free Trade. This work would not need any refutation, the proposed remedy having been so often exposed before, were it not for the novelty of the argument, the whole of which is based upon the Con- stitution of the United States. It is this circumstance that brings the two works under criticism upon the same plane. It would seem that any one sufficiently alive to the present social disorders, and sufficiently earnest to think and write upon the subject, would first fully inform himself upon the question and equip himself with the historic, legal and economic writings that have been brought forth by this movement Yet, for all one can find out from these works, Marx, Lassalle, Ricardo, Louis Blanc, the New Yorker Skidmore, the New Englander Wendell Phillips, nay, even Spencer, Huxley and Darwin may never have lived or written. No attempt is made at refuting the oft repeated arguments of the many foremost think CTS in this field. They are simply passed by. Probably they are not even known of by these gentlemen. As result these writers are entirely of" in their diagnosis. They are utterly unaware of the meaning of what is going on. Hty nave uo lnhh'iS ol oic Siitiedi 0No' lutionary character of the social move, ment. As a consequence they come with their plasters and salves, and Mir. Candee with his American Constitution; whereas, if he had studied jurisprudence before committing himself upon that sea, he would find that the Constitution is strictly political document, having no more economic aims in view than it has astronomic; and that the present stage in the social evolution being strictly economic, not political, no comfort can be drawn from the Constitution, and no argument, pro or con, in present economic discussions can be based upon it, except such as are of purely meta physical, l. e., futile nature.
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