The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1897-10-06
THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE.
From the Hartford Couran..

From the Hartford Courant.
1t is natural that a man should think
that he Is the sole author or originator
of any material thing which results from
his eXertions bodily or mental Our body
is our own and our mind is oursef ana IL
we make anything 1t seems just that IL
should belong to us. 1t is natural when
a man is hired to make something, and
receives less tran the difference in value
between the raw material and the finished
product, that he should feel defrauded.
There Is some excuse for the idea that all
wealth is produced by labor. Yet in reai-
ity labor, that Is living labor, is one of the
least important agents of industry. Inc
chief factor is the labor of the dead en-
bodied in tools or stored up In the expert
enCe that produces rev things. How
many bricks could a man make in a day
with his hands and such rude tools as he
could shape himself? Perhaps two hun
dred. If he associates himself with ten or
twenty other men and uses brick-maktng
machinery of the most approved pattern
they can make perhaps 1000 a day apiece.
He receives 1000 or the equivalent of 1000
though in reality he Is entitled to no more
than he could make with his bare hands.
But he is sure to insist that he is entitled
to 1000 or all he made, on the theory that
the machine which is the product of past
labor, it may be of dead labor, is entitled
to nothing. 1t Is not to be wondered at
that socialists insist that tools or the In
struments of production should belong to
society, and should never be held as indi-
vidual property.
1t is difficult to see that this claim is
well founded A tool is parity the result
of present labor, and partly the result OF
the experience of past generations. In so
far rs it is the result of the labor of the
dead it belongs to society. Anybody can
make 1t and use it If the original short
monopoly created by patent has ex-
pired. Everybody, including the laborer,
profits by this. The user of brick making
machinery can buy with the proceeds of
his days labor in modern brickyard ten
| times as many bricks as he could make
| without tools in a day. But every ma
| chine has to be made and the man who
made it or who paid another man for
| making it Is entitled to a share of the
| increased product of labor by every nat
| ural right. A portion of every tool that
| is the idea, beorg gs to society and society
| gets the advantage of it. Another por-
ton belongs to an individual.
Suppose a farmer and his boys work all
| winter in Blasting and hauling the stone
| from a rocky pasture worth ten dollars
an acre. They change it into an arabic
|
| would seem to be a case where physical
| labor and nothing else had created a
value of $780, But the farmer could have
| done nothing without the use of the cast
| steel for his hammers and drills, invented
| in England two hundred years ago. moi
without the dynamite which Is the result
| of chemical inventions dating back to The
| alchemists of the middle ages. The in
| creased value of the land is partly the re-
suit of his labor and partly of the labor
and thought of all past generations. 1t /:
perfectly right that society should take
part of it in the form of increased va.ua
tion on the tax roll. 1t is just, also, tha
he should pay the owners of the estab
lshment for making eXplosives,who made
the machinery that made the tool he uset
(the dynamite cartridges) something more
| than the cost of the labor they expended
| or paid for in the form of wages. Th'
question of dividing profit between labor
er. tool owner and society at large is ;
complicated one. Doubtless it is some
times settled unfairly in our modern sys
TEN. But nothing can be more absur'
than to say that any one of the three Gle
ments is entitled to the whole. To try t
carry out such a theory even on a small
scale by Mr.. Bellamy's plan or any othe
would result in industrial paralysis AM
social chaos.