Industrial freedom. [volume] (Edison, Wash.) 1898-1???, 1898-08-06
UNDER WHICH THIMBLE.
By PETER e. BURROWS.

! 49, one VINO mas an eye IOf spoil;
scientifically obtained must admit thai
it was glorious victory. Wealth ere
ated by steam and gliding off to the
| great unknown without noise or friction
Everybody hit and everybody satisfied
and hoping for Il chance to hit some
body else-a golden tomb for every
pauper. a man puts so much of him
self into coat; say three days of his
precious life: he brings his coat to an
other who can give him capitalistic
currency for it. AS an exchange of
life for life it is not very instructive to
inquire here how much of his life the
holder of the currency had invested in
the five dollars which we will presume
has been paid for the coat. Whatever
his money may have cost the purchaser
the rule is that he who buys with
money gets the biggest slice of the
labor power and the lifetime of the
man who has made and must sell the
coat for money. The man with the
coat to sell is wegcd by nature demand
to the bargain for BREAD and is con-
fronted by another necessity which is
its equivalent, viz, the necessity for
procuring the instrument of exchange
by means of which alone he can obtain
food in exchange for his coat. Thus
before he can buy food for his coat he
must buy money with his coat. In
capitalized society it is not the rocks
the tempests, the surly unresponsive
soil. the famine. the plague and the
pestilence we must fight. But when
we have won by the Investment of our
life and skill some equivalent which
we may exchange at the place where
the fruits of conquered nature are
stored and waiting for exchange, we
find that we have now another realm,
more stern than natures own, to con-
quer: we have to find somebody who
has one of the golden keys which alone
admit us to natures stores and he of
the golden key, however much or how
ever little. as man, he may exploit
you, stands with, and for. and by a
factor in modern society which has
never been better illustrated in any
piece of human art or utterance than
by the fable of the monkey and his
clients, the two cats who came before
him to divide equally their cheese.
The function of money as an instrument
of exchange between the producer and
consumer. both interlaced for the most
part of the time. the certain action OF
money to get margins on balance al
each tip of the scale marks the starting
point of the real conquerors of man in
our days. The man with the coat tc
sell, for food. and other life commodi-
ties, soon discovers on the counting,
that so many days given to make that
coat prove to be ultimately given fol
! just that many days subsistence wrung
from the system. and still there is lit
tie balance due of the rent. regarding
]
and looking over the few simple thing,
he has exchanged it for: he cannot see
that any in all the world but he. have
singly or together put anything like
three days of their life into the few
necessaries exchanged for the three
days of his life put into that coat
! IL. 1, 81
the same cry comes up. The farmer
the collier. the iron founder. as units OF
considered by any force of Imagination
as collective producers of the tailOr's
loaf, or the old often used frying pan.
| the stove, table utensils. etc, all cry
out; For the portion of life given by
us and sent out to you in these finished
uses we have had about the same rate
of returns a. Yourself" l. the iron
man, put my life, not into a single pot
that l can see, but into the handles OF
many pots | put it. | cannot tell how
many of anything or how much of any
thing, |. as one man have made in
this age of infinite subdivision and
scientific industrial organization. only
know the periods into which my own
life is divided and find the sum of the
capitalistic process in my case to be the
same As in yours. Three days work foI
three days living while at work; and q
little balance against me at the land
| lords.
What then has become of invention.
of cooperation, almost perfectly en-
bodied in the machine, of the almost
UNNECESSARILY increased power of man
to produce wealth. What has become
of the fruits of natures conquest 10y
science: the fusing of her old iron heart,
the hardening of it into steel: the pro-
duets and achievements of steam and
electricity as they roll on their trium-
plant chariotsy What, oh spirit of the
nineteenth century, has become Of it:
Il there a Chatmoss between the
exchanges of labor products and it,
. J. q