14 Industries of the United States for the respective years; mark! not the gross value of the products on leaving the factories, but only that value which has been given to them in the factories minus the wear and tear of machinery. That is to say, we have arrived at the above figures by first adding the value of the raw materials and the depreciation of all machinery, implements and buildings together, and then deducting that sum from the value of the finished products. The value of the raw-materials used, and the gross value we have gathered from the respective U. S. Census Reports, but for the estimate of the wear and tear of machinery &c there are absolutely no data anywhere to be had. We have taken five per cent. of all the capital invested in all manufactures in the respective years as probably a fair estimate of such wear and tear, as but a small part of all capital is invested in machinery and implements, where most of the wear and tear occurs. Supposing that we are somewhat out of the way on one side or the other in this guess, it will not materially affect the conclusions of this chapter. Observe, first, that these "cakes" grow at an even and a very great rate; The cake of 1850 has a value of $437 million dollars; 66 805 66 66 66 66 1834 66 66 that of 1860 66 that of 1870 (reduced to gold) 1310 that of 1880 a value of Observe, next, that these cakes" are divided by a vertical line into two very nearly equal portions. That to the left was paid to the workers in the form of wages; that to the right we shall, for the time being, call the "Surplus." Note, also, for we do not want to make facts, but simply to declare and explain them-that the portion: wages, increases both absolutely and relatively in proportion to the number of workers: The average wage in 1850 was 248 dollars; 66 66 66 1860 1870 66 1880 .. 292 66 The portion: surplus grows at a great rate: The average "surplus," that is, when divided by the number of establishments, was as follows: "1870 it fell to 2,736, because the number of establishments had nearly doubled. In 1880 it rose to 3,490. the number of establishments being nearly the same as in 1870. Here ends the lesson. It was all figures; but we should say that to a reflective mind these figures are not dumb, but speaking. The central point of interest seems to us to be this "surplus." How does this surplus originate? For to know what a thing is, we must know the process of its origin. How come these cakes-the net results of our industrial production—to be divided that way? In order to answer these questions we shall have to dissect the system of production which now prevails. Take a number of moneyed men who agree to invest their superfluities in some industrial enterprise. They come together, form themselves into a joint-stock company and elect officers; such companies, in fact, now own and operate some of our largest establishments, and the tendency is that all industries of any consequence in time will be carried on by them. Suppose then our moneyed men engaged in the cotton, or woolen, or iron and steel industry; either one of these will serve our purpose equally well, as the surplus' was in 1880 about the same in proportion in all of them. Suppose they engage in the making of cotton cloth. None of these men need have any knowledge whatever of the work to be done, and as a matter of fact the stockholders of existing joint-stock companies have no such knowledge. They need not know anything, indeed, except to add and divide-this is not added impertinently, but simply to emphasize a fact most pertinent to our subject. All that they need do is to hire a manager at a stated salary and place their funds at his disposal. This manager then rents a factory-a cotton-" mill "--or has one built; goes then into the market and buys spindles, bales of cotton, and other machinery and raw materials. All that now is wanting is Labor; but that is also to be found in the market plenty of it. The manager buys as much as he wants of it. Note, however, here a difference. The machinery and raw material 1 has to pay for on, or a short time after, delivery; not quite so with Labor. With that a contract is made to employ it for a week or a month at an agreed price, and then to pay for it after having used it. All these wares machinery, cotton and Labor are now taken to the cotton mill, where our men with money may, if they think fit, look on while Labor spins and weaves the cotton into cloth, using up in that process a certain small portion of the machinery and factory. Everybody now knows, that this cloth is not made for the personal use of these moneyed men or their families—and we shall see in another chapter that this fact is a truly distinguishing mark of the era we are living in-but that it is manufactured wholly for other people whom these men never saw or heard of. This cloth is made for the express purpose of being taken into and disposed of in the market of the world. For there, all wares, from guano to gold, from rags to silk, have one quality in common; that of possessing value. Now, please mark that nothing can so effectually kill our cause as the successful impeachment of the answer we shall give to the question: What is value? or the deductions we shall draw from it. Our explanation of what this "surplus" is and what Capital is, hinges on this question, which is, indeed, "l'idee mere”-the "mother idea" of Socialism. We shall,therefore, suspend our sketch of the present mode of production, in order first to answer it. But mark again, our exposition of "value" is none other than that of David Ricardo. Socialists regard Ricardo as the last political economist who made any substantial addition to the science; the one who, in regard to value and wages, advanced it to its highest plane. And it was only after the sup 1 porters of the present social order found out, what use could be made of his teachings, that Bastiat and his disciples came to their succor and tried to impugn these teachings. We build on Ricardo as our foundation. To the question then. By "value" we mean value in exchange; we do not mean value in use, or utility, or, what seems to us a more luminous name, and what Locke called it: worth. The worth or utility of shoes is the capacity to protect the feet; their value is what they will fetch in the market, Their value is their relation to other wares, in some way or other; is another name for equivalence. But relation in what way? Not relation of worths. Worth, or utility, is undoubtedly presupposed, but it does not determine the value. That will be seen from the following illustrations: The reason why a man wants to purchase a pair of shoes, is that he needs them, that they are useful, that they possess "worth" to him. But their usefulness is not at all the reason why he pays $2.00 for them He does not pay twenty times as much for them as for a ten cent loaf of bread, because they are twenty times as useful to him. Why not? Because the two worths" or two usefulnesses are just as incomparable as a pound of butter and a peck of apples would be. Again, a loaf of bread is worth" infinitely more to a man who has not eaten anything for fortyeight hours than to one who just comes from a hearty dinner; yet the former can buy the loaf just as cheaply as the latter. Value, then, is no relation of worths," of usefulnesses. Nor has money anything to do with determining values. Wares would have value, the same as they have now, if all money of all kinds were suddenly annihilated. In order to eliminate that disturbing factor: money, we shall suppose an exchange of goods for goods-pure barter. Assume, then, a shoemaker to exchange one pair of boots for a coat, another similar pair for a table, a third pair for one hundred pounds of bread, a fourth pair for forty bushels of coal, and a fifth pair for a book. All these articles are said to be equal in value. But equality presupposes comparison. We only compare such articles with each other that are similar. In what respect, then, are the above articles similar, except that of being useful, which we saw was no point of comparison? They are dissimilar in regard to the material, out of which they are made and the purposes for which they are made. They are, on the other hand, similar in this respect that they have been produced by human labor, working on natural products, which, again, have been won by human labor. They have, then, this property in common, that they have sprung from Nature, and contain in them a certain amount of human labor. Labor is their father and Nature is their mother. Nature, however, performs her work gratuitously. It must, then, be human labor which gives these various articles their value. That is, also, the teaching of Ricardo. He lays it down as a fundamental principle, that the exchange values of wares the supply of which may be indefinitely increased, (as is the case with these articles we enumerated) depend, exclusively, on the quantities of labor, necessarily required to produce them and bring them to market, in all states of society. In another place he says: "In all cases, wares rise in value, because more labor is expended." These various articles, however, have not only value; they were supposed to have equal value, consequently they must contain an equal amount of human labor. And so it is. These amounts are first measured by the time devoted to produce these articles. Thus, it is easy enough to say, how much bakering labor is contained in the bread; how much tailoring labor in the coat &c. These various labors, however, are very different in kind, you will say. Undoubtedly. But the difference consists simply in being more or less complicated. It takes, simply, more time to learn the one than the other. The most complicated kind of work can always be reduced to ordinary unskilled labor, may always be considered as multiplied common labor. Thus digging is easier to learn than type setting. There is con |