employer of the flax-dressers would, in selling his flax, require an additional five per cent upon the whole value of the materials and wages which he advanced to his workmen. The employer of the spinners would require an additional five per cent both upon the advanced price of the flax and upon the wages of the spinners. And the employer of the weavers would require a like five per cent both upon the advanced price of the linen yarn and upon the wages of the weavers. In raising the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. The rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.[1]
CHAPTER X
of wages and profit in the different employments of labor and stock
THE whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labor and stock must, in the same neighborhood, be either perfectly equal, or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighborhood, there was any employment evidently either more
- ↑ The foregoing chapter has special historical interest and importance as a general exposition of the conditions of the capitalistic system before the rise of the grande industrie. The subject is worked out in detail in the following and subsequent chapters—Ed.
