they may not. We must accept the fact, and
be aware, also, that emigration is the safety
valve for that excess of population which
makes competiton pinching.

Competition then does pinch? We have
admitted so much. Therefore why not remove
the pressure; set a limit to the fall of wages,
and give bread to all? Why not "defy
competition," as the advertisers say? The
idea seems very simple when we stand still
and look at it, and look no farther. If you
run away from an enemy, it seems to be no
great call upon your strength to say that you
must jump over a three-foot wall that lies
across your track. But what if there should
be a precipice upon the other side? would it
not then be better to turn round and face the
enemy?

Perhaps you see no precipice. Come, then,
and look. You would have a point to be
fixed, below which wages should be held
unreasonable—below which, therefore, wages
should not go. In that way, you say, you
would soon put an end to the "distressed
needlewomen," and all their like. Assuredly
you would. Starvation would soon clear them
off for you, unless we mightily enlarged the
workhouses. Consider first what wages are.
They are allowances of money paid for skill
or labour in producing something; which
allowances the employer gets repaid to him
with profit by the sale or use of the thing
that has been produced. If he obtained no
profit, it is certain that he would not employ
men to work for him. Though, to be sure,
some men employ others to their loss, and
become bankrupt. Very well, then labourers
must suffer their employer to take at least so
much profit from the produce of their labour
as will suffice for his support. Let us
suppose that he engages to pay in material and
wages the utmost sum that will leave him
able to get bread and cheese. There is an
utmost sum; suppose he pays it. Say he can
afford to pay in wages two thousand a year
for work that returns to him only two thousand
and fifty. Well, as the matter now stands,
under competition, he has that money to pay
in wages, and he offers, we will say, a pound
a week on the average. He employs, then,
forty men, and feeds them each with an average
of somewhere about fifty pounds a year.

But hunger abounds; the standard of comfort
is low in the working class; fifty pounds a
year is a superfluous mine of wealth; men
press their services on this employer for an
average remuneration of, let us say, fifteen
shillings apiece weekly. That is competition.
The employer then accepts their terms, his
rate of wages falls to fifteen shillings, and his
two thousand pounds will now find work for
more hands, food for more mouths, although
not so much or such good food for each.

But the employer will, in this new position,
not only have more workmen to pay (because
each is content with a smaller portion of the
fund at his disposal), but, having more labour
for the same capital, he makes a larger profit
and extends his resources; so that he has not
two thousand, but two thousand five hundred
pounds, to be distributed. He takes, accordingly,
new workmen—feeds new mouths—
in a proportion greater than is made by the
direct interference of the competition.
Competition had decided that the given capital
should be divided into smaller portions in
order that more hands might be recipients of
it; but now, in addition to that, its decision
has led to the creation of fresh capital, fresh
wages; and has placed in his care five hundred
pounds more to the credit of the whole body
of the working population.

Now reverse this picture. Carry out the
theory of controlled wages. Fix this employer
to an average of a pound a week for forty
people; since he would have to pay high
salary to some, the average of about fifty
pounds a year to each is reasonable. Stop at
the reasonable. All the hungry fellows
outside, who would work for fifteen shillings,
have to keep aloof. This business will
maintain forty men at the fixed rate of
payment; but the master goes into the gazette if
he should take forty-two. The hungry man
without must starve, or live upon the nation's
charity. Competition having been suppressed,
the extension of cheap labour does not produce,
as it did, rapid increase of capital and fresh
extension of employment. The employer's
business does indeed grow, but not so fast.
Do you see now the use of competition? how
it tends to overthrow monopolies, give all men
access to the food? And although it is impossible
at present to prevent the mouths from
being here and there too many for the meat;
yet the resources yielded up by property do
get in this way to be fairly divided among all;
and the advantage derived by property from
competition is of a kind which multiplies the
loaves and fishes in the lap of those who are
competing.

Let us now look at the No-competition
system from another point of view. There
are many in this country, you may say, who
live in luxury; their waste would feed the
poor. Since there must be hosts of
unemployed men when we put an end to
competition, we will make these men eaters in
idleness of bread taken as tax from those
who have too much. We will suppose no
wrong done to the luxurious by such a tax.
Will there be no wrong done by it to the
working class, if we convert more than half
of them into reckless paupers, sure of their
bread? Where, then, will be our independence?
We may talk about court sinecures,
and titled paupers, and all that sort of thing,
with much abated indignation, when we
ourselves choose to be pauperised. But never
mind that; grant that it is fair, and that our
pride does not rebel against the proposition.
Let all superfluities be mulcted with a tax to
feed the men kept out of work by the forced
price of labour. These men, who, under the