The Development of Capitalist Society

Let us take a condensed page of the country’s history. For the sake of plainness, and forced to it by the exigency of condensation, I shall assume small figures.

Place yourselves back a sufficient number of years with but 10 competing weaving concerns in the community. How the individual 10 owners came by the “original accumulations” that enabled them to start as capitalists you now know. Say that each of the 10 capitalists employs 10 men; that each man receives $2 a day, and that the product of each of the 10 sets of men in each of the 10 establishments is worth $40 a day. You know now also that it is out of these $40 worth of wealth, produced by the men, that each of the 10 competing capitalists takes the $20 that he pays the 10 men in wages, and that out of that same $40 worth of wealth he takes the $20 that he pockets as profits. Each of these 10 capitalists makes, accordingly, $120 a week.

This amount of profits, one should think, should satisfy our 10 capitalists. It is a goodly sum to pocket without work. Indeed, it may satisfy some, say most of them. But if for any of many reasons it does not satisfy any one of them, the whole string of them is set in commotion.

“Individuality” is a deity at whose shrine the capitalist worships, or affects to worship. In point of fact, capitalism robs of individuality, not only the working class, but capitalists themselves. The action of any one of the lot compels action by all; like a row of bricks, the dropping of one makes all the others drop successively.

Let us take No. 1. He is not satisfied with $120 a week. Of the many reasons he may have for that, let’s take this: He has a little daughter; eventually, she will be of marriageable age; whom is he planning to marry her to? Before the public, particularly before the workers, he will declaim on the “sovereignty” of our citizens, and declare the country is stocked with nothing but “peers.” In his heart, though, he feels otherwise. He looks even upon his fellow capitalists as plebeians; he aspires at a prince, a duke, or at least a count for a son-in-law; and in visions truly reflecting the vulgarity of his mind he beholds himself the grandfather of prince, duke or count grandbrats. To realize this dream he must have money; princes, etc., are expensive luxuries. His present income, $120 a week, will not buy the luxury. He must have some more.

To his employees he will recommend reliance on heaven; he himself knows that if he wants more money it will not come from heaven, but must come from the sweat of his employees’ brows.

As all the wealth produced in his shop is $40 a day, he knows that, if he increases his share of $20 to $30, there will be only $10 left for wages. He tries this. He announces a wage reduction of 50 per cent.

His men spontaneously draw themselves together and refuse to work; they go on strike.

What is the situation? In those days it needed skill, acquired by long training, to do the work; there may have been corner loafers out of work, but not weavers; possibly at some great distance there may have been weavers actually obtainable, but in those days there was neither telegraph nor railroad to communicate with them; finally, the nine competitors of No. 1, having no strike on hand, continued to produce, and thus threatened to crowd No. 1 out of the market. Thus circumstanced, No. 1 caves in. He withdraws his order of wage reduction.

“Come in,” he says to his striking workmen, “let’s make up; labor and capital are brothers; the most loving of brothers sometimes fall out; we have had such a falling out; it was a slip; you have organized yourselves in a union with a $2 a day wage scale; I shall never fight the union; l love it, come back to Work.” And the men did. Thus ended the first strike.

The victory won by the men made many of them feel bold. At their first next meeting they argued: “The employer wanted to reduce our wages and got left; why may not we take the hint and reduce his profits by demanding higher wages; why should we not lick him in an attempt to resist our demand for more pay?”

But the labor movement is democratic. No one man can run things. At that union meeting the motion to demand higher pay is made by one member, another must second it; amendments, and amendments to the amendments, are put with the requisite seconders; debate follows; points of order are raised, ruled on, appealed from and settled; in the meantime it grows late, the men must be at work early the next morning, the hour to adjourn arrives, and the whole matter is left pending. Thus much for the men.

Now for the employer. He locks himself up in his closet. With clenched fists and scowl on brow, he gnashes his teeth at the victory of his “brother” labor, its union and its union regulations. And he ponders. More money he must have and is determined to have. This resolution is arrived at with the swiftness and directness which capitalists are capable of.

Differently from his men, he is not many, but one. He makes the motion, seconds it himself, puts it, and carries it unanimously. More profits he shall have. But how? Aid comes to him through the mail. The letter carrier brings him a circular from a machine shop. Such circulars are frequent even today. It reads like this:

“Mr. No. 1, you are employing 10 men. I have in my machine shop a beautiful machine with which you can produce, with five men, twice as much as now with 10. This machine does not chew tobacco. it does not smoke. Some of these circulars are cruel and add: This machine has no wife who gets sick and keeps it home to attend to her. It has no children who die, and whom to bury it must stay away from work. It never goes on strike. It works and grumbles not. Come and see it.”