The wages question

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane, February 23, 1895.

Open Column.

For the expression of social and economic

opinions with which the “Worker” does not

necessarily hold itself in complete accord.

Why Wages Fall.

In all the great nations of the earth to-day, widely different though they may be in all political and social conditions, the wages question is the vital question of the hour. Temporarily crushed and repressed by iron laws and ancient customs, the workers everywhere are rising in revolt against a system which condemns the great mass of men and women to a slavery more hopeless and more cruel than the old state of chattel slavery, and the revolt is every day growing more and more gigantic and more and more bitter. And when we consider that by labour, and by labour alone, every class of wealth is produced for man, and then gaze upon the condition of labour in all parts of the earth, who can fail to see reason and right in the widespread feeling of discontent and unrest? For the great majority of workers to-day there is little else but grinding toil and hopeless poverty, and all the trouble, anxiety, envy and misery which spring inevitably out of poverty or the fear of poverty. And that this state of affairs is not the outcome of any local law or want of law is proved by the fact that it exists in countries whose political and social systems are as far different in character as their positions are in geography.

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In England, with a monarchy and a hereditary aristocracy; in America under Republican institutions and democratic rule; in Switzerland, where the referendum is an established fact; in New Zealand, where women exercise the franchise; in New South Wales, where one man one vote is in actual operation; and in Victoria, where they possess the priceless boon of an elective Upper House; in all of these countries the condition of labour, in greater or lesser degree, is not at all what it should be.

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This proves that the cause of the evil must lie deeper then the mere surface, and it also draws us to the conclusion that it must be a cause which exists, not only in one of these countries, but in and through the whole civilised world.

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What is it, then, which is to-day responsible for the steady fall of wages towards a minimum which affords the labourer but a bare subsistence, and which causes the condition of the worker, in spite of the marvellous increase in the productive power of labour, to grow daily more dependent and more miserable?

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The answer is, in the opinion of the writer, that the responsible agent for these evils and anomalies is the unjust and senseless institution of private property in land, or in shorter words still, land monopoly. The wages of labour are regulated by the quality of land which labour can freely exert itself upon, and the more this quality of land is lowered the more wages will sink, despite all superficial and arbitrary attempts to raise them. If Queensland could by any means have all its present population effaced, the first-comer afterwards would be able to settle on the richest land he could find, and keep for himself all he could produce there by his labour. His wages would then be at the highest possible point consistent with his power of production.

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And if he only monopolised as much land as he wished to use, the wages of the next arrivals, so long as there was plenty of land of equal quality available, would be all that they could produce. And if the first man wished to employ the others he would be obliged to pay them practically the same amount as they could produce for themselves, for the man , short of an imbecile, would work for another for less than he could make by working for himself. And if the first settler wished to sell or lease his holding he could only obtain a return for his improvements. Ground rent proper would not yet have arisen.

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But in time, when all this best quality of land was in the hands of private people, population would be forced to settle upon an inferior class. Let us suppose that this land would only produce, with the same amount of labour, half as much as the first grade would. Wages would then at once fall to half their former rate, for the other half would be pocketed as rent by the owners of the best land. These owners could then employ others to labour for them, and pay them by handing back to them half the value of their produce, or they could lease their land for half what the user of it could make upon it, and without exerting an ounce of labour personally, draw as large an income from the labour of that user as he himself could obtain for himself. And as labour was driven farther and farther out on to inferior land, wages would continue to fall in like ratio till at last the utmost the ordinary non-land-owning worker could make would be a bare living.

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To sum up, then, wages fall as the quality of land open to labour without the payment of rent is lowered. Or, to express it in the language of political economy, “Wages fall as the margin of cultivation is lowered.” This is the reason why wages in every civilised land to-day are down almost to the lowest possible limit. This is the reason why, in spite of improvement and discovery, of science and invention, the life of the worker is every day growing harder and yet more hard. It is this monopoly of natural opportunities, this alienation of the nation's heritage, that gives wealth to the idle and power to the worthless. It is this that in England pours £200,000,000 annually into the pockets of useless parasites; that make in America the millionaires and the million paupers; that allow our banks and other financial institutions to pay to absentee directors and shareholders tremendous dividends out of Queensland workers' earnings; that paralysers industry and cripples commerce; and that renders both organised and unorganised labour helpless in the grasp of the privileged few.

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To raise wages in Queensland, or anywhere else where private property in land is in operation, we must necessarily attack this monopoly, and when once it is wholly destroyed, and labour has once more access to natural opportunities, we need have no fear as to the ability of industry and enterprise to provide amply for themselves. When labour is allowed to produce freely, and to posses what it does produce, poverty, distress, and want, if they continue to exist at all, will no longer be confined to the working masses. Instead they will be limited to the individuals who are absolutely too indolent to work at all. For these people, if they will-not repent of their evil ways, there will indeed be starvation, but the absurd anomaly of men, able and anxious to work, starving in the midst of plenty will disappear forever with the final abolition of land monopoly.

L.O. WILKINSON