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Title: Work and Wealth Author: Joshua K. Ingalls Date: 1878 Language: en Topics: capital, labor, mutualism, wealth Source: Retrieved 11/11/2021 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/from-the-archives/joshua-king-ingalls-work-and-wealth-1878-2/ Notes: Published in The Radical Review 1 no. 4, p. 650-660 (February 1878).
I have chosen the above terms in preference to Labor and Capital,
because they convey more exact ideas. The word labor carries with it the
impression of compulsory, or servile, toil. Capital is a word which
economists themselves cannot satisfactorily define, and to which they
apply only an arbitrary meaning. The things signified by work and wealth
are subject to no equivocal interpretation, are understood by all, and
stand to each other in the relation of a natural sequence.
Speaking from the standpoint of the trader, from which political
economists mainly speak, Adam Smith lays down this fundamental
proposition: “It was not by gold or silver, but by labor, that all the
wealth of the world was originally purchased.” For him the term labor
was appropriate, because in his time, a large proportion of the world’s
work was performed by bondmen or by hirelings, even more the mere
dependents of the legal possessors of the world’s wealth than are the
workers of today.
Starting from this comprehensive, but exact, proposition that work is
the only source from which wealth can be produced or purchased as an
axiom, the opposite of which is simply unthinkable, let us direct our
attention to an inquiry into the manner in which wealth to appearance is
transferred so often in exchange for no equivalent in labor. Even the
trader may be interested in the attempt to account for the fact that
wealth, at first purchasable only by work, comes to be possessed mainly
by those who do no work.
The thing which a man has produced by his work, and which is an object
of desire to himself and others, can be transferred in several different
ways. The natural or simplistic methods are (1) Force, involving
robbery, theft, and, in an advanced stage, cheating, overreaching, and
advantage-taking of every description; (2) Gift, involving partial and
invidious bestowments, as well as noble generosities; (3) Hazard,
involving all kinds of gaming, and, in the progress of society, all
speculative ventures.
The rational method, and one which is arrived at only by culture and the
recognition of social obligations, is MUTUAL EXCHANGE.
With the earlier methods, as they have existed in the past, we need have
no quarrel. They were the only ones possible under the condition of
social and moral development then obtaining. Robbery is the main element
of organic and animated life. The carnivorous animals all support life
by drawing it from orders less powerful or aggressive than themselves,
and even the herbivorous sustain life by devouring vegetable life. Man
destroys the lives of the creatures beneath him that he may eat their
flesh and robe himself with their furs and skins. He robs the sheep of
its fleece, the silk-worm of its web, that he may clothe himself. That
he pursues a similar course with his fellow is not to be wondered at.
Only a conception of the brotherhood of man and the real dignity of work
can win him from his tendency to devour the substance of the weak and
simple who fall into his hands, instead of producing wealth for himself.
The rude man, who has spent hours in the forest gathering fagots, but
lies down at night without fire, while another enjoys the genial warmth
those same fagots yield while burning, may have transferred their
possession in several different ways. He may, with a certain degree of
equity, have exchanged them for different products which the other had
worked to obtain; he may have engaged in some game of chance, and lost
them wholly; or he may have been met by a stronger man, while returning
laden, and derived of his fagots by force. Or, he already may have been
reduced to a bond-slave, his life having been spared in war on condition
of his submission to a life of slavery; and thus have given his captor
the perpetual ability to purchase wealth with his and his children’s
toil.
From the mental state which results from such motives as sway the
successful warrior and slave-holder, to that of the enlightened moralist
and economist who discovers that, if another has created wealth which he
himself desires, the true thing to do is to create something which the
other will equally desire, that so the transfers may be mutually
agreeable and beneficial, is a stance which requires ages of toil and
struggle to overcome.
It may be urged that in the capture and management of slaves, who would
not willingly work if left to themselves, a certain necessary work was
performed, and a larger production of wealth obtained. If we were to
admit this as regards the past, it would serve as no justification for
the continuance of slavery; but it should also be considered that the
robber class, until taught by the toil of the industrious that labor
will produce or purchase wealth, never seeks to subject the toilers to
slavery. Besides, experience shows that slavery, so far from promoting
industry, begets a general repugnance to work on the part or both slave
and slave-owner: thus the thing urged in its justification is seen to
have been caused mainly by itself. It was not till after centuries of
advancement that civilized nations began to discourage chattel slavery.
Its entire abolition in our country is a recent event. But by its
abolition we have by no means reached any thing like an equitable system
of exchange. We still have class legislation, protecting the vast
accumulations of wealth and ownership of land in unlimited quantities,
just as incompatible with justice as the older tyranny.
To be able to purchase wealth with others’ labor, it is not at all
necessary to own their bodies. The strong assumed “property in man” and
“property in the soil” at the same time. Now, since the soil is
absolutely essential to the application of labor to productive uses, he
who has an exclusive claim to it can labor under any tribute he pleases,
or deny it opportunity to employ itself or be employed at all. Since
ownership in man has been abolished, private ownership of land is the
chief basis, the great fulcrum, of all devices for purchasing wealth by
the work of others.
By the workers themselves this power is little understood, because it
affects them indirectly. They come in immediate contact with their
employers, and questions of raising or lowering wages, lengthening or
shortening hours, attract their attention and divert it from more
fundamental questions. They hardly reflect that their employers are also
subject to the competitive struggle, and are often broken down by the
operation of the same law which shortens the rations, and renders more
and more precious the employment, on which the laborer depends.
The indifference of the workingmen to this question of the land, and
their failure to obtain even enough of it to enable them to rear homes
for themselves and families, has a curious, as well sad, result. Quite
twenty-five per cent of the earnings of laborers, clerks, and mechanics
who do not own a home of their own, goes to the landlords for rent. In
many instances, this is for structures which have been paid for a
hundred times over, and are not worth in their material the labor of
pulling down and carrying away. It is true that a portion of this rent
comes back in payment of repairs, taxes, etc., but still leaving a large
percentage for which labor receives no return whatever, and may almost
be said to yield voluntarily, thus permitting others, that extent to
purchase wealth with their unrequited toil.
Had our Government established a system of easy access to the soil
through nationalization of the land or a judicious limitation to private
ownership, the questions arising between employer and employed would
have a ready solution. On the recurrence of a depression in business,
general or special, the parties feeling themselves crowded would betake
themselves to the cultivation of the soil, or some self employment; or
at least enough would do so to relieve the overstocked labor market,
thus increasing the demand for the things which had been over-produced.
Out of our semi-feudal land system grow also many of the giant evils
which afflict our commerce and finance. The man who as no land must hire
it or pay for its use, before he can apply his labors in cultivation,
however willing and capable he may be. This basic necessity of borrowing
is the foundation of all other borrowing; paying for the use of land is
the basis of all rent and usury and speculative profit of every
description. Distressed by unnatural dispossession and deprivation,
people are in no condition to resist the temptation to borrow any thing
which promises relief, and to pledge themselves to pay therefore
impossible rates of interest. The poor man, to free himself from present
deprivation, borrows the means to do a little business; the man of
considerable means borrows that he may do more business; and for the
result, we have most of the real estate and much of the personal
property of both in the hands of the money lender through foreclosures.
A large proportion of all transfers of real estate, especially for the
last three years, has been through foreclosures, and to avoid
foreclosures.
An annual half-billion does not cover the amount which goes to or
through the hand’s of corporations in the form of interest in this
country, not to mention the enormous rentals, private speculative
profits, etc.
The industrious man, who purchases by his work any desired wealth, gets
only one-half, or less, himself—the other half going to the usurer,
landlord, or profit-monger. These are enabled to purchase, or get
recognized possession of, this other half through unlimited control of
land, and the system of usance and annuities growing up from that basis.
It may be said with too much truth that workingmen get now no more than
they wisely use; but it is still truer that, in proportion to their
share in what they have produced is diminished, they become more and
more indifferent to saving, and more and more shiftless and unreliable.
It is not the purpose of this paper to attempt to point out what is
right and equitable between employer and employed under our system of
wages. When any considerable portion of mankind desires equity and
mutualism in industry and division, there will be no difficulty in
arriving at exact conclusions. My object will be more than realized, if
I can draw attention to these things as they actually exist, and to the
positive relation which work and wealth sustain to each other, the truth
in regard to which can only be ascertained by careful analysis.
Into all production of wealth only two factors enter: (1) the raw
material—the soil or its spontaneous productions; (2) human effort.
However complex or extended, in the last analysis only these two
elements are found. It is not the carbon and nitrogen, the salts and
gases, of which our food and clothing are composed, which we produce as
wealth, but that specific form and aptitude for use which our work has
wrought or effected.
According to that ingenious political economist, Bastiat, even when we
purchase things with money or by barter, we do not exchange things, but
forms of service. The inference, however, which he draws from this
truthful proposition—that, therefore, any one in possession of wealth to
whatever amount must necessarily have rendered an equivalent service for
that wealth (either by himself, or through an ancestor or donor)—is so
monstrous as to be accepted only by specialists in “exact science.” On
the contrary, we find mutuality of service nowhere recognized as at all
requisite in the business transactions of the world. We might as well
look for it under the chattel system, where men and women are bought and
sold, and where labor does not have to be purchased with equivalent
service, but can be enforced by the lash. Adam Smith says: “It is
impossible for one to become excessively rich without making many others
correspondingly poor.” This is a result which could not possibly arise
from any mutual exchange of services, or from any honest transfers of
equivalents, any more than we can have an equation with one side plus
and the other minus. Hence it follows that, where inordinate wealth
exists, it has been purchased by the labor of others than the
possessors, and through transfers by force, fraud, or hazard.
To produce or have wealth at all, human effort must be put forth. Even
the spontaneous productions of Nature cannot constitute wealth, until
taken out of their natural state. The savage who has fagots and game in
store for a week has wealth, as compared with him who has to gather a
daily supply. Application and frugality seem the only requisites for its
acquirement. By a wise division of labor and special adaptation of
functions, the wealth of the world has been vastly increased; but we
must not let the complexity of work and diversity of employments confuse
our ideas in regard to the main question,—namely, the source of wealth,
and the equity or iniquity of the present method of distribution.
As society advanced from the simply savage state, the search, capture,
and transportation of natural wealth was followed by various handicrafts
which added value thereto. It was work, nothing less and nothing more,
of hand and brain which formed social wealth from the resources of
Nature. In all these elaborate transformations, we can discover no other
earthly agency, nor indeed make any material distinction in the
essential character of these varied services. One and all are necessary
to other. By no logic can we decide that one service is more important
than another, except in the utility of its product.
If one has discovered, another secured, and a third transported the
prize to the place where it is needed for consumption, we can decide no
otherwise than that the pay of each should be proportioned to the time
employed in labor and the useful result accomplished. Even the labor
necessary to divide and distribute it comes in justly for a share.
So far all must be plain in regard to the facts involved in our
question. It seems to me the principles must also be clear. But it will
be answered that still the distinctions in life and the inequalities of
distribution of which we complain have been transmitted to us from
previously existing conditions, and result from the operations of forces
that can be traced back through every form of civilization. This is,
however, very far from proving that they exist in accordance with
elementary principles or any rational interpretation of law. Really it
comes to this,—whether we will continue the essential injustice, while
dropping the barbaric methods of the savage, or attempt a truly
scientific solution of the problem of work and wealth.
In the discovery, procurance, and manipulation of natural productions, I
have indicated all the steps in the production of wealth. Services in
the preservation or conservation of wealth are equally entitled to
consideration, but cannot be yielded a superior claim. With our
inequitable division, and the disorganized methods of distribution which
it begets, the number of traders becomes sadly disproportioned to the
number of actual producers; and since those despoiled are chiefly those
who perform the most useful labor, the smart and shrewd seek the more
indirect methods of obtaining wealth. And just here the principle of
competition, which political economists seem to think ought to reconcile
the wealth producers to starvation, does not work with facility, for no
one can do a business at a loss, and hence society has to support
numbers to do the work which one might do.
I may, in this connection, refer to the instrumentality of money or
currency, serviceable in moving crops and the work of distribution
generally. Its importance, however, is mainly due to the want of
mutualism in our distributive system and of equity in our methods of
exchange.
A charge for the time-use of this instrument, in defiance of the
sentiments of all moralists from Moses and Cato to Ruskin and Palmer,
has been enforced by our laws, because labor was at the mercy of the few
who hold the soil, and because operations could be made to pay dividends
out of the wealth purchased by the labor of the poor and simple. Chattel
slavery enabled the planter to pay interest. Land monopoly enables the
capitalist to assume that there is a usufruct to wealth. In return,
usury has been the great lever by which millions of homes have been
alienated, and gone to swell the domain of avarice and love of lordly
domination.
As war was the parent of slavery, by which whole families, tribes, and
nations were reduced to bondage,—made “hewers of wood and drawers of
water ” to the victors,—so it has been employed to enslave labor by the
creation of immense national debts, the mere interest of: which is an
onerous tax upon the worker. Hazard has also played as large, if not so
conspicuous, a part as war in reducing labor to the condition of
dependence and distress. The liberty of self, wife, and children, in
barbaric times, was often staked. And when this was not done, borrowing
to prolong play was practised, as to-day in Turkey and in some Christian
and even republican countries, upon conditions and at rates which can
have no termination but in life-long bondage or peonage; To relieve
present distress, or deluded by the hope of acquiring the ability to
live by others’ labor, many people to-day, who would despise the mere
gambler, fall into a similar fatuity, and wake from it only to find
themselves slaves to the power they expected to use to lay others’ labor
under contribution.
I am not urging sympathy for these dupes. I am only pointing out some of
the causes, still in operation, which have resulted in making the few
the actual masters of labor, and given them the ability to purchase
wealth without work of their own. In our country and time we do not
enforce gambling debts as they do in Turkey; but we do enforce contracts
to pay interest, often just as oppressive, and only outwardly less
barbarous and inhuman. In thus tracing the working of these crude
methods, we find that the productive labor of our time has its
inheritance, through the wage system, serfdom, and slavery, from
primitive subjection to force; or through speculative trade, from the
hazard which ruined the victim without permanently benefiting the
winner. It is not important to our purpose to inquire whether the
plunderers or plundered are more to blame, or the greater sufferers.
This is plain; with the land in the hands of the hereditary or
speculative lord, the laborer has no resource for self-employment,
however fit or unfit he may be.
The workingman can obtain independence now only by the possession of
exceptional powers, or by special good fortune, and then only through
schemes and operations which raise one at the expense of many.
The inheritance of the property class consists of a transmission of
power attained by forceful conquest, or by the varied forms of hazard,
fraud, and corruption. With their wealth they inherit generally the
tendency to take advantage of the necessities of others, and to apply
new methods of overreaching when the spirit of progress will no longer
tolerate the old ones.
I do not make this application to individuals, but only to those given
to the shrewd use of wealth; well I know that many parvenus far outdo,
in management, those who inherit wealth.
In this country we have changed some things to suit republican
prejudices. For instance, our land is no longer entailed in a family.
Yet it is all falling into the hands of a class; and although the great
fortunes sometimes change to other hands, they are controlled by those
with still greater, and their attitude and relation to industry remain
the same. Of the large fortunes now enjoyed in New York and New England,
many had their foundations laid by successful privateers and slave
traders; and by other methods no less discordant with principles of
natural justice.
The immense fortunes made by two well-known citizens in the generation
now past are quite exceptional, and yet they well illustrate the present
divorced relation between work and wealth. In a certain sense, both were
industrious workers. Each has said of himself that, when he worked in
the ordinary way, his income was trifling. It was only after long
struggle, in which many worthy men went to the wall, that their fortunes
began to accumulate with great rapidity. Both were greatly indebted to
our civil war, which reduced whole populations to poverty, left the
nation three billions in debt, and sacrificed a million lives. It is
also worthy of note that a great banker at our national capital was made
rich by privileges granted him to trade during the Mexican war. When it
is said in justification of these men that they did not go outside the
acknowledged rules of business, it is admitting that our systems of
trade, finance, etc., are essentially the same as in the barbarous ages
whose forms we have discarded.
Another great estate, also recently left in the city of New York, was
mainly inherited, being now in the possession of the third generation.
In mentioning these instances I disclaim any purpose of judging the men.
They were what inheritance and environment made them. My only purpose is
to show the irrational and fatal policy which places in the hands of any
men, however good or great, the power to purchase, ad libitum, wealth
with other people’s work. I am quite well aware that for many years to
come this remonstrance will remain measurably unheeded. The workers are
so depressed with hardship, or so readily elated with the prospect of
success in some exceptional field, that they are quite unwilling to look
away from prospects of temporary relief to the consideration of broad
questions of reform, even if they were less idiotically joined to party,
labeled republican or democratic, by leaders who form a mutual ring,
whichever party attains power, and conspire to make the plunder of
public funds and public trusts a fine art.
But from the operation upon the public mind of works like those of
Spencer, Mill, Lewes, and Ruskin, much is to be hoped. Our own country
also, has the names of men, not unknown to fortune, who are deeply
impressed with the importance of this vital social and ethical problem.
Its development promises to take form like this:—
First, As a civil right,—freedom of access to the soil and opportunity
of self-employment;
Second, As a principle of law,—the partnership of all concerned in the
production of wealth requiring division of labor;
Third, As a matter of commercial ethics,—equivalents of service in all
exchanges.
In connection with these developments in the intellectual and ethical
field, it occurs to me that there is a probability, at least, of a
movement which shall greatly hasten the downfall of our barbarous system
of division; and we approach of the era when work shall be the only
recognized title to wealth. Within the present century, men like Robert
Owen, Peter Cooper, Gerrit Smith, and many others who could be
mentioned, have shown, with more or less success, that it is ”noble to
live for others,” and that personal interests may be subordinated to
social aims. It seems to me no dream of romance to indulge the faith
that, at time near at hand, a class of true men and women will rise and
form an order, which will abstain from preying on the results of others’
toil These social knights errant will scorn to rely on the efforts of
others for their support, or to apply to their own use, in any way, that
for which another has wrought. They will no more consider the necessity
or weakness of their toiling fellow a reason why they should overreach
and plunder him, than would the model knight of the days of chivalry
have considered that the weakness and defenceless state of a persecuted
woman was a reason why he should outrage rather than protect her. These
will organize industries on an equitable basis, promote emigration to
districts where the exactions of landlords are less intolerable, and
turn the current of many row questionable, though well-intended,
charities into channels of self-employment and self-help. It is not too
much to hope that they will be able ultimately to change the application
of the vast amount of labor and wealth now expended in “plans of
salvation” to save the souls of men in a future world, into broadly
beneficent measures of industrial organization and social renovation,
and thus render possible the coming of the “kingdom of heaven upon the
earth,” under the equitable rule of which it “shall be given to every
one according to his work.”
J. K Ingalls.