With these species of middlemen we are not now concerned, except to say that their work, which is that of distribution, i.e. the more convenient disposal of forms of material wealth, may be equally important with the work of the farmer, the fisherman, or the market-gardener, though the latter produce changes in the shape and appearance of the goods, while the former do not.  The middleman who stands between the employing firm and the worker is of three forms.  He may undertake a piece of work for a wholesale house, and taking the material home, execute it with the aid of his family or outside assistants.  This is the chamber-master proper, or “sweater” in the tailoring trade.  Or he may act as distributor, receive the material, and undertake to find workers who will execute it at their own homes, he undertaking the responsibility of collection.  Where the workers are scattered over a large city area, or over a number of villages, this work of distribution, and its responsibility, may be considerable.  Lastly, there may be the “sub-contractor” proper, who undertakes to do a portion of a work already contracted for, and either finds materials and tools, and pays workers to work for him, or sublets parts of his contract to workers who provide their own materials and tools.  The mining and building trades contain various examples of such sub-contracts.  Now in none of these cases is the middleman a mere parasite.  In every case he does work, which, though as a rule it does not alter the material form of the goods with which it deals, adds distinct value to them, and is under present industrial conditions equally necessary, and equally entitled to fair remuneration with the work of the other producers.  The old maxim “nihil ex nihilo fit” is as true in commerce as in chemistry.  In a competitive society a man can get nothing for nothing.  If the middleman is a capitalist he may get something for use of his capital; but that too implies that his capital is put to some useful work.

Sec. 7.  Work and Pay of the Middleman.—­The complaint that the middleman confers no service, and deserves no pay, is the result of two fallacies.  The first, to which allusion has been made already, consists in the failure to recognize the work of distribution done by the middleman.  The second and more important is the confusion of mind which leads people to conclude that because under different circumstances a particular class of work might be dispensed with, therefore that work is under present circumstances useless and undeserving of reward.  Lawyers might be useless if there were no dishonesty or crime, but we do not therefore feel justified in describing as useless the present work they do.  With every progress of new inventions we are constantly rendering useless some class or other of undoubted “workers.”  So the middleman in his various capacities may be dispensed with, if the organization of industrial society is so changed that he is no longer required; but until