such changes are affected he must get, and deserves, his pay.  It may indeed be true that certain classes of middlemen are enabled by the position they hold to extract either from their employers or from the public a profit which seems out of proportion to the services they render.  But this is by no means generally the case with the middleman in his capacity of “sweater.”  Even where a middleman does make large profits, we are not justified in describing such gain as excessive or unfair, unless we are prepared to challenge the claim of “free competition” to determine the respective money values of industrial services.  The “sweating” middleman does work which is at present necessary; he gets pay; if we think he gets too much, are we prepared with any rule to determine even approximately how much he ought to get?

Sec. 8.  The Employer as “Sweater.”—­Since it appears that the middleman often sweats others of necessity because he is himself “sweated,” in the low terms of the contract he makes, and since much of the worst “sweating” takes place where firms of employers deal directly with the “workers,” it may seem that the blame is shifted on to the employer, and that the real responsibility rests with him.  Now is this so?  When we see an important firm representing a large capital and employing many hands, paying a wage barely sufficient for the maintenance of life, we are apt to accuse the employers of meanness and extortion:  we say this firm could afford to pay higher wages, but they prefer to take higher profits; the necessity of the poor is their opportunity.  Now this accusation ought to be fairly faced.  It will then be found to fall with very different force according as it is addressed to one or other of two classes of employers.  Firms which are shielded from the full force of the competition of capital by the possession of some patent or trade secret, some special advantage in natural resources, locality, or command of markets, are generally in a position which will enable them to reap a rate of profit, the excess of which beyond the ordinary rate of profit measures the value of the practical monopoly they possess.  The owners of a coal-mine, or a gas-works, a special brand of soap or biscuits, or a ring of capitalists who have secured control of a market, are often able to pay wages above the market level without endangering their commercial position.  Even in a trade like the Lancashire cotton trade, where there is free competition among the various firms, a rapid change in the produce market may often raise the profits of the trade, so that all or nearly all the employing firms could afford to pay higher wages without running any risk of failure.  Now employers who are in a position like this are morally responsible for the hardship and degradation they inflict if they pay wages insufficient for decent maintenance.  Their excuse that they are paying the market rate of wages, and that if their men do not choose to work for this rate there are plenty of others who will, is no exoneration of their conduct unless it be distinctly admitted that “moral considerations” have no place in commerce.  Employers who in the enjoyment of this superior position pay bare subsistance wages, and defend themselves by the plea that they pay the “market rate,” are “sweaters,” and the blame of sweating will rightly attach to them.