But this is not to be regarded as the normal position of employers.  Among firms unsheltered by a monopoly, and exposed to the full force of capitalist competition, the rate of profit is also at “the minimum of subsistence,” that is to say, if higher wages were paid to the employes, the rate of profit would either become a negative quantity, or would be so low that capital could no longer be obtained for investment in such a trade.  Generally it may be said that a joint-stock company and a private firm, trading as most firms do chiefly on borrowed capital, could not pay higher wages and stand its ground in the competition with other firms.  If a benevolent employer engaged in a manufacture exposed to open competition undertook to raise the wages of his men twenty per cent, in order to lift them to a level of comfort which satisfied his benevolence, he must first sacrifice the whole of his “wage of superintendence,” and he will then find that he can only pay the necessary interest on his borrowed capital out of his own pocket:  in fact he would find he had essayed to do what in the long run was impossible.  The individual employer under normal circumstances is no more to blame for the low wages, long hours, &c., than is the middleman.  He could not greatly improve the industrial condition of his employes, however much he might wish.

Sec. 9.  The Purchaser as “Sweater.”  A third view, a little longer-sighted than the others, casts the blame upon the purchasing public.  Wages must be low, we are told, because the purchaser insists on low prices.  It is the rage for “cheapness” which is the real cause, according to this line of thought.  Formerly the customer was content to pay a fair price for an article to a tradesman with whom he dealt regularly, and whose interest it was to sell him a fair article.  The tradesman could thus afford to pay the manufacturer a price which would enable him to pay decent wages, and in return for this price he insisted upon good work being put into the goods he bought.  Thus there was no demand for bad work.  Skilled work alone could find a market, and skilled work requires the payment of decent wages.  The growth of modern competition has changed all this.  Regular custom has given way to touting and advertising, the bond of interest between consumer and shopkeeper is broken, the latter seeks merely to sell the largest quantity of wares to any one who will buy, the former to pay the lowest price to any one who will sell him what he thinks he wants.  Hence a deterioration in the quality of many goods.  It is no longer the interest of many tradesmen to sell sound wares; the consumer can no longer rely upon the recommendation of the retailer as a skilled judge of the quality of a particular line of goods; he is thrown back upon his own discrimination, and as an amateur he is apt to be worsted in a bargain with a specialist.  There is no reason to suppose that customers are meaner than they used to be.  They always bought things as cheaply as they knew