FOOTNOTES: 

[17] While these pages were being corrected for the press, a number of utterances have been made by English clerics—­Episcopalian and Nonconformist—­precisely similar in purpose and spirit to those of the author here quoted.

CHAPTER XII

THE JUST REWARD OF LABOUR AS ESTIMATED BY ITS ACTUAL PRODUCTS

Since the educated socialists of to-day admit that in the modern world wealth is produced by two functionally different classes—­a majority who labour and a minority by whom this labour is directed; or by two different faculties—­namely, labour and directive ability—­the question of how much of the total product or its value is produced by one class or agency, and how much by the other, is, for all social reformers, and not for socialists only, a question of the first importance; for in the minds of numbers, who care little about ideal transfigurations of society, the doctrines of socialism leave one vivid conviction, which is this—­that, though the labourers in the modern world do not produce everything, though the ability of those directing them is a productive agent also, and though part of the wealth of modern nations is undoubtedly produced by this, yet the men of ability produce much less than they manage to keep, while the labourers produce much more than is represented by the wages which they get; that labour in this way, even if in no other, is suffering at present a general and intolerable wrong; and that socialism is simply a system by which this wrong will be righted.[18]

Now, this alleged wrong is essentially an affair of quantity.  If the products of any typical firm—­one, let us say, which produces chemicals—­are represented by the number a hundred, and if fifty represents the amount which at present is the share of labour, the rest being taken by men of directive ability—­a picked body of organisers, chemists, and inventors—­labour, it is contended, produces more than the fifty, which is all that it at present gets.  Yes; but how much more?  It is not contended that it produces the entire hundred.  Does it produce, then, sixty, or sixty-five, or seventy, or eighty-three, or what?  Unless such a wrong as this can have some extent assigned to it—­unless it can be measured approximately by reference to some intelligible standard—­it is not only difficult to deal with it; it is impossible to be sure that it exists.  Of course we are here not contemplating individual cases.  That some employes may, under existing conditions, get less than their work is worth, is possible and likely enough.  It is equally likely or possible that others may get more.  We must confine ourselves to what happens generally.  We must take labour as a whole, on the one hand, and directive ability on the other, and ask how we may estimate, with rough but substantial accuracy, the proportion of the joint product respectively produced by each.