s into an immediate
compliance with their demands. The masters upon these
occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never
cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil
magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which
have been enacted with so much severity against the
combinations of servants, laborers, and journeymen.

"But though in disputes with their workmen, masters must
generally have the advantage, there is however a certain rate,
below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any
considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest
species of labor.

"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at
least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most
occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible
for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen
could not last beyond the first generation."

Now, my friend, I know that some of your pretended friends, especially
politicians, will tell you that Adam Smith wrote at the time of the
American Revolution; that his words applied to England in that day,
but not to the United States to-day. I want you to be honest with
yourself, to consider candidly whether in your experience as a workman
you have found conditions to be, on the whole, just as Adam Smith's
words describe them. I trust your own good sense in this and
everything. Don't let the politicians frighten you with a show of
book learning: do your own thinking.

Capitalism began when a class of property owners employed other men to
work for wages. The tendency was for wages to keep at a level just
sufficient to enable the workers to maintain themselves and families.
They had to get enough for families, you see, in order to reproduce
their kind--to keep up the supply of laborers.

Competition was the law of life in the first period of capitalism.
Capitalists competed with each other for markets. They were engaged in
a mad scramble for profits. Foreign countries were attacked and new
markets opened up; new inventions were rapidly introduced. And while
the workers found that in normal conditions the employers were in what
Adam Smith calls "a tacit combination" to keep wages down to the
lowest level, and were obliged to combine into unions, there were
times when, owing to the fierce competition among the employers, and
the demand for labor being greatly in excess of the supply