orkers 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 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