ch you refer
in your letter I have called you the class of the disinherited) are
forever necessarily excluded from the productiveness which increases
in amount through the progress of civilization, i.e., from the
increased product of industry, from the increased earning power of
your own work! For you there remain forever the bare necessities of
life, for the employer everything produced by labor beyond this
amount.

When, because of this great advance of productive power (yield of
labor), many manufactured products become extremely cheap, it may
happen that through this cheapness you have a certain indirect
advantage from the increased productiveness of labor--but as
consumers, not as producers. This advantage in no way affects,
however, your activity as producers. It does not affect nor change the
portion of the yield which falls to your share; it affects only your
situation as consumer and also improves the situation as consumer of
the employer, and of all men, whether they take part in the work or
not, and in a much more considerable degree than yours. And this
advantage, which affects you merely as human beings and not as
workingmen, again disappears in consequence of this inexorable and
cruel law, which always forces wages in the long run down to the point
of consumption necessary to maintain life.

Now, however, it may happen that if such an increased yield from labor
(and the extreme cheapness of many products caused thereby), comes
about very suddenly; if, moreover, it coincides with a prolonged
period of increased demand for labor, then these products, which have
become disproportionately cheaper, are taken into the body of products
that are regularly considered in a community as necessities of life.

The fact, then, that workingmen and wages are always dancing on the
extreme verge of what suffices, according to the social standard of
each age, for the maintenance of life, sometimes standing a little
above and sometimes a little below this limit--this never changes. But
this extreme limit itself may at different ages have changed through
the coincidence of the above circumstances, and it may therefore
happen that, if you compare different periods with one another, the
situation of the working class in the later century or generation
(seeing that now the minimum of necessities of life demanded by custom
is somewhat increased) has improved somewhat in comparison with the
situation of the working class in the