which you disagree, please interrupt
me. Here is a shoe factory. This factory takes leather and makes it into
shoes. Here is one hundred dollars' worth of leather. It goes through
the factory and comes out in the form of shoes, worth, let us say, two
hundred dollars. What has happened? One hundred dollars has been added
to the value of the leather. How was it added? Let us see.

"Capital and labor added this value of one hundred dollars. Capital
furnished the factory, the machines, and paid all the expenses. Labor
furnished labor. By the joint effort of capital and labor one hundred
dollars of value was added. Are you all agreed so far?"

Heads nodded around the table in affirmation.

"Labor and capital having produced this one hundred dollars, now proceed
to divide it. The statistics of this division are fractional; so let
us, for the sake of convenience, make them roughly approximate. Capital
takes fifty dollars as its share, and labor gets in wages fifty dollars
as its share. We will not enter into the squabbling over the division.*
No matter how much squabbling takes place, in one percentage or another
the division is arranged. And take notice here, that what is true of
this particular industrial process is true of all industrial processes.
Am I right?"

* Everhard here clearly develops the cause of all the labor
troubles of that time. In the division of the joint-product,
capital wanted all it could get, and labor wanted
all it could get. This quarrel over the division was
irreconcilable. So long as the system of capitalistic
production existed, labor and capital continued to quarrel
over the division of the joint-product. It is a ludicrous
spectacle to us, but we must not forget that we have seven
centuries' advantage over those that lived in that time.

Again the whole table agreed with Ernest.

"Now, suppose labor, having received its fifty dollars, wanted to buy
back shoes. It could only buy back fifty dollars' worth. That's clear,
isn't it?

"And now we shift from this particular process to the sum total of all
industrial processes in the United States, which includes the leather
itself, raw material, transportation, selling, everything. We will say,
for the sake of round figures, that the total production of wealth in
the United States is one year is four billion dollars. Then labor has
received in wages, during the same period, two billion dollars. Fou