table approximation men are
apt, perhaps too apt, to rest indolently patient, and say, It
will do. Thus these poor Manchester manual workers mean only, by
day's-wages for day's-work, certain coins of money adequate to
keep them living;--in return for their work, such modicum of
food, clothes and fuel as will enable them to continue their work
itself! They as yet clamour for no more; the rest, still
inarticulate, cannot yet shape itself into a demand at all, and
only lies in them as a dumb wish; perhaps only, still more
inarticulate, as a dumb, altogether unconscious want. _This_ is
the supportable approximation they would rest patient with, That
by their work they might be kept alive to work more!--_This_ once
grown unattainable, I think, your approximation may consider
itself to have reached the insupportable stage; and may prepare,
with whatever difficulty, reluctance and astonishment, for one of
two things, for changing or perishing! With the millions no
longer able to live, how can the units keep living? It is too
clear the Nation itself is on the way to suicidal death.

Shall we say then, The world has retrograded in its talent of
apportioning wages to work, in late days? The world had always a
talent of that sort, better or worse. Time was when the mere
_hand_worker needed not announce his claim to the world by
Manchester Insurrections!--The world, with its Wealth of Nations,
Supply-and-demand and such like, has of late days been terribly
inattentive to that question of work and wages. We will not say,
the poor world has retrograded even here: we will say rather,
the world has been rushing on with such fiery animation to get
work and ever more work done, it has had no time to think of
dividing the wages; and has merely left them to be scrambled for
by the Law of the Stronger, law of Supply-and-demand, law of
Laissez-faire, and other idle Laws and Un-laws,--saying, in its
dire haste to get the work done, That is well enough!

And now the world will have to pause a little, and take up that
other side of the problem, and in right earnest strive for some
solution of that. For it has become pressing. What is the use
of your spun shirts? They hang there by the million unsaleable;
and here, by the million, are diligent bare backs that can get no
hold of them. Shirts are useful for covering human backs;
useless otherwise, an unbearable mockery otherwise. You have
fallen terribly behind with that side