pital be good but rare, and productive energy good
and plentiful; the employe is interested that capital be good and
plentiful, but that productive energy be good and rare. When one man
alone can do a service, and he can do it very well, he represents the
laborer's ideal. To say that employers and employed are partners in an
enterprise is only a delusive figure of speech. It is plainly based on
no facts in the industrial system.

Employers and employed make contracts on the best terms which they can
agree upon, like buyers and sellers, renters and hirers, borrowers and
lenders. Their relations are, therefore, controlled by the universal
law of supply and demand. The employer assumes the direction of the
business, and takes all the risk, for the capital must be consumed in
the industrial process, and whether it will be found again in the
product or not depends upon the good judgment and foresight with which
the capital and labor have been applied. Under the wages system the
employer and the employe contract for time. The employe fulfils the
contract if he obeys orders during the time, and treats the capital as
he is told to treat it. Hence he is free from all responsibility, risk,
and speculation. That this is the most advantageous arrangement for
him, on the whole and in the great majority of cases, is very certain.
Salaried men and wage-receivers are in precisely the same
circumstances, except that the former, by custom and usage, are those
who have special skill or training, which is almost always an
investment of capital, and which narrows the range of competition in
their case. Physicians, lawyers, and others paid by fees are workers by
the piece. To the capital in existence all must come for their
subsistence and their tools.

Association is the lowest and simplest mode of attaining accord and
concord between men. It is now the mode best suited to the condition
and chances of employes. Employers formerly made use of guilds to
secure common action for a common interest. They have given up this
mode of union because it has been superseded by a better one.
Correspondence, travel, newspapers, circulars, and telegrams bring to
employers and capitalists the information which they need for the
defense of their interests. The combination between them is automatic
and instinctive. It is not formal and regulated by rule. It is all the
stronger on that account, because intelligent men, holding the same
general maxims of pol