buying whisky or
roast beef will very soon be taken from them. Messrs. Rentmonger,
Interestmonger, and Profitmonger will speedily scent additional swag,
and they will have it, too."[164] "The 'Iron Law of Wages' reduces the
wages to as near the level of the means of subsistence as local
circumstances will admit of."[165] If these arguments were correct it
would follow that the workers could cause their wages to rise by
drinking wine instead of whisky, and by smoking Havana cigars instead
of pipe-tobacco.

This theory of wages is called the "Iron Law of Wages" because of its
absolute and pitiless rigidity. For instance, the Iron Law of Wages
will prevent lower prices of food benefiting the workman in any way.
"If the working class is enabled to buy cheap bread, the operation of
the 'Iron Law of Wages' will secure all the advantage for the
capitalists, as it did in the days of the saintly Bright, when the
corn laws were repealed. Capital is always the same in its effect on
the working-class, whether manipulated by an individual capitalist,
joint-stock enterprise, municipality, or government, and with each
step in concentration the working-class gets relatively less and the
master class gets richer, more corrupt, and more bestial, as recent
events in Berlin and elsewhere show."[166] The "Iron Law of Wages" is
irrefutable and irresistible. "Economists have come to talk about the
'Iron Law of Wages' with as much assurance as if it were an
irreversible law of Nature."[167]

The Iron Law of Wages exists chiefly in the imagination of British
Socialists. The general wage of British workmen living in towns ranges
from, say _18s._ to more than _2l._ per week, and its amount does not
depend on the cost of subsistence, but on the working skill and
various other factors. If the Iron Law of Wages were correct, wages
would be almost uniform. The Iron Law of Wages can possibly apply only
to one small class of workers, the lowest and least skilled labourers,
provided that unemployment is so great among them that they abandon
collective bargaining and underbid one another down to the level of
subsistence. When workers are organised, the Iron Law of Wages does
not apply. The level of wages depends, broadly speaking, on supply and
demand. Wages rise when two employers run after one workman; wages
fall when two workmen run after one employer. An employer who engages
a workman does not ask, "How much do you eat?" but "What can you do?"
an