per week when broken time
is taken into consideration. Will anyone grudge an income of this kind
to a worker whose labour is of a most uncomfortable and exhausting
nature, and who takes his life in his hand from the moment he steps
into the cage until he reaches the surface again? The miner recognises
that high-priced coal means pinching and suffering in the homes of the
poor, and he has real sympathy for this class, but he argues that the
true value of coal must include a reasonable sustenance for those who
risk their lives in its production."[1239] If miners claim higher
wages than other workers because their work is uncomfortable and
dangerous, railway workers, sailors, and many others will raise the
same claims; fishers and butchers will claim higher wages because
their work is disgusting; factory workers because their work is
sedentary and monotonous; waiters because it is menial; postmen
because they have to walk; drivers because they have to sit still;
washerwomen because they have to stand; farm labourers because they
have to work in the cold; bakers because they have to work in the
heat, &c. All workers would of course demand the maximum pay, and who
could adjudicate on all the rival claims? The Wages Question seems
likely to prove insoluble.

HOW WILL LABOUR BE ORGANISED AND DIRECTED?

We are told: "Labour will be organised on principles of perfect
freedom. Everyone decides for himself in which branch he desires to be
employed. If a superfluity of workmen occur in one branch and a
deficiency in another, it will be the duty of the executive to arrange
matters and readjust the inequality."[1240] In accordance with the
variations in demand and supply and the rise and decay of industries,
the introduction of labour-saving machinery, &c., labour requires
continual redistribution. That redistribution is at present
automatically effected largely through the rise and fall of wages. A
rise in the wages of industries which require more labour, and a
decline in the wages of industries which require less labour, cause
labour to turn from shrinking to growing industries. When wages are no
longer fixed with reference to commercial demand and supply, how will
the periodical and necessary redistribution of labour be effected?
Some Socialist leaders think: "As the workers, of course, will not be
drafted into the different branches of production under military
compulsion, irrespective of their wishes, it may well turn out