have no place in
commerce. Employers who in the enjoyment of this superior position pay
bare subsistance wages, and defend themselves by the plea that they pay
the "market rate," are "sweaters," and the blame of sweating will
rightly attach to them.

But this is not to be regarded as the normal position of employers.
Among firms unsheltered by a monopoly, and exposed to the full force of
capitalist competition, the rate of profit is also at "the minimum of
subsistence," that is to say, if higher wages were paid to the employes,
the rate of profit would either become a negative quantity, or would be
so low that capital could no longer be obtained for investment in such a
trade. Generally it may be said that a joint-stock company and a private
firm, trading as most firms do chiefly on borrowed capital, could not
pay higher wages and stand its ground in the competition with other
firms. If a benevolent employer engaged in a manufacture exposed to open
competition undertook to raise the wages of his men twenty per cent, in
order to lift them to a level of comfort which satisfied his
benevolence, he must first sacrifice the whole of his "wage of
superintendence," and he will then find that he can only pay the
necessary interest on his borrowed capital out of his own pocket: in
fact he would find he had essayed to do what in the long run was
impossible. The individual employer under normal circumstances is no
more to blame for the low wages, long hours, &c., than is the middleman.
He could not greatly improve the industrial condition of his employes,
however much he might wish.

Sec. 9. The Purchaser as "Sweater." A third view, a little longer-sighted
than the others, casts the blame upon the purchasing public. Wages must
be low, we are told, because the purchaser insists on low prices. It is
the rage for "cheapness" which is the real cause, according to this line
of thought. Formerly the customer was content to pay a fair price for an
article to a tradesman with whom he dealt regularly, and whose interest
it was to sell him a fair article. The tradesman could thus afford to
pay the manufacturer a price which would enable him to pay decent wages,
and in return for this price he insisted upon good work being put into
the goods he bought. Thus there was no demand for bad work. Skilled work
alone could find a market, and skilled work requires the payment of
decent wages. The growth of modern competition has changed all this.
R