nd 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
_in_supportable 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 suchlike, 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 of
the problem! Manchester Insurrections, French Revolutions, and
thousandfold phenomena great and small, announce loudly that you must
bring it forward a little again. Never till now, in the history of an
Earth which to this hour nowhere refuses to grow corn if you will
plough it, to yield shirts if you will spin and weave in it, did the
mere manual two-handed worker (however it might fare with other
workers) cry in vain for such 'wages' as _he_ means by 'fair wages,'
namely