among the barbarians,
where wealth is still measured by cattle, great chiefs are described as
hundred-cow men. The manager of a great enterprise who is paid
$400,000 a year, might similarly be described as a hundred-family man,
since he receives the income of a hundred families. It is true that
special talent is worth any price, and that a payment of $400,000 a
year to the head of a business with a turnover of millions is
economically a bagatelle. But economic considerations are not the only
considerations. There is also "the point of honor." And the truth is
that these hundred-family salaries are ungentlemanly.

When really important issues are at stake every one realizes that no
decent man can stand out for his price. A general does not haggle with
his government for the precise pecuniary equivalent of his contribution
to victory. A sentry who gives the alarm to a sleeping battalion does
not spend next day collecting the capital value of the lives he has
saved; he is paid 1/- a day and is lucky if he gets it. The commander
of a ship does not cram himself and his belongings into the boats and
leave the crew to scramble out of the wreck as best they can; by the
tradition of the service he is the last man to leave. There is no
reason why the public should insult manufacturers and men of business
by treating them as though they were more thick-skinned than generals
and more extravagant than privates. To say that they are worth a good
deal more than even the exorbitant salaries which a few of them get is
often true. But it is beside the point. No one has any business to
{179} expect to be paid "what he is worth," for what he is worth is a
matter between his own soul and God. What he has a right to demand,
and what it concerns his fellow-men to see that he gets, is enough to
enable him to perform his work. When industry is organized on a basis
of function, that, and no more than that, is what he will be paid. To
do the managers of industry justice, this whining for more money is a
vice to which they (as distinct from their shareholders) are not
particularly prone. There is no reason why they should be. If a man
has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do
it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for
any of the children of Adam.

[1] The Coal Mines Department supplied the following figures to the
Coal Industry Commission (Vol. III, App. 66). They relate