ciple is offered by the idea of function, because its
application would eliminate the surpluses which are the subject of
contention, and would make it evident that remuneration is based upon
service, {42} not upon chance or privilege or the power to use
opportunities to drive a hard bargain. But the idea of function is
incompatible with the doctrine that every person and organization have
an unlimited right to exploit their economic opportunities as fully as
they please, which is the working faith of modern industry; and, since
it is not accepted, men resign themselves to the settlement of the
issue by force, or propose that the State should supersede the force of
private associations by the use of its force, as though the absence of
a principle could be compensated by a new kind of machinery. Yet all
the time the true cause of industrial warfare is as simple as the true
cause of international warfare. It is that if men recognize no law
superior to their desires, then they must fight when their desires
collide. For though groups or nations which are at issue with each
other may be willing to submit to a principle which is superior to them
both, there is no reason why they should submit to each other.

Hence the idea, which is popular with rich men, that industrial
disputes would disappear if only the output of wealth were doubled, and
every one were twice as well off, not only is refuted by all practical
experience, but is in its very nature founded upon an illusion. For
the question is one not of amounts but of proportions; and men will
fight to be paid $120 a week, instead of $80, as readily as they will
fight to be paid $20 instead of $16, as long as there is no reason why
they should be paid $80 instead of $120, and as long as other men who
do not work are paid anything {43} at all. If miners demanded higher
wages when every superfluous charge upon coal-getting had been
eliminated, there would be a principle with which to meet their claim,
the principle that one group of workers ought not to encroach upon the
livelihood of others. But as long as mineral owners extract royalties,
and exceptionally productive mines pay thirty per cent. to absentee
shareholders, there is no valid answer to a demand for higher wages.
For if the community pays anything at all to those who do not work, it
can afford to pay more to those who do. The naive complaint, that
workmen are never satisfied, is, therefore, strictly true. It