e an interest in
his employment, his existence. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is
far better off under the present arrangement than under the old slave
system; it can dismiss its employees at discretion without sacrificing
invested capital, and gets its work done much more cheaply than is
possible with slave labour, as Adam Smith comfortingly pointed out. {80}

Hence it follows, too, that Adam Smith was perfectly right in making the
assertion: "That the demand for men, like that for any other commodity,
necessarily regulates the production of men, quickens it when it goes on
too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast." _Just as in the
case of any other commodity_! If there are too few labourers at hand,
prices, _i.e_. wages, rise, the workers are more prosperous, marriages
multiply, more children are born and more live to grow up, until a
sufficient number of labourers has been secured. If there are too many
on hand, prices fall, want of work, poverty, and starvation, and
consequent diseases arise, and the "surplus population" is put out of the
way. And Malthus, who carried the foregoing proposition of Smith
farther, was also right, in his way, in asserting that there are always
more people on hand than can be maintained from the available means of
subsistence. Surplus population is engendered rather by the competition
of the workers among themselves, which forces each separate worker to
labour as much each day as his strength can possibly admit. If a
manufacturer can employ ten hands nine hours daily, he can employ nine if
each works ten hours, and the tenth goes hungry. And if a manufacturer
can force the nine hands to work an extra hour daily for the same wages
by threatening to discharge them at a time when the demand for hands is
not very great, he discharges the tenth and saves so much wages. This is
the process on a small scale, which goes on in a nation on a large one.
The productiveness of each hand raised to the highest pitch by the
competition of the workers among themselves, the division of labour, the
introduction of machinery, the subjugation of the forces of nature,
deprive a multitude of workers of bread. These starving workers are then
removed from the market, they can buy nothing, and the quantity of
articles of consumption previously required by them is no longer in
demand, need no longer be produced; the workers previously employed in
producing them are therefore driven out of w