timid that it can only be tempted by the offer of high rates for its
use, organizers of industry will think twice about expanding works or
opening new ones, and there will be a check to the demand for workers.
If so many people are saving that capital is a drug in the market,
anyone who has an enterprise in his head will put it in hand, and
workers will be wanted, first for construction then for operation.
It is to the interest of workers that there should be as many
capitalists as possible offering as much capital as possible to
industry, so that industry shall be in a state of chronic glut of
capital and scarcity of workers. Roughly, it is true that the product of
industry is divided between the workers who carry it on, and the savers
who, out of the product of past work, have built the workshop, put in
the plant and advanced the money to pay the workers until the new
product is marketed. The workers and the savers are at once partners and
rivals. They are partners because one cannot do without the other;
rivals because they compete continually concerning their share of the
profit realized. If the workers are to succeed in this competition and
secure for themselves an ever-increasing share of the profit of
industry--and from the point of view of humanity, civilization,
nationality, and common sense it is most desirable that this should be
so--then this is most likely to happen if the savers are so numerous
that they will be weak in bargaining and unable to stand out against the
demands of the workers. If there were innumerable millions of workers
and only one saver with money enough to start one factory, the one saver
would be able to name his own terms in arranging his wages bill, and the
salaries of his managers and clerks. If the wind were on the other
cheek, and a crowd of capitalists with countless millions of money were
eager to set the wheels of industry going, and could not find enough
workers to man and organize and manage their workshops, then the workers
would have the whip hand. To bring this state of things about it would
seem to be good policy not to damn the capitalist with bell and with
book and frighten him till he is so scarce that he is master of the
situation, but to give him every encouragement to save his money and put
it into industry. For the more plentiful he is, the stronger is the
position of the workers.
In fact the saver is so essential that it is nowadays fashionable to
contend that t
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