7. Chapter VII: Influence Of Democracy On Wages
Most of the remarks which I have already made in speaking of
servants and masters, may be applied to masters and workmen. As
the gradations of the social scale come to be less observed,
whilst the great sink the humble rise, and as poverty as well as
opulence ceases to be hereditary, the distance both in reality
and in opinion, which heretofore separated the workman from the
master, is lessened every day. The workman conceives a more
lofty opinion of his rights, of his future, of himself; he is
filled with new ambition and with new desires, he is harassed by
new wants. Every instant he views with longing eyes the profits
of his employer; and in order to share them, he strives to
dispose of his labor at a higher rate, and he generally succeeds
at length in the attempt. In democratic countries, as well as
elsewhere, most of the branches of productive industry are
carried on at a small cost, by men little removed by their wealth
or education above the level of those whom they employ. These
manufacturing speculators are extremely numerous; their interests
differ; they cannot therefore easily concert or combine their
exertions. On the other hand the workmen have almost always some
sure resources, which enable them to refuse to work when they
cannot get what they conceive to be the fair price of their
labor. In the constant struggle for wages which is going on
between these two classes, their strength is divided, and success
alternates from one to the other. It is even probable that in
the end the interest of the working class must prevail; for the
high wages which they have already obtained make them every day
less dependent on their masters; and as they grow more
independent, they have greater facilities for obtaining a further
increase of wages.
I shall take for example that branch of productive industry
which is still at the present day the most generally followed in
France, and in almost all the countries of the world -I mean the
cultivation of the soil. In France most of those who labor for
hire in agriculture, are themselves owners of certain plots of
ground, which just enable them to subsist without working for
anyone else. When these laborers come to offer their services to
a neighboring landowner or farmer, if he refuses them a certain
rate of wages, they retire to their own small property and await
another opportunity.
I think that, upon the whole, it may be asserted that a slow
and gradual rise of wages is one of the general laws of
democratic communities. In proportion as social conditions
become more equal, wages rise; and as wages are higher, social
conditions become more equal. But a great and gloomy exception
occurs in our own time. I have shown in a preceding chapter that
aristocracy, expelled from political society, has taken refuge in
certain departments of productive industry, and has established
its sway there under another form; this powerfully affects the
rate of wages. As a large capital is required to embark in the
great manufacturing speculations to which I allude, the number of
persons who enter upon them is exceedingly limited: as their
number is small, they can easily concert together, and fix the
rate of wages as they please. Their workmen on the contrary are
exceedingly numerous, and the number of them is always
increasing; for, from time to time, an extraordinary run of
business takes place, during which wages are inordinately high,
and they attract the surrounding population to the factories.
But, when once men have embraced that line of life, we have
already seen that they cannot quit it again, because they soon
contract habits of body and mind which unfit them for any other
sort of toil. These men have generally but little education and
industry, with but few resources; they stand therefore almost at
the mercy of the master. When competition, or other fortuitous
circumstances, lessen his profits, he can reduce the wages of his
workmen almost at pleasure, and make from them what he loses by
the chances of business. Should the workmen strike, the master,
who is a rich man, can very well wait without being ruined until
necessity brings them back to him; but they must work day by day
or they die, for their only property is in their hands. They
have long been impoverished by oppression, and the poorer they
become the more easily may they be oppressed: they can never
escape from this fatal circle of cause and consequence. It is
not then surprising that wages, after having sometimes suddenly
risen, are permanently lowered in this branch of industry;
whereas in other callings the price of labor, which generally
increases but little, is nevertheless constantly augmented.
This state of dependence and wretchedness, in which a part
of the manufacturing population of our time lives, forms an
exception to the general rule, contrary to the state of all the
rest of the community; but, for this very reason, no circumstance
is more important or more deserving of the especial consideration
of the legislator; for when the whole of society is in motion, it
is difficult to keep any one class stationary; and when the
greater number of men are opening new paths to fortune, it is no
less difficult to make the few support in peace their wants and
their desires.