The interest of the wage-worker, as wage-worker, is to receive the largest wage possible for the least number of hours spent in labor. The interest of the employer, as employer, on the other hand, is to secure from the worker as many hours of service, as much labor power, as possible for the lowest wage which the worker can be induced to accept. The workers employed in a factory may be divided by a hundred different forces. They may be divided by racial differences, for instance; but while preserving these differences in a large measure, they will tend to unite upon the basis of their economic interests. Some of the great labor unions, notably the United Mine Workers,[118] afford remarkable illustrations of this fact. If the difference of religious interests leads to division, the same unanimity of economic interests will sooner or later be developed. No impartial investigator who studies the influence of a great labor union which includes in its membership workers of various nationalities and adherents of various religious creeds, can fail to observe the fact that the community of economic interests which unites them is a powerful factor making for their amalgamation into a harmonious civic whole.
With the employers it is the same. They, too, may be divided by a hundred forces; the competition among them may be keen and fierce, but common economic interests will tend to unite them against the organizations of the workers they employ. Racial, religious, social, and other divisions and distinctions, may be maintained, but they will, in general, unite for the protection and furtherance of their common economic interests.
So much, indeed, belongs to the very primer stage of economic theory. Adam Smith is rather out of fashion nowadays, but there is still much in "The Wealth of Nations" which will repay our attention. No Socialist writer, not even Marx, has stated the fundamental principle of the antagonism between the employing and employed classes more clearly, as witness the following:--
"The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labor.... Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals.... Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labor.... These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution.... Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labor. Their usual pretenses are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profits which the masters make by their work. But whether these combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamor, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the extravagance and folly of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and _never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, laborers, and journeymen_."[119]