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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, while
the great sink the humble rise, and 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 labour 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 labour. 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 dependant 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
