higher wages, they cannot hold out as long as the capitalists to whom they have given up nearly the whole of their product, but surrender as soon as their idleness reduces them to poverty. Under the present system, where the wage-receiver works for a profit-taker, he can never retain his independence, or retain the fruits of his labor. If he is paid £1 for his work, and the product thereof is sold for £5, he is unable to re-purchase it, but must be content with a fifth part. The census of the United States of America, for 1880,[1] shows that the daily average product of each wage-worker in manufacturing industry was valued at $10, while the daily average wage he received was but $1.15. That is not one-eighth of his earnings. And that is the very home of industrialism. It is probably a shade better elsewhere, but only a shade. The available statistics do not show the Australian laborer’s position in this dismal picture; but it may be safely concluded that his condition is not much better than that of his American comrade, for his is a profitable field for commercial speculation; and, of course, where the speculator’s profits are large, the laborer’s losses must be large in the exact proportion. The annual commerce of Australasia is £90,000,000; the gross earnings of labor in 1882, were £133,000,000. Let us try to make an approximate estimate of how those earnings are spent. The laborers paid in that year for taxation, £15,000,000;[2] the rent they paid to the land monopolists, estimated at say 10% on the value of estates, amounted to £19,000,000; the interest they paid to financiers for hampering their exchanges was £10,000,000; and business profits, calculated at 75%[3] on the merchantable commodities, were £67,000,000. This will leave the remuneration to the laborers at £22,000,000, or about 1/6 of their product, which is probably a fair estimate. The following will accordingly represent, as nearly as possible, a statement of
How the Australasian Laborers Spend Annual Earnings.
| Taxes | £15,000,000 |
| Rent @ 10% on estates’ value (£190,000,000) | 19,000,000 |
| Interest @ over 12% | 10,000,000 |
| Profits @ 75% on merchantable commodities | 67,000,000 |
| Remuneration to labor | 22,000,000 |
| ——————— | |
| Total earnings of Labor | £133,000,000 |
- ↑ Quoted in Parson’s Anarchism: its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, p. 17.
- ↑ This is Mulhall’s computation. Hayter makes it nearly £22,000,000.
- ↑ Whether this estimate is an accurate one, the merchants and speculators themselves will know best; however, without more accurate data, it is safe, I think, to say that a paying business usually “turns over” its stock in three to four months, and brings in an average of something like 25%. I have heard a successful tradesman assert that his stock doubled itself in twelve months, and I know that his calculation could not have been far out of the truth.
