Little matters it that the struggle
between supply and demand ends, now to the advantage of the
employer, now to the benefit of the employee; such oscillations
may vary in amplitude, this depending on well-known accessory
circumstances which have been estimated a thousand times. The
certain point, and the only one for us to notice now, is that the
universal conscience does not set the same price upon the labor
of an overseer and the work of a hod-carrier. A reduction in the
price of the day's work, then, is necessary: so that the laborer,
after having been afflicted in mind by a degrading function,
cannot fail to be struck also in his body by the meagreness of
his reward. This is the literal application of the words of the
Gospel: HE THAT HATH NOT, FROM HIM SHALL BE TAKEN EVEN THAT
WHICH HE HATH.
There is in economic accidents a pitiless reason which laughs at
religion and equity as political aphorisms, and which renders man
happy or unhappy according as he obeys or escapes the
prescriptions of destiny.
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