This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...and employed. Mrs. Webb illustrates this point as follows: --" Let us see how this comes about. I will not, to prove my point, take a time of bad trade, when five workmen are competing for one situation: I will assume that the whole labour market is in a state of perfect equilibrium; that there is only ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...and employed. Mrs. Webb illustrates this point as follows: --" Let us see how this comes about. I will not, to prove my point, take a time of bad trade, when five workmen are competing for one situation: I will assume that the whole labour market is in a state of perfect equilibrium; that there is only one workman wanting work, and only one situation vacant. Now, watch the process of bargaining between the employer and the workman. If the capitalist refuses to accept the workman's terms, he will, no doubt, suffer some inconvenience as an employer. To fulfil his orders he will have to ' speed up ' some of his machinery, or insist on his workpeople working longer hours. Failing these expedients he may have to delay the delivery of his goods, and may even find his profits, at the end of the year, fractionally less than before. But, meanwhile, he goes on eating and drinking, his wife and family go on living, just as before. His physical comfort is not affected: he can afford to wait until the labourer comes back in a humbler frame of mind. And that is just what the labourer must presently do. For he, meanwhile, has lost his day. His very subsistence depends on his promptly coming to an agreement. If he stands out, he has no money to meet his weekly rent, or to buy food for his family. If he is obstinate, consumption of his little hoard, or the pawning of his furniture, may put off the catastrophe; but sooner or later slow starvation forces him to come to terms. This is no real freedom of contract. The alternative on one side is inconvenience; on the other it is starvation."1 In this way the unskilled labourer at any rate is compelled to take not what his work is really worth, but what he can get in competition with his fellow-workman...
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