This has now been the motto of the English working-class 
movement for the last fifty years. It did good service in the time 
of the rising Trades Unions after the repeal of the infamous 
Combination Laws in 1824”; it did still better service in the time 
of the glorious Chartist movement, when the English workmen 
marched at the head of the European working class. But times are 
moving on, and a good many things which were desirable and 
necessary fifty, and even thirty years ago, are now antiquated and 
would be completely out of place. Does the old, time-honoured 
watchword too belong to them? 

A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work? But what is a fair day’s 
wages, and what is a fair day’s work? How are they determined by 
the laws under which modern society exists and develops itself? 
For an answer to this we must not apply to the science of morals 
or of law and equity, nor to any sentimental feeling of humanity, 
justice, or even charity. What is morally fair, what is even fair in 
law, may be far from being socially fair. Social fairness or 
unfairness is decided by one science alone—the science which 
deals with the material facts of production and exchange, the 
science of political economy. 

Now what does political economy call a fair day’s wages and a 
fair day’s work? Simply the rate of wages and the length and 
intensity of a day’s work which are determined by competition of 
employer and employed in the open market. And what are they, 
when thus determined? 

A fair day’s wages, under normal conditions, is the sum 
required to procure to the labourer the means of existence 

A Fair Day’s Wages for a Fair Day’s Work 377 

necessary, according to the standard of life of his station and 
country, to keep himself in working order and to propagate his 
race. The actual rate of wages, with the fluctuations of trade, may 
be sometimes above, sometimes below this rate; but, under fair 
conditions, that rate ought to be the average of all oscillations. 

A fair day’s work is that length of working day and that 
intensity of actual work which expends one day’s full working 
power of the workman without encroaching upon his capacity for 
the same amount of work for the next and following days. 

The transaction, then, may be thus described—the workman 
gives to the Capitalist his full day’s working power; that is, so 
much of it as he can give without rendering impossible the 
continuous repetition of the transaction. In exchange he receives 
just as much, and no more, of the necessaries of life as is required 
to keep up the repetition of the same bargain every day. The 
workman gives as much, the Capitalist gives as little, as the nature 
of the bargain will admit. This is a very peculiar sort of fairness. 

But let us look a little deeper into the matter. As, according to 
political economists, wages and working days are fixed by 
competition, fairness seems to require that both sides should have 
the same fair start on equal terms. But that is not the case. The 
Capitalist, if he cannot agree with the Labourer, can afford to 
wait, and live upon his capital. The workman cannot. He has but 
wages to live upon, and must therefore take work when, where, 
and at what terms he can get it. The workman has no fair start. 
He is fearfully handicapped by hunger. Yet, according to the 
political economy of the Capitalist class, that is the very pink of 
fairness. 

But this is a mere trifle. The application of mechanical power 
and machinery to new trades, and the extension and improve- 
ments of machinery in trades already subjected to it, keep turning 
out of work more and more “hands”; and they do so at a far 
quicker rate than that at which these superseded “hands” can be 
absorbed by, and find employment in, the manufactures of the 
country. These superseded “hands” form a real industrial army of 
reserve for the use of Capital. If trade is bad they may starve, beg, 
steal, or go to the workhouse *”; if trade is good they are ready at 
hand to expand production; and until the very last man, woman, 
or child of this army of reserve shall have found work—which 
happens in times of frantic over-production alone—until then will 
its competition keep down wages, and by its existence alone 
strengthen the power of Capital in its struggle with Labour. In the 
race with Capital, Labour is not only handicapped, it has to drag a 

cannon-bal]l riveted to its foot. Yet that is fair according to 
Capitalist political economy. 

But let us inquire out of what fund does Capital pay these very 
fair wages? Out of capital, of course. But capital produces no 
value. Labour is, besides the earth, the only source of wealth; 
capital itself is nothing but the stored-up produce of labour. So 
that the wages of Labour are paid out of labour, and the working 
man is paid out of his own produce. According to what we may 
call common fairness, the wages of the labourer ought to consist in 
the produce of his labour. But that would not be fair according to 
political economy. On the contrary, the produce of the workman’s 
labour goes to the Capitalist, and the workman gets out of it no 
more than the bare necessaries of life. And thus the end of this 
uncommonly “fair” race of competition is that the produce of the 
labour of those who do work, gets unavoidably accumulated in the 
hands of those that do not work, and becomes in their hands the 
most powerful means to enslave the very men who produced it. 

A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work! A good deal might be 
said about the fair day’s work too, the fairness of which 1s 
perfectly on a par with that of the wages. But that we must leave 
for another occasion. From what has been stated it is pretty clear 
that the old watchword has lived its day, and will hardly hold 
water nowadays. The fairness of political economy, such as it truly 
lays down the laws which rule actual society, that fairness is all on 
one side—on that of Capital. Let, then, the old motto be buried 
for ever and replaced by another: