T'HE earlier orthodox economists were so intent on measuring with their divided stick the relations of the dead products of industry, that it is little wonder they altogether overlooked those great blocks of Power which in the last chapter we saw interposing themselves everywhere between the different classes who own the living instruments of production - the land, the fixed capital, and the labour, - powers whereby one or other of these classes was enabled to extort 'forced gains' from the rest; and this oversight is as great in the works of the recent academic economists as in the earlier ones. Consider, for example, the naivete of General Walker, who declares that if workmen will only work harder and better, the increase in the product must go to them in higher wages; - but why must it? On the ground, he says, that as Rent and Interest will not be increased, the excess must go to Labour. It would, of course, if the master and his workmen could bargain on equal terms, but they cannot if they would; and the mere fact that each master makes his own bargain with his workmen, cannot neutralize the fact that the informal combination of the master-capitalists as a body gives them an advantage over the class of dispersed workmen as a body, seeing that the one class own the instruments of Production from which Profits and Interest arise, while the other, divorced from them, are dependent on their masters for their living; and this difference in the power of bargaining of the masters over their workmen, involuntarily affects the contract between every master and every individual workman.

He could scarcely help taking advantage of it if he would, any more than rival crews entering on a race on even terms can help being affected by the fact that the one is made up of twelve-stone men and the other only of ten, or that the one has the shore, and the other the mid-stream. It was a rare piece of simplicity on the part of General Walker to imagine that the masters were going to throw away this differential advantage under any contract, however free, - and so spoil the game which the trump cards they have been enabled to secure have given them, - by handing it over to their workmen, when they could quite legitimately, according to the rules of the present game of wealth, pocket the difference themselves under that very elastic and convenient category of 'wages of superintendence.' Besides, do the masters in point of fact ever hand over any excess of product to their workmen, however hard they work? Do they do so even in piece-work % On the contrary, they cut down the wages of the piece-work so that it will average with ordinary time-labour, and thereby still retain the differential advantage which their economic position gives them; like the Bank of Monte Carlo, which, while freely allowing you to choose your form of play, has so loaded the chances in its own favour all round - by its zero and maximum - before you begin, that it has the advantage of you in every spin.

Is it not, indeed, a truism that wages do not rise pari passu with profits, but lag behind them; and is it not only by laborious and difficult combinations on the part of the workmen that they can be got to rise at all? Another equally false assumption of General Walker's is, that it is the ability of the entrepreneur or organising capitalist which makes the difference between a dear and a cheap product.

On this he dwells with as much insistence and at as great a length, as if the entrepreneur were the very soul and crown of all industry, instead of too often being merely that cunning cuckoo who has managed to turn the eggs of the others out of their nests. It is true that he does a service to industry, and a very great service, but it is the negative one of increasing the produce by picking up the savings that are to be had by a more economical 'division of labour;' not the positive one which can only come, as we have seen, from capturing the great powers of Nature embodied in machines and processes, and which is to be credited to the inventors and scientists, not to the entrepreneurs. It is true that the entrepreneurs have got hold of the new inventions and processes and are using them; for without them their organizing ability would go a very little way, and would, indeed, be the play of Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark left out. But how have they got them? Mainly by taking advantage of the inventors' poverty it is generally admitted, like those old theatrical entrepreneurs whose custom was to throw to the playwright a £10 note and be done with him, instead of the new, more reasonable and more honourable arrangement which divides the profits between them according to the success of the play.

But not only has General Walker forgotten the inventor in his apotheosis of the entrepreneur, he has forgotten also the advantage held by large and concentrated capitals over dispersed smaller ones; first, in the savings which large-scale production makes possible through the 'division of labour,' and secondly, in enabling the entrepreneurs to crush out in detail the competition of the smaller concerns by underselling them. He has forgotten too, the advantage which situation itself gives - the proximity to railways, canals, and markets, etc., - of which the giant industrial magnates can command the pick, but none of which advantages proceed from the entrepreneur, although in their aggregate they are so great that without them he would be as helpless to add to the wealth of the world as his own staff of clerks. But when once he has managed to become possessed of any one of these differential advantages, it quickly, - owing to the tendency of profits to inequality, - gives him a fresh lever for seizing more of them; until in the end, with the wealth thus pouring in on him, the poor entrepreneur, if he have a sense of humour, must stand in the midst of it all, astonished at the greatness thus thrust on him.