approximately in general by the bargaining and higgling of the market."

This is the final parting of the ways between the two schools. Hitherto their paths have been sometimes the same, sometimes more or less parallel, and always departed merely to return. But now they part never to meet again, and that parting is made by the Socialist's development of his theory of Labor.

For Labor, in the dictionary of Socialism, is a commodity. Just as money, the modern medium or measure of exchange for two given commodities, is itself a commodity, so also is this Labor, which, the Marxian insists, is the fundamental determining power of value.

Labor as labor has no value. One may spend his days in building something that he passes his nights in destroying; Penelope wove her web only to unweave it; in both cases the labor is without worth. Green organizes an industry, builds a factory and secures men to operate the machines in that factory; but what he secures, or hires, or buys, is not Labor in the abstract, but the power and will to labor, whether by time, so paid, or by piece-work, the result of which latter contract is a result embodying labor-power. As Mr. Spargo well

says:

"Labor-power is a commodity and wages is its price."

Now, continues the Socialist, Labor being a commodity, it is subservient to the conditions that govern its sister commodities. Wages, its price, rise and decline, as do the prices of other commodities, and the price of Labor observes to Labor the same relation that is observed by the prices of other commodities to those commodities. Monopoly can thus create artificial labor-values, as it creates artificial coal or beef values, and to the excess of supply, as well as to that of demand, Labor, like every other commodity, is amenable. The only certain thing about Labor and wages is the only certain thing about other commodities and their prices that price for one as for the other will tend to approximate value.

To state the case more fully: since the ruling amount of time and labor obtaining at the period for the production of the best commercial type of a given article—that is, since its Social-Labor-Value-determines, under the influence of competition, the Exchange-Value of that article, so Labor, or labor-power, another commodity, depends upon the ruling amount of time and labor obtaining at that period for the production thereof—upon the

current standard of efficiency, under the influence of competition, plus the power of the employer. The price of this particular commodity is about the cost of the support of a laborer and his family—the latter being included because it is economically necessary to rear more laborers to fill the ranks-and though monopoly may force wages down and tradesunions may force them up, these conditions are subject to the same automatic adjustment that we have seen prevailing, so the Socialist thinks, in the matter of supply and demand as related to Price.

There is, however, as you may have noticed in the above exposition, one point wherein labor-power differs from other commodities: it must constantly be renewed. The worker, unlike such commodities as pig-iron and bricks, but not at all unlike such commodities as sheep and steers, must have food, clothing and a home in order to make him useful—and at that he must eventually die. Death being a factor, food, clothing and a home must also be provided for his family, in order that future workers may be raised up to take his place and maintain the supply of labor-power. And again whereas other commodities, in raw material form, are as a rule utterly consumed

in the creation of Exchange-Values, this laborpower creates fresh values in the course of its work and lives on to create still more.

Herein lies the doctrine of "The Surplus Value" to which I referred in Chapter I. It is well to repeat now the explanation given there:

"In the Socialist's view, under society as at present organized, A owns the tools; B has the necessity to use those tools, and A pays B wages for the time B spends in working with the tools, A meanwhile keeping the article that B produced with A's tools and selling this article for a price which will reimburse A for the wages paid B, and for the permission given B to use the tools, and still leave a profit that A puts into his own purse.

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Now, says the Socialist, between the ownership of those tools in the first instance and the use of those tools in the second, something was produced that could be sold for more money-was of more value-than A. the A, owner, expended. That something, that surplus value, the Socialist contends, was created not by A, the owner of the tools—he was paid for his ownership out of the primary profit— but by B, who used the tools, and the profit therefore should go not to A, but to B. The Socialist grants that A may be rewarded for

his ownership and for the opportunity provided B, but he maintains that B should be rewarded for his time and should receive that 'Surplus Value' which he has created."

This is the root of the essential antagonism that the Socialist discovers between employer and employé. In this creation by the commodity of labor-power of fresh values-surplus values—and in that commodity's power to continue so to create such values so long as the power lives-in that rests the belief that the employer, or capitalist, by getting possession of the surplus value without paying for it, makes his profit, gets something for nothing, something over and above the wages of the worker and the price of the worker's food and clothing and housing, over and above the rental on the machine, the wear and tear, and, so getting, perpetuates his power.

Of course, the Socialist is not so foolish as to pretend that all the surplus value goes into the pocket of the direct employer. That occurs only when the direct employer is the owner of all the capital invested in his business or factory, but it does go-whether in dividends to stockholders, or rent for build-* ings, or interest upon mortgages-to Capital as a class, says the Marxian, as opposed to