sires as expressed in choice ; some goods that are produced easily by little labor may have a high value, and other goods that are produced by much hard and disagreeable labor must have a low § 3. Shifting of labor to the point of highest return to the laborer. The fisherman as he follows his vocation (as a self-directing laborer) gets an income in the form of the price of the fish he catches every day (less cost of maintaining his equipment). The value of this income is a complex of the usance attributable to the equipment, a very small amount, of the value of his own labor. The market conditions for fish determine the value of his labor. If in the long run he earns less than he could get in another equally agreeable occupation requiring no greater equipment, to which he will and can transfer, he will leave fishing. If he does change and gets a larger labor-income this is but the reflection of the higher priced product in the new occupation. Similarly, the gold miner, working with simple tools in the days of placer-mining, got an income determined by the value of the gold he washed out. It was for this that he gave up his former occupation and went to the gold fields. In like manner the farmer, the cloth weaver, the furniture maker, etc., would find the occu pation in which his labor would produce goods of the greatest value (differences of psychic income being allowed Thus we must conceive of a state of equilibrium where each kind of labor would be applied to the production of that kind of goods which will yield it the largest possible income, and where there is no one at the moment that can change to an occupation paying better on the whole.
In any labor market, each grade of labor may be looked upon as a potential supply of desirable things and its value is determined as if it were an actual supply. If all the vari ous goods, psychic and material, that labor produces were spread out before men in visible form, some would be in great 2 See note on The labor-theory of value at end of chapter.
8 See note at end of chapter, on "Value versus utility of labor." demand, some would exchange at a very unfavorable ratio with others. The market for goods would come to equilibrium at a point where each buyer had adjusted his supply of serv ices in the most favorable way, had so distributed his pur chasing power, as represented by his labor, so as to get those kinds and amounts of goods (including services of others) which gratify his desires in the highest possible manner.
Corresponding with this state of equilibrium on the buyers' side, would be at the point of the theoretically correct market price, an equilibrium on the sellers' side. Wherever and in so far as free competition exists, there is a constant adjustment and striving toward such a state of equilibrium. Each work man is moving into the industry where he earns the highest amount possible to him; that is, the highest price which any of his fellow-men are willing to pay for the service (embodied in goods) which he can and will perform. Each man's in
come is determined by the desirability of his services as bid for by the other members of his community. His value to others determines his economic place just as the specific grav ity of liquids of different densities poured into a glass deter mines their place. In actual life various disturbing factors prevent the full realization of this condition, but the prac tical process by which labor is valued is that which we have been describing. Each laborer in a true market should get close to what his services "are worth" in the sense of their economic value to the purchaser.' 4 This in no wise is to be taken to assert the social desirability of low wages, or the justice of actual wages either in any particular case or in general. Some thinkers have assumed and have asserted that the competitive wage is the wage which is "theoretically correct" in an ethical sense. The process of valuation which we are describing, how ever, leads us to the conclusion that under competitive conditions a man gets what he "is worth" to the purchaser merely in the value sense; he gets the maximum sum possible in view of the nature of his service and of the existing conditions of demand and supply. But these con ditions are more or less dependent at any given time upon various antecedent circumstances, such as the distribution of wealth, inheritance, § 4. Fees for temporary direct services. On the very borderline between the class of self-directing laborers and regular wage-employees is the class of laborers which is tem porarily employed to do a definite service directly for others, receiving therefor a payment or fee. The barber shaves his patron, the ferryman takes the traveler across the river, the boy carries a message, the surgeon sets a broken arm. Of a like nature are the fees for services of bootblacks, messengers, porters, doctors, lawyers, etc., when there is no continuing contract of employment. Each performs a valuable service, which is sold to the beneficiary but produces no long-abiding material result, and no separable, saleable, material good. Lit tle different is the case of custom-made production once very common, now infrequent, where the customer took his own cloth to the tailor to be made into a suit, leather to the cob bler to be made into shoes, and wheat to the miller to be ground into flour. The artisan owned his own tools, and stayed in his own shop, and was paid for the definite service of imparting new form-value to the materials. There, clearly, his earnings in the long run would be adjusted in a market for labor services.