When the buyer of labor is a merchant who supplies the ma terials and pays for the form-change made in the home or shop of the worker, the system of work is called domestic produc tion, sometimes factor or commission work, sometimes, in cities, tenement-house work. This is still common in the weaving of silk in Europe, and in the manufacture of clothing in America, and in some other cases. The artisan has here less independent action, has no dealing directly with the ultimate consumer of his services, and is very near to being a piece price wage-earner ; but if he still owns his tools it is not a clear case of wage-payment. We hesitate to call any of these the growth of population in the different classes of society, etc. Our present analysis, therefore, involves no ethical judgment of a competitive wage-scale one way or another. That is a question for separate con sideration.
cases of wage-payment, tho they come very near to it. But when we come to the case of the artisan (e.g., a carpenter), even tho he may own his own tools, who works for an em ployer in a place chosen and controlled by the employer, we consider it a case of wage-payment. In these border cases we see very plainly how the services are valued and sold apart from the material to which they are applied.
§ 5. The continued wage contract for personal services. In ordinary domestic service the laborer is employed for a longer or shorter time to give a series of services, some per sonal and direct, and others more or less indirect. The wealthy man does not hire a coachman each time he wishes to take a ride, but having summed up the advantages of a coachman's services, he buys them by the month or the year. The price is determined in the market for coachmen of the needed abil ity, qualities ranging from stupid to bright, from weak to strong, and from drunk to sober. Instead of buying flowers from day to day, a wealthy man hires a gardener to cultivate them in a conservatory. The average market-price of flowers influences the wages paid to the gardener, his wages being but the sum of the values (or of his imputed part in the val ues) of flowers, well-kept lawn, and garden products. Of a like nature are the services of cooks, waiters, tutors, musi cians, and teachers in private employment, etc. Between two and three million persons are employed in this way in Amer ica. According to the conditions of each household and of the general market, the one or the other mode of buying these services and products is the more advantageous to the con sumer. The wages of gardeners in private employ must be in pretty close agreement with the wages of those working in commercial gardening, and with the labor-incomes of the simpler self-employing gardeners.
§ 6. Price of labor employed on products to sell. The payment of the laborer to produce goods for exchange is the most common modern case of wages. The relation of wages to the value of the product is in this case more complex, for the employer is directing the labor to meeting the desires of others, not his own desires. It is by rightly anticipating the desires of prospective customers for the product, and suc cessfully exchanging or selling it, that the employer is en abled to recover the amounts paid to laborers. When indus try becomes complex, the connection between the wages and the price ultimately realized in the product may be broken for a time, but rarely for a very long time. Because of mis calculations, labor is sometimes employed on things that prove to be quite valueless, and on other things that have a much greater value than was expected. When months or years in tervene before the price of the labor is realized in the sale of the product, the employer must forecast the outcome as best he can, and employ labor only when the wages promise to be recovered. These are complicating facts, but in any logical view they do not falsify the principle that wages are but the commuted, or reflected price of the product (i.e., of that portion of the product which under market conditions, is reflected to the labor).'s Let us recall again that labor is only one of the elements entering into the product. (See last chapter, section 10.) Each agent in industry, whether it be a plow, a horse, or a man, is valued in connection with other agents, never apart or isolated. It is not the total service that any one of them performs that can be got at ; all that can be got at is the value attributed to the marginal unit of supply, that is to every unit of like quality in the whole economic situation. Each agent is considered in combination with other things at a given moment under existing conditions. Within limits labor may be substituted for the other elements, fewer machines being used and more laborers, or vice versa. It is said that the price of mules at the Pennsylvania mines is affected by immigration, for a mule and a man may for some purposes be substituted. No more will be given for any labor than s The place of the employer as midway between laborer and consumer, is more fully treated later, under enterprise, in Part V.