But the real cause will be clear if you will consider
that since labor must find its workshop and reservoir in
land, the labor question is but another name for the land
question, and will reexamine your assumption that private
property in land is necessary and right. ...
You assume that the labor question is a question
between wage-workers and their employers. But working for
wages is not the primary or exclusive occupation of
labor. Primarily men work for themselves without the
intervention of an employer. And the primary source of
wages is in the earnings of labor, the man who works for
himself and consumes his own products receiving his wages
in the fruits of his labor. Are not fishermen, boatmen,
cab-drivers, peddlers, working farmers — all, in
short, of the many workers who get their wages directly
by the sale of their services or products without the
medium of an employer, as much laborers as those who work
for the specific wages of an employer? In your
consideration of remedies you do not seem even to have
thought of them. Yet in reality the laborers who work for
themselves are the first to be considered, since what men
will be willing to accept from employers depends
manifestly on what they can get by working for
themselves.
You assume that all employers are rich men, who might
raise wages much higher were they not so grasping. But is
it not the fact that the great majority of employers are
in reality as much pressed by competition as their
workmen, many of them constantly on the verge of failure?
Such employers could not possibly raise the wages they
pay, however they might wish to, unless all others were
compelled to do so. ... read the whole
letter