ABSTRACT
The general highness or lowness of the earnings of labour is a subject of wide interest which must have occurred to ordinary people before economics became a special branch of science, and must have been discussed before any theory of" distribution" was invented. Yet recorded discussions upon it do not go back to antiquity. If anyone wonders why not, let him ask himself why he never considers what regulates the earnings of horses. I suppose he would answer, " Because horses belong to the class of lower animals and therefore are not part of the human community. We don't let them bargain with us. They have got to take what we give them. If they go on strike we whip or spur them, and if that does not make them move in the required
direction, we kill them, and make them into leather and glue."
