ABSTRACT
Without the aid of the paramount principle, mental labor must be excluded, as well as capital, from any share in the products of labor. The advantages of competition, supported by its ever-attendant servant, want, or the dread of want, in the development of activity and production, over the old system of labor by force, or slave-labor, are quite apparent. The freedom of exchanges, however, cannot be limited without infringing on the right of the laborers to possess the whole produce of their labor. All day labor, all labor but task-work—which is almost uniformly over-exciting, injurious to health, and abridging life—though necessarily unequal in its degrees of exertion, is equally remunerated. The possession of the whole products of labor—never yet given, nor, under competition, capable of being given, to the producers—is a stimulus abundantly sufficient, without the antisocial aid of unequal remuneration, to produce all useful things.
