The business itself sets the limits. You cannot
distribute $150,000 out of a business that brings in only $100,000. The
business limits the wages, but does anything limit the business? The
business limits itself by following bad precedents.
If men, instead of saying "the employer ought to do thus-and-so," would
say, "the business ought to be so stimulated and managed that it can do
thus-and-so," they would get somewhere. Because only the business can
pay wages. Certainly the employer cannot, unless the business warrants.
But if that business does warrant higher wages and the employer refuses,
what is to be done? As a rule a business means the livelihood of too
many men, to be tampered with. It is criminal to assassinate a business
to which large numbers of men have given their labours and to which they
have learned to look as their field of usefulness and their source of
livelihood. Killing the business by a strike or a lockout does not help.
The employer can gain nothing by looking over the employees and asking
himself, "How little can I get them to take?" Nor the employee by
glaring back and asking, "How much can I force him to give?" Eventually
both will have to turn to the business and ask, "How can this industry
be made safe and profitable, so that it will be able to provide a sure
and comfortable living for all of us?"
But by no means all employers or all employees will think straight.
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