ase in actual fact, that the labourers cannot or will not wait for their wage till the very end of the production of the engine, and that they enter into a negotiation with an undertaker, with the view of obtaining a wage from him immediately on the performance of their labour, in return for which he is to become the owner of the final product. Assume, further, that this undertaker is a perfectly just and disinterested man, who is far from making use of the position into which the labourers are possibly forced, to usuriously depress their claim of wages; and let us ask, On what conditions will the wage-contract be concluded under such circumstances?
The question is tolerably easy to answer. Clearly the labourers will be perfectly justly treated if the undertaker offers them as wage the sums which they would have received as parts of the division, if they had been producing on their own account. This principle gives us first a firm standing ground for one labourer, namely, for the last. This labourer would in the former case have received £100 immediately after the accomplishment of his labour. This £100, therefore, to be perfectly just, the undertaker must now offer him. For the remaining labourers the above principle gives no immediate indication. The wages in this case are not paid at the same time as they would have been in the case of the division, and the sums paid in the former case cannot afford a direct standard. But we have another standing ground. As all five labourers have performed an equal amount towards the accomplishment of the work, in justice an equal wage is due to them; and where every labourer is to be paid immediately on the performance of his labour, this wage will be expressed by an equal amount. Therefore, in justice, all five labourers, at the end of their year's labour, will receive each £100.
If this seems too little, let me refer to the following simple calculation, which will demonstrate that the labourers receive quite the same value in this case as they would have received had they divided the whole product among themselves alone, in which case, as we have seen, the justice of the division would have been beyond question.
Labourer No. 5 receives, in the case of division, £100 immediately after the year's labour; in the case of the wage-contract he receives the same sum at the same time.
Labourer No. 4 receives, in the case of division, £105 a year after the termination of the year's labour; in the case of the wage-contract £100 immediately after the labour. If, in the latter case, he lets this sum lie at interest for a year he will be in exactly the same position as he would have been in the case of division; he will be in possession of £105 one year after the conclusion of his labour.
Worker No. 3 receives, in the case of division, £110 two years after the termination of his labour; in the wage-contract, £100 at once, which sum, placed at interest for two years, will increase to £110.
And in the same way, finally, the £100 which the first and second labourers receive are, with the addition of the respective interests, quite equivalent to the £120 and the £115 which, in the case of division, these two labourers would have received respectively four and three years after the conclusion of their labour.
But if each single wage under the contract is equal to the corresponding quota under the division, of course the sum of the wages must also be equal to the sum of the division quotas; the sum of £500 which the undertaker pays to the labourers immediately on the completion of their work is entirely equal in value to the £550 which, in the other case, would have been divided among the labourers at the end of the fifth year.
A higher wage payment, e.g. to pay the year's labour at £110 each labourer, is only conceivable in one of two cases; either if that which is not indifferent to the labourers, namely, the difference of time, were completely indifferent to the undertaker; or if the undertaker were willing to make a gift to the labourers of the difference in value between a present £110 and a fu