 rising to meet the increased cost of living.
We have bewailed the High Prices, while prices are only nominally higher than they were five years ago. Gold (or wages) has decreased in value considerably and as commodities tend to exchange at their values, gold buys fewer commodities.
We may still be receiving the same number of dollars each week, but the value of these dollars has decreased. Actually our wages have been reduced. Unless they enable us to buy the necessities of life we are not receiving the value of our labor-power from our employers.
1. An increase in the prices of the necessities of life may come from an increase in the value of commodities. We shall have to receive an equal rise in wages if we are to get the value of our labor-power.
2. Wages (or gold) may decrease in value until they no longer will purchase A. Unless we receive more wages accordingly we will be receiving less than the value of our labor-power.
Now all through the preceding chapters I could hear, in imagination, the reformers crying, "But what about monopoly prices?"
In the first place, there never was an absolute, permanent monopoly. There are steel mills in China, Japan, Mexico, England and Germany which will supply the American market if they can undersell the home product. China is now shipping steel rails into California at a lower price than the American mills supply them.
There are still many independent oil companies in many lands. Automobile service, electric car lines, aeroplanes, water courses, chutes and flumes all infringe upon the railroads. Whenever the railway charges become more than the traffic will bear the manufacturer removes to another city.
Men may hope to gain permanent complete monopolies, but there is always the danger of somebody coming forth with a substitute. Some one is always providing substitutes.
No man was ever able to raise the general price of a commodity at will, and get that price. If any man ever held such power, he would have charged an unlimited price for his commodity and immediately assumed the world's dictatorship.
John D. Rockefeller may be able to raise the price on oil in certain communities but he cannot force men to buy at this price. So-called monopolists are subject to economic laws just as are wageworkers. No monopolist was ever so great a philanthropist that he did not charge all the traffic would bear at all times. We see, therefore, that they cannot raise prices at their own sweet will.
No man ever held a near monopoly but what other capitalists with money to invest turned ever longing eyes upon the Golden Goose ready to produce a substitute that will relegate his rival's product to the Past.
But there are some very near monopolies in the United States. Some of these doubtless are able to sell–or exchange–their commodities above their value. A few of these are engaged in the production of food, clothing or houses.
Now it does not mean because a monopolist holds temporary control of a commodity that he will raise the price of that commodity. He will surely seek to lower its value by closing down unnecessary factories and installing improved machinery that will lessen the labor contained in his product. Many "monopoly" owned commodities sell at a lower price than they did before they were monopoly produced.
If a monopoly produced commodity exchanges at its value, under the new method of production, its prices would be lower. Many friends assure me that oil is much cheaper today than it was twenty or thirty years ago, before John D. began to build the Octopus. If a monopolist continues to sell a commodity at the same price it exchanged for formerly, he will be able to appropriate greatly increased profits, for its value will have decreased–perhaps 50 per cent.
But we will take an extreme case to illustrate who pays the increased price where an imaginary Octopus doubles the price of the necessities of life.
Let us suppose that 500 miners are receiving $5 a day working a copper mine in Alaska. Five dollars just affords them a comfortable or tolerable living in Alaska. The man who owns the