houses, flats and cottages that rent to the working class here, and suppose this city should cut rents down one-half. Suppose that Chicago had municipal ownership and it was possible for the city to reduce the cost of living here 50 per cent. What we want to consider is–would the reduction benefit the working class or that part of capitalist class not directly engaged in producing the necessities of life?
When the cost of living is greatly reduced at any given city, workingmen and women flock to that point to sell their labor-power. They believe that if they can get jobs where it costs less to live, th~y will be able to save money and, perhaps, finally climb into the capitalist class themselves.
But note what happens. There is an immediate influx of workers into the city of low prices. The competition among workers for jobs becomes more keen at once, and it is always keen. Capitalists purchase labor-power at the lowest price. Men and women offer to sell their labor-power at a lower and still lower price till wages again fall to the cost of living. In a very short time these workers will find that they have gained nothing.
Take the examples of A, B and C. When the cost of living (A) is cut in half, the competition, among the, sellers of labor-power, reduces wages (B) accordingly. If your capitalist employer is a steel manufacturer will he be able to appropriate more or less of the value of your product?
Capitalists rarely start industrial enterprises in Alaska because the cost of living (or value of labor-power) is so extremely high in the far north that there is very little surplus value left for them.
The value of a commodity is determined by the average social labor contained in it. The Alaska steel manufacturer would have to compete in a world market just as the Bethlehem and Gary mills compete, and it is necessary social labor only that makes value.
Reports are coming from Guatemala of cotton manufacturers who are locating and establishing cotton mills there. The natives of Central America can live on very low wages. Almost all natives in Guatemala build and own their own thatched huts, The climate is warm and artificial heat is never needed. Nobody requires steam heat or base-burners. A cotton shirt and cotton trousers clothe a man as well as his neighbors, so that the cost of living is a very negligible quantity. Bread fruit and bananas grow wild, and 10 or 12 cents a day will keep a native in comfort, a recent magazine article, which dwelt upon the advantages of capital in Central America reports that Guatemala natives receive, on the average, 9, 10 or 12 cents a day.
If the Central American natives were driven to toil as fiercely as we are of the states, Guatemala would be a heaven for capitalists. But it is still possible for them to live without much labor. When, however, the capitalists gain control of the land, so that the natives will be forced to sell their labor-power in order to live, more exploiters of labor will turn toward the land where the cost of living is almost nothing (labor-power of little value), and where they will be able to appropriate a still larger portion of unpaid labor.
From no angle can we find where low prices will benefit the working class for any appreciable length of time, because the struggle for jobs soon brings wages down to just about enough to live on.
The workingmen and women of Belgium have long labored to reduce the cost of living in Belgium. They have formed co-operatives and we learn that they actually HAVE been able to lower the prices on the necessities of life. If we had list prices of groceries in Belgium, we would probably be amazed at the difference in their prices and ours. And still only recently a Belgian Socialist wrote us that his country was still the Heaven for capitalists and the hell for workingmen and women.
Will wages in Belgium be as high as they are in Colorado or in Ohio? Why not? Are the Belgium comrades any better off than we are?
If every workingman owned his own home in Salt Lake City, would this tend to INCREASE or to DECREASE wages there? Explain