(1) There is an extremely common misapprehension on the part of both labor-givers and labor-takers as to the real _nature_ of the transaction between them. Both parties forget, or rather neither party is ever fully instructed, that it is a case of pure Buying and Selling. There is never any _obligation_ of the moral sort between buyers and sellers. The relation itself is purely economical. Moral considerations indeed cover this relation from above, just as they cover all other relations between man and man in human Society; and any two individuals standing over against one another as buyer and seller, also stand over against each other in higher and broader relations as man and man; but it works confusion and mischief as between both, whenever relations differing in their nature and operation and reward are not separated from each other in the mind of each relator, and whenever each does not act in the particular relation according to the nature and rules of that relation alone. When A hires B to work in his factory, this new relation is economical not moral; there were moral relations between the two before this relation was knit, and will be again after this has been broken, and indeed are while this continues; but the economical relation is one thing, and the others a very different thing; they are so different, that they cannot be blended in mind or motive to any advantage to either individual or to either set of relations; and any degree of confusion as between the relations has always wrought mischief as between the individuals, because instead of seeing either set of relations in its own clear light, they now see both in a commingled twilight. What is the economical relation? This. A desires the personal service of B in his factory purely for his pecuniary benefit, and assumes his own ability to make all the calculations requisite for determining how much he can (profitably to himself) offer B for his service; and B, who knows all about his own skill, how it was acquired and how much it has cost, wants to sell his service to A for the sake of the pecuniary return or wages. There is no obligation resting upon either. Man to man, each in his own right. There is no benevolence in the heart of either, so far as this matter goes. Benevolence is now an impertinence. It is a question of honest gain in broad daylight. Benevolence is blessed in its own sphere, but there is no call for it here and now. If it comes in an unbidden guest, it comes in to mar and to distort. It is an incongruity. "_I never knew a Jew converted but it spoilt him_," was the word of one deeply versed in human nature and in Christian experience. Conversion is good, and its field is broad; but the Jew _as such_ is incongruous with it. Good is benevolence and wide its field, but Buying and Selling does not need it. Its own motives are independent of it, and sufficient without it.