"Such combinations, [i.e., to lower wages] however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labor. Their usual pretenses are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether these combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the extravagance and folly of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, laborers, and journeymen. "But though in disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage, there is however a certain rate, below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labor. "A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation." Now, my friend, I know that some of your pretended friends, especially politicians, will tell you that Adam Smith wrote at the time of the American Revolution; that his words applied to England in that day, but not to the United States to-day. I want you to be honest with yourself, to consider candidly whether in your experience as a workman you have found conditions to be, on the whole, just as Adam Smith's words describe them. I trust your own good sense in this and everything. Don't let the politicians frighten you with a show of book learning: do your own thinking. Capitalism began when a class of property owners employed other men to work for wages. The tendency was for wages to keep at a level just sufficient to enable the workers to maintain themselves and families. They had to get enough for families, you see, in order to reproduce their kind--to keep up the supply of laborers.