Anyone who has read with attention the current discussion of labor topics must have noticed that writers start from assumptions, in regard to the doctrine of wages, which are as divergent as notions on the same subject-matter well can be. It appears, therefore, that we must have a dogma of wages, that we cannot reason correctly about the policy or the rights of the wages system until we have such a dogma, and that, in the meantime, it is not strange that confusion and absurdity should be the chief marks of discussion carried on before this prime condition is fulfilled. Some writers assume that wages can be raised if the prices of products be raised, and that no particular difficulty would be experienced in raising prices; others assume that wages could be raised if the employers would be satisfied with smaller profits for themselves; still others assume that wages could be raised or lowered according as the cost of living rises or falls. These are common and popular assumptions, and have nothing to do with the controversies of professional economists about the doctrine of wages. The latter are a disgrace to the science, and have the especial evil at this time that the science cannot respond to the chief demand now made upon it. If the employer could simply add any increase of wages to his prices, and so recoup himself at the expense of the consumer, no employer would hold out long against a strike. Why should he? Why should he undertake loss, worry, and war, for the sake of the consumers behind him? If an employer need only submit to a positive and measurable curtailment of his profits, in order to avoid a strike and secure peace, it is probable that he would in almost every case submit to it. But if the employees should demand five per cent advance, and the employer should grant it, adding so much to his prices, they would naturally and most properly immediately demand another five per cent, to be charged to the consumers in the same way. There would be no other course for men of common sense to pursue. They would repeat this process until at some point or other they found themselves arrested by some resistance which they could not overcome. Similarly, if wages could be increased at the expense of the employer’s gains, the employer who yielded one increase would have to yield another, until at some point he decided to refuse and resist. In either case, where and what would the limit be? Whenever the point was reached at which some unconquerable resistance was encountered, the task of the economist would begin. There is no rule whatever for determining the share which any one ought to get out of the distribution of products through the industrial organization, except that he should get all that the market will give him in return for what he has put into it. Whenever, therefore, the limit is reached, the task of the economist is to find out the conditions by which this limit is determined.