In a society perfectly stationary, (if there be such a thing,) where the wants of the whole community, and the nature and amount of labor necessary to supply those wants, and the subjects of labor are the same from generation to generation, there will be a steady demand for a new laborer, to supply the place of each one that dies off. Hence the average wages will be such as to enable each pair to produce and bring forward another pair; or, in other words, they will enable a man and his wife to rear two children. If, on an average, they are more than this, then on an average, more than two children will be reared; the number of laborers will be increased; the supply will exceed the demand; the competition will reduce wages below the standard of the cost of production, until the surplus laborers are starved off; and they will then return to that standard, and settle there. In a society retrograde in its condition, the average of wages will be less than enough to support a laboring pair and two children. There will always be a stock of surplus labor to be starved off, and a ragged lazaroni will mark this condition of society. In a society advancing in all things, there must be an increasing supply to keep up with the increasing demand. Competition among employers will enhance the price of labor, and this will enable the laboring class to reproduce itself in an increasing ratio. And this it will do, for he who said "increase and multiply, and replenish the earth," has commanded it. It is thus perfectly true of _labor_, and the _laboring class collectively_, that the cost of production is the measure of price; and that food and raiment for the laborer of today, and for those future laborers who are rising up to supply the future demand, are all that enter into the cost of production. The seeming exceptions to the rule do but confirm it, and show how its author has rivetted it on the necks of men, _that they shall not escape from it_. It is the brazen collar which marks the laborer "THE BORN THRALL OF NECESSITY." His wages are never increased beyond the wants of his own individual nature, but for a purpose, to which the law of that nature makes it sure that he will apply them; the reproduction of _just so many_ others (neither more nor less) as the exigencies of society may require, to follow in the same dull round of labor in which his life has been spent.