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The standard has, at all times, remained substantially the same. The condition of man cannot be measured by the natural relations of the animals of the primal forest, nor yet the negro in Africa, nor the serf during the Middle Ages, nor even the workingman of two hundred or eighty years ago; but only through the relation of the condition of his fellow-workers to the condition of the other classes of the same time.
Instead of stating views about this, and discussing how this relation may be bettered, and how that cruel law may be changed, which holds you constantly upon the outer circle of the wants in every period, they amuse themselves by distorting the question beneath your very nose, entertaining you with problematical views of history, of culture, and the condition of the working class informer times: views all the more problematical: those products of industry falling to a minimum of cheapness, belonging, in a very marked degree, to the articles consumed by the workingman; while the food which chiefly forms this consumption, not at all governed by the same tendency to an ever increasing cheapness. Such views would only have value when the conditions of the entire working class, during the different periods, would be investigated in all directions, and from every point; investigations of the gravest nature, and to be carried to a degree of completeness for which those who present them have not the requisite qualities, such duties to be performed only by the really learned.
Let us now return from our necessary detour, to the question, What influence can the Consume Associations have upon the condition of the working class, after the law of Political Economy, formulated in Sub-Division 2?
The answer will be simple enough.
As long as only single circles of workingmen combine for a Consume Association, so long the general wages will not be affected by it; and just so long will these Consume Associations, through cheaper consumption, exert a subordinate influence, lightening the down-trodden conditions of the worker—a tendency I have already viewed and admitted.
It will be most important here to bear in mind that, so soon as the Consume Associations more and more embrace the whole working class, it will be seen,as a necessary consequence, that wages, owing to the cheapness of the necessaries of life,
