employees is not much greater than, say not more than twice as great as, the number of the
employers. In such a case, if labour is sold by the hour,—openly, or virtually in a fashion that
probably prevails at present,106—there would be a determinate equilibrium of the labour market such
that each labourer would earn an amount equal to the number of hours worked, multiplied by the
final productivity of each hour. That arrangement might appear just, on a certain interpretation of
the dictum that one's product “ is determined by what a final unit of mere labour can add to the
product.” But the arrangement would not be just if “the basis of the claim that a workman makes is
that his presence in the mill will cause a certain increase in the output of it.” All turns on the unit
employed. If it is allowable to take the hour as the unit, and find the wage of the individual man by
multiplying the number of hours worked by the final productivity of the unit, why should it not be
allowable to take a gang of men as the unit, and find the wage of the individual man by dividing the
number of men in a gang into the final productivity of a gang? Not to rest the argument on supposed
cases, take the case of the “capitalist” as he existed in Ricardo's time, or even the modern
entrepreneur who is not a salaried manager. If such a one is to be paid on the basis that “ his presence
in a mill causes a certain increase in the output of it,” it is quite possible that he would be justified
in claiming a much larger share of the joint product than he now obtains.107 The assertion that the
entrepreneur receives just as much as he adds to product is at best an empirical law, not possessing
the sort of universality proper to a general canon of distributive justice. Thus the coincidence of
perfect competition with ideal justice is by no means evident to the impartial spectator: much less
is it likely to be accepted by the majority of those concerned, whose views must be taken into
account by those who would form a theory that has some relation to the facts. One who has closely
observed popular movements in America testifies to “the growing belief that mechanical science and
invention applied to industry are too closely held by private interests.”108 “An enormous private
ownership of industrial mechanism, especially if coupled with lands and mines,” forms the gravamen
of the complaints. To advert for a moment to the accessory grievance with the view of understanding
the main one, can we suppose that in a case such as Ireland was supposed to constitute before the
Gladstonian land legislation, the land leaguers would have been content if they had obtained a
perfect market in land, an equation of supply and demand undisturbed by hustling or delay,
intimidation or cornering?109 This perfection of the market might have served only to bring out the
disadvantage at which the many were placed by the vesting of the complete ownership of land in the
hands of a few. The prevailing sentiment about the “enormous private ownership of industrial
mechanism “ may well be similar. It is true that the expediencies governing “ judicial rents “ are very
106. See Marshall, Principles of Economics, Book VI, chap. ii, §2, note to p. 499, 4th edition.
107. The attribution of a portion of the product to a unit of productive factor is only significant when
the unit can be treated as a final increment. Cp. Marshall, Principles of Economics, note to p. 465,
4th edition. When this condition is not fulfilled,—e.g., Professor Clark's Distribution of Wealth, p.
326, where “the amount that is attributable to one-half of the capital” (“the capital that is used in the
industry”) is specified,—this doctrine of attribution becomes perilously like the Austrian doctrine
of “imputation.”
108. Graham Brooks, The Social Unrest, p. 122.
109. Such a market as is analysed in Mathematical Psychics, p. 141.