CHAPTER XIII 
THE HUMAN CLAIMS OF LABOUR 
§ 1. The validity of the human law of distribution is well 
tested by considering the light it sheds upon the modern claims 
of Labour and the Movement which is endeavouring to realise 
these claims. For the significance of the Labour Movement 
will continue to be misunderstood so long as it is regarded as a 
mere demand for a larger quantity of wages and of leisure, im- 
portant as these objects are. The real demand of Labour is 
at once more radical and more human. It is a demand that 
Labour shall no longer be bought and sold as a dead commodity 
subject to the fluctuations of Demand and Supply in the market, 
but that its remuneration shall be regulated on the basis of the 
human needs of a family living in a civilised country. 
At present most sorts of labourers are paid according to the 
quantity of labour-power they give out, and according to the 
market-price set upon a unit of each several sort of labour- 
power. This means that the actual weekly earnings of some 
grades of labourer are much higher than those of other grades, 
not because the work takes more out of them, or because it in- 
volves a higher standard of living, but because some natural, 
some fortuitous, or some organised scarcity of supply exists 
in the former grades, while there is abundance of supply in the 
latter.! Moreover, the weekly earnings for any of these sorts of 
labour will vary from week to week, from month to month, or 
year to year, with the variations of Supply and Demand in the 
Labour Market. The income of the working family will thus 
vary for reasons utterly beyond its control, though its require- 
ments for economic and human efficiency show no such varia- 
tion. Thus there is no security for any class standard of living. 
Within each class or grade of labour there will be variations 
1 The width of variations in the weekly earnings, involving in most instances a 
nearly corresponding variety of family income, may be illustrated by the following 
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