CATHOLIC SOCIALISTS. 
123 
Evidently upon the rate of his wages. And upon what does 
the rate of wages depend? Upon the law of supply and 
demand, replies the prelate with the Economists, that is upon 
the iron law, the eherne Lohngezetz, as Lassalle expresses it. 
Formerly, says the bishop, the future of the labourer was 
guaranteed by the trade guilds. Labour constituted a pro 
perty which the regulations of the guild preserved from the 
fluctuations of the market and the strife of competition. To 
day this is no longer so ; labour is now treated as a com 
modity in the market {DU Arbeit ist eine Waare), and, as 
such, it is subject to the laws which govern other commodities. 
The price of commodities rises and falls according as they 
are in greater or less demand ; but it tends to approach the 
level of the cost of production. In order to get ahead of 
his competitors, the manufacturer is therefore obliged to reduce 
this cost as much as possible so as to be able to offer his 
wares cheaper than others do. The cost of production of 
this labour-commodity is the food and maintenance of the 
labourer. There would consequently be a universal and 
necessary tendency to reduce to the minimum the cost of 
the labourer’s maintenance. The employer who can obtain 
from his workmen the largest amount of useful exertion at 
the least expense will carry the day. In the present state 
of things this is a mathematical or mechanical law which 
destroys at once the good intentions of masters and the resist 
ance of men. Hence, concludes the Bishop of Mayence, it 
cannot be denied that the whole existence of the labouring 
population—who constitute the greater part of humanity—the 
daily bread of the father and his family is subject to the 
fluctuations of a market, disturbed by endless crises. “ This 
IS the slave market open all over modem Europe, fashioned 
according to the model sketched by our enlightened and 
anti-Christian liberalism, and our humanist freemasonry.” 
Is it not curious to And at the head of Monseigneur von 
^tteler’s book the theory of “ the labour-commodity,” Arbeit 
•^aare, which, expanded with a vast display of seien tiñe 
analyses and algebraic formulas, is the very basis of Karl Marxs 
nious book. Das Kapital., the Gospel of German Socialism ?