Under these circumstances small and varying penalties are
obviously the most convenient things for the person keeping order; an
underling can be punished for coming late, and yet do useful work when he
comes. It will be possible to give a rap over the knuckles without wholly
cutting off the right hand that has offended. Under these circumstances
the employers have naturally resorted to fines. But there is a further
ground for believing that the process will go beyond fines before it is
completed.
(2) The fine is based on the old European idea that everybody possesses
private property in some reasonable degree; but not only is this not true
to-day, but it is not being made any truer, even by those who honestly
believe that they are mending matters. The great employers will often do
something towards improving what they call the "conditions" of their
workers; but a worker might have his conditions as carefully arranged as a
racehorse has, and still have no more personal property than a racehorse.
If you take an average poor seamstress or factory girl, you will find that
the power of chastising her through her property has very considerable
limits; it is almost as hard for the employer of labour to tax her for
punishment as it is for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tax her for
revenue.
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