Even in a trade like the Lancashire cotton trade, where there is free competition among the various firms, a rapid change in the produce market may often raise the profits of the trade, so that all or nearly all the employing firms could afford to pay higher wages without running any risk of failure.

Now employers who are in a position like this are morally responsible for the hardship and degradation they inflict if they pay wages insufficient for decent maintenance.

Their excuse that they are paying the market rate of wages, and that if their men do not choose to work for this rate there are plenty of others who will, is no exoneration of their conduct unless it be distinctly admitted that "moral considerations" have no place in commerce.

Employers who in the enjoyment of this superior position pay bare subsistance wages, and defend themselves by the plea that they pay the "market rate," are "sweaters," and the blame of sweating will rightly attach to them.
But this is not to be regarded as the normal position of employers.
Among firms unsheltered by a monopoly, and exposed to the full force of capitalist competition, the rate of profit is also at "the minimum of subsistence," that is to say, if higher wages were paid to the employes, the rate of profit would either become a negative quantity, or would be so low that capital could no longer be obtained for investment in such a trade.

Generally it may be said that a joint-stock company and a private firm, trading as most firms do chiefly on borrowed capital, could not pay higher wages and stand its ground in the competition with other firms.