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Turn your “supply” round and apply it to the producer. Supply him with all the necessary conditions for rich production. Then we might say in a general way “the supply is equal to the supply.” But “demand” is not a producing agent. It does not make people create, invent, or discover. It does not make them sell unless they want to—see Ahab demanding Naboth’s vineyard—or Frederic and his Miller of Sans Souci. It does not make them work even, unless they are able and willing. Demand what you please of the tramp and pauper—he cannot produce it.

A natural law is a series of observed phenomena. Such things always happen, so we say it is a law. The observed phenomena in this case are those of a past stage of economic development; and at no time “natural” but purely arbitrary. A parallel may be drawn from similar observed phenomena in the system of slave labour. The “supply” then was the work of the slave. The “demand” was a command, and was enforced by the whip; no whip no work, more whip more work, and behold “a law”! The work equals the whip! So it did, in most cases—granting the man was a slave. But it was no law of social economics; it was a law of slavery. Neither is this theory of ours that “The work equals the pay” a law of social economics—it is only a law of wagery.