Let us suppose that some workers over 100 years ago really did not have   
a choice. Presumably they lacked education (probably illiterate) so that   
the could not go into business for themselves, they did not know how to   
stop having babies, and they felt a strong moral obligation to care for   
the babies they had. The iron law of wages, we shall suppose, was   
operative. (In reality, they faced repressive laws and discriminatory   
law enforcement. But that is another matter.) The question is whether   
the iron law of wages based on such assumptions is an ECONOMIC law.  
  
That it is a phenomenon of which industrialists would have taken account   
means that it is part of their calculations, just as the rotation of the   
earth around the sun and the seasons are a part of the calculations of   
the profit-maximizing farmer. However, would it be any more reasonable   
to suppose that economists should include the study of these "cultural"   
phenomena as part of economics than to suppose that they should include   
the study of physics?  
  
Perhaps in one's empathy for one's fellow person, one has neglected to   
consider the possibility that economics has a distinctive character that   
is unrelated to the hardships due to culture and nature.  
  
We all care about people who, for one reason or other, are unhappy or   
unhealthy because of their cultural situation. But this does not mean   
that we ought to make the study of that situation a part of economics as   
such.  
  
Pat Gunning