2. Cheap lodgings; through building improved dwellings for the poor,
and doing away with the profit of sub-letting.
3. Co-operative stores; or the “club system” of obtaining provisions
at wholesale prices.
4. The abolition of the payment of wages on Sunday morning, or at so
late an hour on the Saturday night as to prevent the labourer availing
himself of the Saturday’s market.
5. Teetotalism; as causing the men to spend nothing in fermented
drinks, and so leaving them more to spend on food.
Such are the _direct_ modes of remedying low wages, viz., either by
preventing the price of labour itself falling below a certain standard;
prohibiting all stoppages from the pay of the labourer; instituting
certain aids or additions to such pay; or increasing the money value of
the ordinary wages by reducing the price of provisions.
The _indirect_ modes of remedying low wages are of a far more complex
character. They consist of, first, the remedies propounded by political
economists, which are--
A. _The decrease of the number of labourers_; for gaining this end
several plans have been proposed, as--
1. Checks against the increase of the population, for which the
following are the chief Malthusian proposals:--
_a._ Preventive checks for the hindrance of impregnation.
_b._ Prohibition of early marriages among the poor.
_c._ Increase of the standard of comfort, or requirements, among the
people; as a means of inducing prudence and restraint of the passions.
_d._ Infanticide; as among the Chinese.