TABLE SHOWING THE INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF CRIMINALS IN ENGLAND AND
WALES FROM 1805-1850.
----+--------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------------
| Annual | | | |Increase |
|Average Number| |Decennial| Annual |per Cent.|
| of Criminals |Numerical|Increase |Increase | in the |
| Committed. |Increase.|per Cent.|per Cent.|43 years.|
----+--------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------------
1805| 4,605 | | | | |Annual Average
1811| 5,375 | 770 | 17 | 2·8 | | Increase
1821| 9,783 | 4408 | 82 | 8·2 | | per Cent.,
1831| 15,318 | 5535 | 57 | 5·7 | 504 | 11·7.
1841| 22,305 | 6987 | 46 | 4·6 | |
1850| 27,814 | 5509 | 25 | 3·6 | |
----+--------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------------
From these results--and such figures are facts, and therefore stubborn
things--the people cannot be said to have increased beyond the wealth
or the means of employing them, for it is evident that _we increase in
poverty and crime as we increase in wealth, and in both far beyond our
increase in numbers_. The above are the bare facts of the country--it
is for the reader to explain them as he pleases.
* * * * *
As yet we have dealt with those causes of casual labour only which may
induce a surplusage of labourers without any _decrease taking place
in the quantity of work_. We have seen, first, how the number of the
unemployed may be increased either by altering the hours, rate, or mode
of working, or else by changing the term of hiring, and this while the
number of labourers remains the same; and, secondly, we have seen how
the same results may ensue from increasing the number of labourers,
while the conditions of working and hiring are unaltered. Under both
these circumstances, however, the actual quantity of work to be done
in the country has been supposed to undergo no change whatever; and
at present we have to point out not only how the amount of surplus,
and, consequently, of casual labour, in the kingdom, may be increased
by _a decrease of the work_, but also how the work itself may be made
to decrease. To know the causes of the one we must ascertain the
antecedents of the other. What, then, are the circumstances inducing
a decrease in the quantity of work? and, consequently, what the
circumstances inducing an increase in the amount of surplus and casual
labour?
In the first place we may induce a large amount of casual labour _in
particular districts_, not by decreasing the gross quantity of work
required by the country, but by merely shifting the work into new
quarters, and so decreasing the quantity in the ordinary localities.
“The west of England,” says Mr. Dodd, in his account of the textile
manufactures of Great Britain, “was formerly, and continued to be till
a comparatively recent period, the most important clothing district in
England. The changes which the woollen manufacture, as respects both
localization and mode of management, has been and is now undergoing,
are very remarkable. Some years ago the ‘west of England cloths’ were
the test of excellence in this manufacture; while the productions of
Yorkshire were deemed of a coarser and cheaper character. At present,
although the western counties have not deteriorated in their product,
the West Riding of Yorkshire has made giant strides, by which equal
skill in every department has been attained; while the commercial
advantages resulting from coal-mines, from water-power, from canals
and railroads, and from vicinage to the eastern port of Hull and the
western port of Liverpool, give to the West Riding a power which
Gloucestershire and Somersetshire cannot equal. The steam-engine,
too, and various machines for facilitating some of the manufacturing
processes, have been more readily introduced into the former than into
the latter; a circumstance which, even without reference to other
points of comparison, is sufficient to account for much of the recent
advance in the north.”
Of late years the products of many of the west of England clothing
districts have considerably declined. Shepton Mallet, Frome and
Trowbridge, for instance, which were at one time the seats of a
flourishing manufacture for cloth, have now but little employment for
the workmen in those parts; and so with other towns. “At several places
in Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Gloucestershire, and others of the
western counties,” says Mr. Thornton, “most of the cottagers, fifty
years ago, were weavers, whose chief dependence was their looms, though
they worked in the field at harvest time and other busy seasons. By so
doing they kept down the wages of agricultural labourers, who had no
other employment; and now that they have themselves become dependent
upon agriculture, in consequence of the removal of the woollen
manufacture from the cottage to the factory” [as well as to the north
of England], “these reduced wages have become their own portion also;”
or, in other words, since the shifting of the woollen manufacture in
these parts, the quantity of casual labour in the cultivation of the
land has been augmented.
The same effect takes place, of course, if the work be shifted to
the Continent, instead of merely to another part of our own country.
This has been the main cause of the misery of the straw-plaiters of
Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. “During the last war,” says the
author before quoted, “there were examples of women (the wives and
children of labouring men) earning as much as 22_s._ a week. The
profits of this employment have been so much reduced by the competition
of Leghorn hats and bonnets, that a straw-plaiter cannot earn much more
than 2_s._ 6_d._ in the week.”
But the work of particular localities may not only decrease, and the
casual labour, in those parts, increase in the same proportion, by
shifting it to other localities (either at home or abroad), even while
the gross quantity of work required by the nation remains the same,
but the quantity of work may be less than ordinary at _a particular
time_, even while the same gross quantity annually required undergoes
no change. This is the case in those periodical gluts which arise from
over-production, in the cotton and other trades. The manufacturers, in
such cases, have been increasing the supplies at a too rapid rate in
proportion to the demand of the markets, so that, though there be no
decrease in the requirements of the country, there ultimately accrues
such a surplus of commodities beyond the wants and means of the people,
that the manufacturers are compelled to stop producing until such time
as the regular demand carries off the extra supply. And during all this
time either the labourers have to work half-time at half-pay, or else
they are thrown out of employment altogether.
Thus far we have proceeded in the assumption that the actual quantity
of work required by the nation _does not decrease in the aggregate, but
only in particular places or at particular times_, owing to a greater
quantity than usual being done in other places or at other times[54].
We have still to consider what are the circumstances which tend to
_diminish the gross quantity of work required by the country_. To
understand these we must know the conditions on which all work depends;
these are simply the conditions of demand and supply, and hence to
know what it is that regulates the demand for commodities, and what it
is that regulates the supply of them, is also to know what it is that
regulates the quantity of work required by the nation.
Let me begin with the decrease of work arising from a _decrease of the
demand_ for certain commodities. This decrease of demand may proceed
from one of three causes:--
1. An increase of cost.
2. A change of taste or fashion.
3. A change of circumstances.
The _increase of cost_ may be brought about either by an increase in
the expense of production or by a tax laid upon the article, as in
the case of hair-powder, before quoted. Of the _change of taste or
fashion_, as a means of decreasing the demand for a certain article
of manufacture, and, consequently, of a particular form of labour,
many instances have already been given; to these the following may
be added:--“In Dorsetshire,” says Mr. Thornton, “the making of wire
shirt-buttons (now in a great measure superseded by the use of
mother-o’-pearl) once employed great numbers of women and children.” So
it has been with the manufacture of metal coat-buttons; the change to
silk has impoverished hundreds.
The decrease of work arising from a _change of circumstances_ may be
seen in the fluctuations of the iron trade; in the railway excitement
the demand for labour in the iron districts was at least tenfold as
great as it is at present, and so again with the demand for arms during
war time; at such periods the quantity of work in that particular line
at Birmingham is necessarily increased, while the contrary effects,
of course, ensue immediately the requirements cease, and a large
mass of surplus and casual hands is the result. It is the same with
the soldiers themselves, as with the gun and sword makers; on the
disbanding of certain portions of the army at the conclusion of a
war, a vast amount of surplus labourers are poured into the country
to compete with those already in work, and either to drag down their
weekly earnings, or else, by obtaining _casual_ employment in their
stead, to reduce the gross quantity of work accruing to each, and so
to render their incomes not only less in amount but less constant and
regular. Within the last few weeks no less than 1000 policemen employed
during the Exhibition have been discharged, of course with a like
result to the labour market.
The circumstances tending to _diminish the supply_ of certain
commodities, are--
1. Want of capital.
2. Want of materials.
3. Want of labourers.
4. Want of opportunity.
The _decrease of the quantity of capital_ in a trade may be brought
about by several means: it may be produced by a want of security felt
among the moneyed classes, as at the time of revolutions, political
agitations, commercial depressions, or panics; or it may be produced
by a deficiency of enterprise after the bursting of certain commercial
“bubbles,” or the decline of particular manias for speculation, as on
the cessation of the railway excitement; so, again, it may be brought
about by a failure of the ordinary produce of the year, as with bad
harvests.
The _decrease of the quantity of materials_, as tending to diminish the
supply of certain commodities, may be seen in the failure of the cotton
crops, which, of course, deprive the cotton manufacturers of their
ordinary quantity of work. The same diminution in the ordinary supply
of particular articles ensues when the men engaged in the production
of them “strike” either for an advance of wages, or more generally to
resist the attempt of some cutting employer to reduce their ordinary
earnings; and lastly, a like decrease of work necessarily ensues when
the _opportunity of working is changed_. Some kinds of work, as we
have already seen, depend on the weather--on either the wind, rain, or
temperature; while other kinds can only be pursued at certain seasons
of the year, as brick-making, building, and the like; hence, on the
cessation of the opportunities for working in these trades, there is
necessarily a great decrease in the quantity of work, and consequently
a large increase in the amount of surplus and therefore casual labour.
* * * * *
We have now, I believe, exhausted the several causes of that vast
national evil--casual labour. We have seen that it depends,
First, upon certain times and seasons, fashions and accidents, which
tend to cause a periodical briskness or slackness in different
employments;
And secondly, upon the number of surplus labourers in the country.
The circumstances inducing surplus labour we have likewise ascertained
to be three.
1. An alteration in the hours, rate, or mode of working, as well as in
the mode of hiring.