3. A decrease of the work, either in particular places, at particular
times, or in the aggregate, owing to a decrease either in the demand
or means of supply.
Any one of these causes, it has been demonstrated, must necessarily
tend to induce an over supply of labourers and consequently a casualty
of labour, for it has been pointed out that an over supply of labourers
does not depend _solely_ on an increase of the workers beyond the means
of working, but that a decrease of the ordinary quantity of work, or a
general increase of the hours or rate of working, or an extension of
the system of production, or even a diminution of the term of hiring,
will also be attended with the same result--facts which should be borne
steadily in mind by all those who would understand the difficulties of
the times, and which the “economists” invariably ignore.
On a careful revision of the whole of the circumstances before
detailed, I am led to believe that there is considerable truth in
the statement lately put forward by the working classes, that only
one-third of the operatives of this country are fully employed, while
another third are partially employed, and the remaining third wholly
unemployed; that is to say, estimating the working classes as being
between four and five millions in number, I think we may safely
assert--considering how many depend for their employment on particular
times, seasons, fashions, and accidents, and the vast quantity of
over-work and scamp-work in nearly all the cheap trades of the present
day, the number of women and children who are being continually
drafted into the different handicrafts with the view of reducing the
earnings of the men, the displacement of human labour in some cases by
machinery, and the tendency to increase the division of labour, and to
extend the large system of production beyond the requirements of the
markets, as well as the temporary mode of hiring--all these things
being considered, I say I believe we may safely conclude that, out of
the four million five hundred thousand people who have to depend on
their industry for the livelihood of themselves and families, there is
(owing to the extraordinary means of economizing labour which have been
developed of late years, and the discovery as to how to do the work of
the nation with fewer people) barely sufficient work for the _regular_
employment of half of our labourers, so that only 1,500,000 are fully
and constantly employed, while 1,500,000 more are employed only half
their time, and the remaining 1,500,000 wholly unemployed, obtaining a
day’s work _occasionally_ by the displacement of some of the others.
Adopt what explanation we will of this appalling deficiency of
employment, one thing at least is certain: we cannot _consistently with
the facts of the country_, ascribe it to an increase of the population
beyond the means of labour; for we have seen that, while the people
have increased during the last fifty years at the rate of ·9 per cent.
per annum, the wealth and productions of the kingdom have far exceeded
that amount.