LANDOWNERS AND WAGE RECEIVERS
BY FRANCIS W. NEWMAN
CONTRIBUTED BY MR. WILLIAM JAMIESON
[Presumably written in 1886, when Newman was Vice-President of the "Land
Nationalization Society." It was kindly sent me by Mr. William Jamieson,
who was Hon. Sec. to the above Society at the time. I wish to express here
my sense of gratitude to him for much help and information regarding his
own work with Newman in 1886.]
The tendency of English industry for a long time back has been to exalt
the land_lord_, or chief man in any locality, into land _owner_ (a phrase
implying that no one but he has legal right in the land), and to convert a
larger and larger fraction of the nation into wage receivers, liable to be
cast out of work either at the simple will, or by the imprudence or
misfortune of their paymaster. In order to analyse the natural results of
this juncture, we must follow the method received in Political Economy, of
taking an imaginary case, far simpler than any which is actually met in
human life, so as to make all the conditions of the problem known to us by
hypotheses. Let us suppose an island, secluded commercially from the rest
of the world, and peopled by a vast working lower class under three small
ruling castes. The island is physically divisible into three parts:
_first_, marshy coast land, abounding with shrubs, canes, rushes of many
kinds, from which human garments of various sorts can be made; _secondly_
rolling land, eminently suitable for the cultivation of grain, and of
certain fruit trees and roots on which the whole population live;
_thirdly_, the mountain land, on which are timber trees and copses
affording firewood; also quarries of stone, gravel pits, lime rocks, and
mines of copper and iron. Of the marshy coast land, the _second_ lordly
caste is acknowledged to be absolute owner; the first or highest caste
owns the rolling land, which is the arable and cultivated portion; and the
_third_ caste owns the mountain land and its products. From the first
comes the food of the native, from the second comes the clothing, from the
third the houses. It is possible that gravel, lime, and stone can be found
in rolling land, and that fruit trees either exist or if planted would
bear fruit in the marsh land, some even in the mountains; but the ruling
castes follow ancient custom, and the working caste has no right to
innovate. They work _under_ and _for_ their masters, and receive wages _in
kind_--that is, as an equivalent for their work, a definite but liberal
supply of the three necessary articles--food, clothes, and house
accommodation. Money does not exist, nor tame animals in our island. To
add sharpness to our imaginary case, and to make argument intelligible, we
must assign definite numbers to the working population; but from whatever
numbers we start, the argument and the practical result will be the same.
Let us suppose the first caste to employ _ten thousand_ cultivators; the
second caste to employ _three thousand_ knitters and plaiters; the third
caste _one thousand_ masons, miners, and carpenters. Each of these castes
furnishes to the workman such rude tools as are necessary, but these
remain the property of the masters, not of the workmen.
The soil and climate being favourable, and the habits of the people
simple, a few hours of work suffice; and like many barbarians, they have
been accustomed to much idle time, which they employ in sport; moreover,
by the connivance or good of the superior caste, they have been accustomed
to pick or steal largely the leaves of an intoxicating grass, and the
masters to whom the whole produce of their labour belongs, have large
superfluity after paying their wages; hereby the lordlings easily feed
domestic servants and exhibit themselves in gay clothing with superior
dwellings.
But the tendency of the workers to drunkenness shocks a certain religious
preacher, who traces the vice to idleness and sport. He goes about the
island urging upon them a higher morality. They widely receive him as a
divine messenger, and under his exhortation they become more industrious
and more conscientious in their work; not only working more hours, and
curtailing their sport, but in every hour using more diligence. In
consequence, the masters are enriched by stores somewhat embarrassing.
Grain comes in, more than they want: their barns begin to overflow.
Garments are too many for the warehouses. Huge piles of timber block up
the yards, besides masses of stones, and heaps of other superfluous
material. Before long, the masters conclude that their simplest course for
checking supply is by lessening the number of the workmen. The increased
diligence of the people (we may suppose) has made the work of three men on
an average as efficient in all tasks as were _five_ men previously. Thus
sixty do the work of a hundred; and the masters discover that what had
been the normal average produce will be maintained, if they dismiss forty
out of every hundred dependents. Not only so; but retaining their usual
surplus, which we may call their rent, at the old level, they will be able
to raise the wages to these workmen whom they still keep, since instead of
a hundred they will have only sixty now to feed and clothe; and only for
these do they feel morally responsible. Forthwith they actually dismiss
forty out of every hundred. Each landowner cares for his own workmen as by
a sort of social duty; but for those who are discharged he feels no
responsibility. In the average result the landowners who had had a hundred
workmen, but now only sixty, take as increased rent the food and clothes
of ten, and use it to add ten servants to their domestic retinue, but add
to the wage of the sixty whom they keep at work, the food and clothes
previously received by thirty of the forty whom they have dismissed. Thus
they raise wages by one half--that is, they pay in the proportion of one
hundred and fifty instead of one hundred.
The labourers, clothworkers, and builders who are dismissed (the remaining
thirty out of every hundred) being without work and without houses, are at
once in a state of beggary. Only by betaking themselves to some _new
industry_ will they be able to get a livelihood, and it rests with them to
devise their new industries. Meanwhile they can only subsist on charity,
which is doled out to them chiefly by the fellow feeling of those of their
class who are still in work. The increased wages of these enable them to
be liberal; in fact, the increase has on an average been just what the
discarded men previously earned.
A parliament of the higher classes is in due course assembled, and a
member came (?) to the distress of so many men out of work. But a
distinguished literary writer, member of a Politico-Economical Club ...
eases the consciences of the higher castes by pointing out that in fact
the island is much increased in prosperity. Rents had, no doubt, risen,
but only as one mark of prosperity, for their increase was in a much
smaller percentage than that of the rise of wages. These had increased by
the very remarkable ratio of 50 per cent. It was true that many men were
out of work. That was to be regretted; but it was a _passing phenomenon_.
They would before long find work somewhere or somehow.
The discarded workmen hitherto had had no great variety in their tasks,
and were always set to work by others without exercise of their own
inventive powers. Yet out of a large number of men there are always many
of good talents, some of original genius. The idea of many new forms of
industry springs up. Oil for food has been hitherto raised from the olive
tree; now an ingenious man would extract oil from several shrubs or trees,
and make candles, or else oil for lamps. A second wishes to plait carpet
socks, sandals, and umbrellas. A third would make boats, with ropes, and
oars, and sails. A fourth would add wheelbarrows and casks to the baskets
already in use. A fifth has noticed wild ponies on the mountains, and
desires to catch them and make needful harness. A sixth would plant fruit
trees in gardens, and not take the chance of wild fruit. But on every such
plan they are at once checkmated: first, because all these natural
products are accounted the absolute property of the upper castes, and must
be bought; next, most of their new schemes need a yard or a garden and
right of access by a road, and workshops, beside a dwelling-house. But the
land, as well as the raw produce, is inaccessible to them; yet on them,
hungry and destitute, is laid the task of originating the new trades. Can
this seizure of the land and its natural products as the private property
of a limited number of families be morally justified? In its origin was it
attained by violence and robbery? Else, has it grown up by gradual and
cunning perversion of law? These three questions point at the principle of
landowning. Another question rises: Is it good for a nation for _the great
majority_ to retain life only on condition that there is someone ready to
pay wages for their work and able to discard them? In the imaginary case
thus drawn the increased industry of the workers which produced
superfluity is the beginning (to them) of change for the worse. Their
spontaneous industry causes overproduction, and leads to the dismissal of
many workmen. Our economists treat every increase of productiveness as an
unalloyed good. It is good, provided that men are not kept idle by it.
Evidently there is no national gain from sixty men doing the work of a
hundred, if thereby forty men are tossed into unwilling idleness, and must
live on charity, some of the forty losing all habits of industry, and
perhaps becoming criminal. This is a national loss.
Further, our hypothesis that the men voluntarily become more industrious
may be called an extreme and unlikely case. For that very reason it has
been here adopted. The ordinary causes give us _a fortiori_ argument,
because they are ever in action. _Skill_ naturally increases among men
employed continuously on any work. In a settled, industrious nation small
improvements accumulate. In modern Europe the cultivation of mechanics and
chemistry conduces to a steady improvement in tools, a cheapening also of
tools, and introduction of such more complex tools as we call "machines,"
by dint of all which human work constantly becomes more effective, so that
fewer and fewer workmen are needed for _the same amount_ of produce. Thus
the normal and natural order of things, wherever _the wage-system exists_
tends to dispense with some, or many, of the workmen. This is a clear gain
if the men thus displaced _are instantly taken up for some other service_.
But this seldom can happen; often their old skill is made useless, and
before they can learn a new trade they become demoralized, and many
perish. The loss of their industrial position is a grievance and a
national mischief which our "Economists" are prone to undervalue, and pass
unnoticed.
Let us contrast the case of men who work not for a master, not for wages,
but for themselves; holding their own little homestead, from which they
cannot be driven out. Such is the case of back-settlers in the Far West of
the United States. Each perhaps carries out with him a box of stout
clothes, some agricultural tools and important seeds, and either _squats_
on a bit of wild land, or by a very easy payment buys possession of the
Federal Government. This bit of land the settler counts _his own_. With
the aid of friendly neighbours he builds the rude log-hut. The felling of
the trees needed to construct it makes an opening for small culture. In a
very few years he raises more food than his family needs. If the season
and the roads favour, he sends his superfluous barrels of corn and fruit
eastward, and recovers an equivalent. But what happens if wide distance
part him from civilized towns, if the roads are swampy and not made by
art, and the conveyance of food be too onerous to remunerate him? All his
neighbours being in like case, there is a local Overproduction of food;
yet not one of the little community is thereby made a pauper. No one is
able to expel them from their rude homes, or forbid their cultivation.
They are not made outcasts or idlers. Simply they are kept poorer, than
with access to a market they would have been; but they lessen their
production of food, and either with the females of the family work at
clothing, or execute carpentering. In many ways they can use their time to
produce articles which they could have bought in a better finished state
had the market of the East been open to them. The present writer was
informed by an Englishman who in the American Civil War had penetrated
very far West, that he had seen with his own eyes a colonist _burning
wheat as fuel_, because he had it in so great excess. Probably he had
plenty of green maize for his horses and pigs.
Whenever a man retains a house of his own, and has neither rent to pay nor
any excessive taxation, if only he have a moderate plot of land for
workshop and garden, he is not made destitute, though he do not directly
raise food for his household, but works at some domestic manufacture. Our
"Spitalfields" poor who fought a long battle with the hand-loom against
the loom driven by steam power, might not have been at length utterly
ruined if they had had freehold houses and some small garden in a healthy
country. If the system of huge factories had had to compete with domestic
manufacture conducted by private families living in small freeholds, it is
possible that the battle might simply have driven the independent workers
either to buy small steam engines for their aid, or what now is more
obvious, to hire power from some company, as from a Gas Company or Water
Company, which had it in superfluity. Such, in the opinion of some far-
sighted men, may very possibly be even now the solution of our difficulty.
At present the Trade Unions gravely mistake the end for which they ought
to strive. They mischievously unite two objects. First, they are Benefit
Societies. The funds of a Benefit Society ought to be forbidden by law to
be spent in warring against capitalists; this enables the directors, or a
majority of them, to confiscate the whole contributions of any member who
disapproves of the war.
Next, the main effort to raise the status of the workmen is ill-directed
towards raising or sustaining the _rate_ of wages, else towards dictating
concerning the management. This effort is ill-directed, first, because it
is liable to aim at an impossibility--i.e. to extort from a master a wage
so high that he prefers not to light his engine fires; next, because to
raise the _rate_ of wages does not secure continuous work, and idle days
neither tend to sobriety nor give pay. Strikes which inflict vast loss
upon the workers cause loss to the masters also, and make them less able
to pay high wages. But beyond all these, if the Unions were wise, they
would struggle against the system of wage-earning, wherever it is new and
needless; that is, as far as possible, strive to recover the system of
domestic manufacture. For certain new and peculiar industries undoubtedly
combine, and large capital is essential; even in them the effort ought to
be towards uniting, _as far as possible_, the interests of each workman,
and of the company, the opposite of which is in general the Union policy.
But for every old trade independent work is physically possible, under the
condition that the workman have a fixed homestead. To effect this ought to
be the main effort of the Unions.
In the thirty-two years between the battle of Waterloo and the Irish
famine, the farmers and manufacturers were like two buckets of a well;
when one was up, the other was down. But now, both at once are down. The
causes are clearly separate.
Our manufacturers when allowed to accept payments from abroad In wheat and
sugar and foods and all raw produce, Immensely increased their foreign
sales; and during the Cotton Famine, capital was largely invested in
building new cotton mills, as if we were to supply all the world.
But the European Continent more and more chooses to compete with us, and
from more causes than one deprive our merchants of their customers.
Between us and our rivals more of the _same sort_ is produced than the
existing markets can take: this is again Overproduction. Hence stagnation
in our manufacturing districts. Meanwhile, in near thirty years of
manufacturing prosperity after 1847, the increased riches of these towns
enriched the farmers and enabled the landlords to raise rents in England,
and in consequence, by dint of landlord power, rent rose in the whole
United Kingdom. At the same time, Englishmen found too little
encouragement to invest their savings on English soil, and preferred to
invest many millions on foreign railways and on foreign loans; and the
payment of their dividends is made largely by imported foreign food. Their
investments at first were an advantage to our manufacturers, while they
sent out railway plant and carriages and locomotives. Now foreigners
compete with us even as to these, and the imported food competes with the
farmers. Thus a double failure convulses us.
How much better, if instead of quarrelling for distant markets (and _it is
said_ conquering Burmah in the hope of advantage to our merchants) we had
_a native population of small cultivators_, prosperous enough to be
valuable as well as steady customers to our manufacturing towns, and
gradually (in the course of several generations) another population of
country folk, substituting domestic manufactures for those of factories
with wage earners!