Natural law of wages--State-laws regulating
wages--Enactments regulating consumption--The labour-fund
and the want-fund--Ratio of capital to population--State of
industry at the end of the seventeenth century--Rise of
manufactures--Wages and prices--Turning over capital.
[Illustration: Vision of Henry I.]
The old chroniclers relate that our Norman king, Henry I., had once a
terrible vision, of soldiers, and priests, and peasants, surrounding his
bed, one band succeeding another, and threatening to kill him. The
legend became the subject of illuminated drawings in an ancient MS.
preserved at Oxford, and one of these represented the tillers of the
land, with spade, and fork, and scythe, demanding justice. The
cultivators were loaded with heavy exactions, so great that the tenants
of the crown even offered to give up their ploughs to the king. They
ploughed, but they reaped not themselves. In such a state of things
there could be no accumulation, and no profitable labour. The funds for
supplying the wages of labour were exhausted. The country was
depopulated.
During the next two centuries, the condition of the people had been
materially improved. Capital had increased, and so had population. But
capital had increased faster than population, and hence the improvement.
The class of free labourers had for the most part succeeded to the old
class of villeins. Labourers for hire, without understanding the great
principles which govern the rate of wages, any more than did their
masters, would practically seek to measure their earnings according to
those principles. The lawgivers determined the contrary.[37] The Statute
of Labourers, 23rd Edward III., says:--"Because a great part of the
people, and especially of workmen and servants, late died of the
pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of
servants, will not serve unless they receive excessive wages." They were
therefore to be compelled to serve, and they were to serve at the same
wages which they had received three years before. The ratio of
population, in consequence of the pestilence, had fallen considerably
below the ratio of accumulated capital seeking to employ labour. Under
the natural laws of demand and supply, the scarcity of labourers and the
excess of capital would have raised the wages of labour. These laws were
not to operate. Forty years after this enactment of Edward III., comes
the statute of Richard II., which says that "Servants and labourers will
not, nor by a long season would, serve and labour without outrageous and
excessive hire, and much more than hath been given to such servants and
labourers in any time past, so that for scarcity of the said servants
and labourers the husbands and land-tenants may not pay their rents, nor
scarcely live upon their lands." Here was a distinct conflict between
the capitalists seeking profits and the labourers seeking wages. The
law-makers resolved that the hires of the servants and labourers should
be "put in certainty;" and they fixed the rate of wages throughout the
land. They settled the contest in favour of profits, arbitrarily. To
avoid this interference with the due payments of their labour in
proportion to the ratio of capital and labour, the husbandmen might have
fled to the towns, and some did so. But they were met there by the
enactment that the artificers should be subject to the same controlling
power, and that the boy who had laboured at the plough and cart till he
was twelve years old should continue so to labour for the rest of his
life. This state of things was truly slavery without the name. Some such
marvellous folly and injustice went on for several centuries. But,
regulating wages, the laws also undertook to regulate the cost of food
and of clothing--their quality, and their consumption--how much people
should eat, and what coats they should wear. These absurdities also went
on for centuries--of course under a perpetual system of open violation
or secret evasion. The people, we may safely conclude, never fully
believed what their rulers told them of their prodigious kindness in
managing private affairs so much better than individuals could
themselves. Mr. Sergeant Thorpe, judge of assize for the northern
circuit, in a charge to the grand jury in 1648, tells them to be
vigilant against servants taking higher wages than those allowed by the
justices,--to enforce the laws against everybody who bought every thing
for the sustenance of man, with intent to make a profit by it--against
every tradesman who did not produce his wares in conformity with the
statutes;--wonderful laws, which would not permit the tanner to sell a
piece of leather that had not been kept twelve months in the tan-pit,
and which forbade the cloth-maker to use lime in whitening linen cloth.
"And thus you see," says solemn Mr. Sergeant Thorpe, "how the wisdom of
the common laws of this nation, and of the parliaments, from time to
time, hath provided for the security and ease of the people; and hath
furnished us with a salve for every sore; and gives us rules and
instructions how to govern ourselves, that we may be helpful and useful
to one another."[38] Instead of providing the salve, it probably would
have been better not to have made the sore.
But, after all, it is scarcely candid to laugh at the wisdom of "the
good old times" in regulating trades, when in our own day, we have had
excise laws which interfered in the most absurd way with production, and
some of which still interfere. Nor can we look with perfect complacency
at the manifest impolicy and injustice of fixing the rate of wages,
when, within the last quarter of a century, we have had justices at work
all over the country to keep down the wages of labour, by paying
labourers not in proportion to their earnings, but according to their
necessities; and raising up a fund for the encouragement of idleness and
improvidence, by a diversion of the real funds for the maintenance of
labour. The Poor Laws, as they were administered in the beginning and
middle of the last half century, did this evil, and a great deal more;
and persons of influence, with the most benevolent intentions, could see
no difference between the parish allowance to able-bodied labourers, and
the wages which they could have really commanded for their labour if
this opposing fund had not been called into action. In those times, and
even after a strenuous effort had been made to bring about an
improvement, educated gentlemen used to say--"something must be done to
give the labourers employment upon fair wages;" and they were accustomed
to believe that "some plan should be devised whereby work should be at
hand."[39] These gentlemen, and many others, did not understand that
there is a natural fund for the maintenance of labour which is to
produce such beneficial results; that this fund cannot be increased but
by the addition of the results of _more_ profitable labour; that
whatever is paid out of the fund for the support of unprofitable labour
has a direct tendency to lower the rate at which the profitable labour
is paid,--to prevent the payment of "fair wages;" and that there is a
"plan" which requires no devising, because our necessities are
constantly calling it into operation,--the natural law of exchange,
which makes "work at hand" wherever there is capital to pay for it. Such
reasoners also held that the labourers were not to seek for the fund
"about the country on an uncertainty;" but that the work for the
labourers "should be at hand"--"it should be certain." This clearly was
not the ordinary labour-fund. That is neither always at hand, nor is it
always certain. It shifts its place according to its necessity for use;
it is uncertain in its distribution in proportion to the demand upon it.
The fund which was to work this good was clearly not the labour-fund--it
was the _want_-fund; and the mistake that these gentlemen and many
others fell into was that the want-fund had qualities of far greater
powers of usefulness than the labour-fund; that the parish purse was the
purse of Fortunatus, always full; that the parish labour field was like
the tent of the Indian queen in the Arabian tale--you could carry it in
the palm of your hand, and yet it would give shelter to an army of
thousands. All these fallacies are now, happily, as much exploded as the
laws for the regulation of wages and the price of commodities. The real
labour-fund--the accumulation of a portion of the results of past
labour--is the only fund which can find profitable work and pay fair
wages.
It is extremely difficult to ascertain the ratio of Capital to
Population at any particular period; yet some approximations may be
made, which, in a degree, may indicate the activity or the inertness of
the labour-fund, in regard to the condition of the labourer.
At the end of the seventeenth century, about half the land of England
and Wales was, according to the best authorities, held to be under
cultivation, either as arable or pasture. As the whole area of England
and Wales is about thirty-seven millions of acres, this would show a
cultivation of eighteen million five hundred thousand acres. The entire
quantity of wheat, rye, barley, oats, pease, beans, and vetches, grown
upon these eighteen million and a half acres, was estimated at less than
ten millions of quarters, wheat being little more than a sixth of the
whole produce. The quantity of stock annually fattened for food was even
more inconsiderable. We may safely assume that in a century and a half
the amount of agricultural produce in England has increased five-fold.
Two-thirds of the whole area of England and Wales are now under
cultivation; for in the census returns of 1851 we have twenty-five
million acres of farm holdings, occupied by two hundred and twenty-five
thousand farmers. In the calculations of Gregory King, in 1688, the
number of farmers was given at a hundred and fifty thousand; but the
number of lesser freeholders, who were doubtless cultivators, was also a
hundred and twenty thousand. The produce of the land has increased at a
greater rate than the increase of population. According to the commonly
received estimates, the population of England and Wales was about five
millions and a half, perhaps six millions, at the end of the seventeenth
century; it is now eighteen millions. The inhabited houses, according to
the hearth-books of 1690,[40] were one million three hundred and twenty
thousand. In 1851 they were three million two hundred and seventy-eight
thousand. The hearth-books of 1685 show that, of the houses of the
kingdom, five hundred and fifty-four thousand had only one chimney--they
were mere hovels.
Gregory King has given 'A Scheme of the Income and Expense of the
several Families in England, calculated for the year 1688.' He considers
that, in the aggregate, there were five hundred thousand families who
were accumulators--that is to say, whose annual expense was less than
their income. He values this accumulation at three millions. The number
of persons comprised in the accumulating families was two million six
hundred and seventy-five thousand. Of this number only one-fifth
belonged to the trading classes--merchants, shopkeepers and tradesmen,
artisans and handicrafts. The remainder were the landholders, farmers,
lawyers, clergy, holders of office, and persons in liberal arts and
sciences. But there was a large non-accumulating class, consisting of
two million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand, whom he puts down as
"decreasing the wealth of the kingdom,"--that is to say, that their
annual expense exceeded their income; and this excess he computes at six
hundred and twenty-two thousand pounds, which reduces the annual
national accumulation to two million four hundred thousand pounds. The
positive plunderers of the national capital were thirty thousand
vagrants, such as gipsies, thieves, and beggars. We were in a happier
condition than Scotland at the same period; where, according to Fletcher
of Saltoun, there were two hundred thousand "people begging from door to
door," out of a population of one million, for whose suppression he saw
no remedy but slavery. We were more favoured, too, than France; where,
as Vauban records, in 1698, more than a tenth part of the population of
sixteen millions were beggars, in the extremity of hunger and
nakedness.[41] But we may be sure that in England the two million eight
hundred and twenty-five thousand "labouring people, out-servants,
cottagers, and paupers," who are put down by Gregory King as
non-accumulators, were working upon very insufficient means, and that
they were constantly pressing upon the fund for the maintenance of
profitable labour. It is a curious fact that he classes "cottagers and
paupers" together; but we can account for it when we consider how much
of the land of the country was uninclosed, and how many persons derived
a scanty subsistence from the commons, upon which they were "squatters,"
living in mean huts with "one chimney."
The small number of "artisans and handicrafts," comprising only sixty
thousand families, is of itself a sufficient indication that our
manufactures, properly so called, were of very trifling amount. In
various parts of this volume we have incidentally mentioned how slowly
the great industries of this country grew into importance. At the period
of which we are now speaking, nearly every article of clothing was, in
many districts, of domestic production, and was essentially connected
with the tillage of the land. The flax and the wool were spun at home;
the stockings were knit; the shoes were often untanned hide nailed upon
heavy clogs. Furniture there was little beyond the rough bench and the
straw bed. The fuel came from the woods and hedges. About forty thousand
of the cottages mentioned in the hearth-books had some land belonging to
them; and, to prevent the growth of a "squatter" population, it was the
business of the Grand Jury to present, as a nuisance, all newly-erected
cottages that had not four acres of land attached to them. There was a
contest perpetually going on between the more favoured portion who had
regular means of subsistence, and the unhappy many who were pressing
upon those means, in all the various forms of pauperism. One of the
means of keeping down this class was to prevent them having dwellings.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, then, we see that there was
some accumulation of capital, however small. There was then a vague
feeling amongst the accumulators that something might be saved by
setting the unemployed and the starving to other work than was provided
for them in the fields. Population was pressing hard upon Capital. It
pressed, chiefly, in the shape of increasing demands upon the poor-rate.
The remedy universally proposed was "to set the poor to work." The
notion was extremely crude as to the mode in which this was to be
effected; but there was a sort of universal agreement expressed by sober
economists as well as visionary projectors, that the more general
introduction of manufactures would remedy the evil. Of course, the first
thing to be done was to prohibit foreign manufactures by enormous
duties; and then we were to go to work vigorously at home, knowing very
little of the arts in which foreigners were greatly our superiors. But
we were to go to work, not in the ordinary way of profitable industry,
by the capitalist working for profit employing the labourer for wages,
but by withholding from the poor the greater part of the want-fund, and
converting it into a labour-fund, by setting up manufactures under the
management of the poor-law administrators. Here, in these "workhouses"
was the linen trade to be cultivated. Mr. Firmin set up a workhouse in
Aldersgate Street, of the results of which, after four years, he thus
speaks:--"This, I am sure, is the worst that can be said of it, that it
hath not been yet brought to bear its own charges." Sir Matthew Hale was
for setting up a public manufactory of coarse cloth, of which the
charges for materials and labour in producing thirty-two yards would be
11_l._ 15_s._ He calculated that the cloth, if sold, would only yield
12_l._ The excellent Judge does not make any calculation of the cost of
implements, or rent, or superintendence. He desires to employ fifty-six
poor people, who are paid by the parish 400_l._ per annum, and by this
cloth manufacture he will give them the 400_l._ for their work, and save
the parish their cost. One thing is forgotten. The pauper labour
yielding no profit, and consequently preventing any accumulation, the
labourers must be kept down to the minimum of subsistence, which appears
to be about seven pounds per annum for each labourer. The earnings of
the artisan and handicraft are estimated by Gregory King at thirty-eight
pounds per annum. These were the wages of skilled labourers. The pauper
labourers were unskilled. If these schemes had not broken down by their
own weight, and workhouse manufactories had gone on producing a
competition of unskilled labourers with skilled, the rate of wages would
have been more and more deteriorated, and the amount of poor seeking
workhouse employment as a last resource more and more increased.
Experience has very satisfactorily demonstrated that these schemes for
employing the poor ought to be strictly limited to the production of
articles of necessity for their own consumption. Even the production of
such articles is scarcely remunerating,--that is, the produce scarcely
returns the cost of materials and superintendence. Even the boasted Free
and Pauper Colonies of Holland have turned out to be commercial
failures. They are not self-sustaining. The want of skill in the
colonists, and their disinclination to labour, having no immediate
individual benefit from their labours, have combined to produce the
result that one good day-labourer is worth five colonists working in
common. There are also tenants of small colonial farms, at a low rent,
and having many advantages. They are not so prosperous as the little
farmers out of the colony, who pay a higher rent, and have no incidental
benefits. The solution of the question is thus given:--"The certainty
that the society will maintain them, whether they save or not, has an
unfavourable influence on their habits."[42]
The increase of population was very small during the first fifty years
of the eighteenth century. It absolutely declined at one period. The two
million four hundred thousand pounds that were calculated by Gregory
King as annual savings, were probably more and more trenched upon by
pauperism and war, by "malice domestic, foreign levy," under a disputed
succession. The upper classes were licentious and extravagant; the
labourers in towns were drunkards to an excess that now seems hardly
credible. Hogarth's 'Gin Lane' was scarcely an exaggeration of the
destitution and misery that attended this national vice. About the
middle of the century, or soon after, sprang up many of the great
mechanical improvements which made us a manufacturing people; and which,
in half a century, added a third to the population. In spite of the most
expensive war in which England had ever been engaged, the accumulated
capital, chiefly in consequence of these discoveries and improvements,
had increased as fast as the population in the second fifty years of the
eighteenth century. In the present century the population has doubled
in fifty years; and the accumulated capital has more than doubled.
Population has been recently increasing at the rate of one and a half
per cent.; capital has been increasing at the rate of two and a half per
cent.[43] It is this accumulation which has been steadily raising the
rate of wages in many employments of industry; whilst the chemical and
mechanical arts, the abundant means of rapid transit, the abolition or
reduction of duties upon great articles of consumption, and the freedom
of commercial intercourse, have given all the receivers of wages a
greatly increased command of articles of necessity, and even of what
used to be thought luxuries.
There is nothing more difficult in economical inquiries than the attempt
to ascertain what was the actual rate of wages at any given period. The
fluctuations in the value of money enter into this question, more or
less, at every period of our history. We find the nominal rate of wages
constantly increasing, from one generation to another, but we cannot at
all be certain that the real rate is increasing. That nominal rate
always requires to be compared with the prices of the necessaries of
life. What pertains to wages pertains to all fixed money-payments. A
Fellow of a college applied to Bishop Fleetwood to know if he could
conscientiously hold his fellowship, when the statutes of the college,
made in the time of Henry VI., say that no one shall so hold who has an
estate of 5_l._ a year. The Fellow had an estate of much larger nominal
amount. The Bishop made a very valuable collection of the prices of
commodities, and he thus answers the conscientious inquirer:--
"If for 20 years together (from 1440 to 1460) the common price of
wheat were 6_s._ 8_d._ the quarter; and if from 1686 to 1706 the
common price of wheat were 40_s._ the quarter; 'tis plain that
5_l._ in H. VI. time would have purchased 15 quarters of wheat;
for which you must have paid, for these last 20 years, 30 pound.
So that 30 pound _now_, would be no more than equivalent to 5
pound in the reign of H. VI. Thus if oats, from 1440 to 1460,
were generally at 2_s._ the quarter, and from 1686 to 1706 were at
12_s._ the quarter, 'tis manifest that 12_s._ _now_ would be no
more than equivalent to 2_s._ _then_, which is but a sixth part of
it. Thus, if beans were _then_ 5_s._ and _now_ 30_s._ the quarter,
the same proportion would be found betwixt 5_l._ and 30_l._ But
you must not expect that everything will answer thus exactly. Ale,
for instance, was, during the time of your founder, at
three-halfpence the gallon; but it has been, ever since you were
born, at 8_d._ at the least: which is but five times more, and a
little over. So that 5_l._ heretofore (betwixt 1440 and 1460)
would purchase no more ale than somewhat above 25_l._ would _now_.
Again, good cloth, such as was to serve the best doctor in your
University for his gown, was (between 1440 and 1460) at 3_s._
7_d._ the yard; at which rate, 5_l._ would have purchased 29
yards, or thereabouts. _Now_ you may purchase that quantity of
fine cloth at somewhat less, I think, than 25_l._ So that 25_l._
_now_ would be an equivalent to your 5_l._ _then_, 250 years
since, if you pay about 18_s._ the yard for your cloth. I think I
have good reason to believe that beef, mutton, bacon, and other
common provisions of life, were six times as cheap in H. VI. reign
as they have been for these last 20 years. And therefore I can see
no cause why 28 or 30_l._ per ann. should now be accounted a
greater estate than 5_l._ was heretofore betwixt 1440 and
1460."[44]
But we are not to infer from these considerations that the wages of
labour ought to fluctuate with the prices of commodities, or that
practically they do so fluctuate. If this were the principle of wages,
every improvement which lowers the price of commodities would lower the
rewards of labour. Almost every article of necessity is cheaper now than
it was ten years ago, taking the average of years; and the larger amount
of this cheapness has been produced by improvements in manufactures, by
facilities of communication, and by the removal of taxation. At the same
time, taking the average of years and of employments, wages have risen.
There must be some general cause in operation to produce this result.
[Illustration: Irish Mud-cabin.]
The wages of labour cannot be reduced below the standard necessary to
support the labourer and his family whilst he produces. If he cannot
obtain this support he ceases to be a producer. He is starved out of
existence; or he falls upon the public fund for the support of want; or
he becomes a beggar or a thief. In states of society where there is no
accumulating capital, the labourer necessarily receives low wages,
because he maintains himself at the minimum of subsistence. Our poet
Spenser, writing nearly three centuries ago upon the miseries of
Ireland, describes the cottiers as inhabiting "swine-sties rather than
houses." Swift, long after, describes the same state of things:--"There
are thousands of poor wretches who think themselves blessed if they can
obtain a hut worse than the squire's dog-kennel, and an acre of ground
for a potato plantation." This condition of society unhappily lasted up
to our own day. If the Irish cottier had been a labourer for wages
instead of deriving his miserable living direct from the land, he would
have been no better off, unless his desire for something higher than
the coarsest food, and the most wretched lodging, had set some limit to
the increase of population beyond the increase of capital. Population
necessarily increases faster than subsistence when there is no restraint
upon the increase by the disposition to accumulate on the part of the
labourer. There may be accumulation in the form of his money-savings;
and there may be accumulation in an increase of the conveniences of life
by which he is surrounded. When there is neither money saved nor
comforts increased--when there is no accumulation for the gratification
of other wants than that of food--competition is driving the labourers
to the lowest point of misery. The competition in Ireland was for the
possession of land, at an extravagant rent, out of the labour upon which
the cottier could only obtain the very lowest amount of necessaries for
his subsistence. If, in the habits of the whole body of the peasantry,
clothes and furniture had been as necessary as potatoes, the oppressive
exactions of the landlords must have yielded to what then would have
been the natural rate, whether we call it profit or wages, necessary for
the maintenance of that peasantry; and the necessity, on their part, for
maintaining the average _status_ of their class, would in a considerable
degree have kept down the inordinate increase of the people. A century
ago the great body of the working-people of England ate rye bread, which
is cheaper than wheaten. If all the workers were to come back to
rye-bread, the rate at which they could be comfortably maintained would
be somewhat less; and unless the accumulation from the economy were
expended universally in some improved accommodation, labourers would
gradually arise who would be contented with the smaller amount necessary
for subsistence, and the greater number of labourers seeking for wages
would depress the amount paid to each individual labourer.
"In England and Scotland," says Mr. Morison, "the classes living by
wages form the majority of the population." It has been estimated by Mr.
Greg that the annual amount paid in wages is a hundred and forty
millions sterling; to which may be added twenty millions for the board
of domestic servants. The profits of all the operations of industry to
the capitalists are estimated by Mr. Morison at ninety millions. The
census returns show that there were three hundred and fifty-four
thousand masters in trades, and farmers, employing fourteen hundred
thousand men. This gives a proportion of about four men employed to one
employer. Compared with the estimate of profits it shows that each
employer, assuming the calculation to be correct, would derive a revenue
of two hundred and fifty pounds a year as the recompense of his capital,
skill, and risk. This is not so large an aggregate profit as is
ordinarily supposed. The men employed would each receive a revenue of
one hundred a year. But we must add a large number to the men receiving
wages, who would not be returned by their employers; and the calculation
of payments must be further diminished by the consideration that in many
branches of industry, and in factory labour especially, a very large
number of females are employed, as well as boys. But the fact of the
general proportion of wages to profits is sufficiently striking to show
that the inequality of the condition of the labourer and the employer is
not so extravagantly great as we have been accustomed of late years to
hear asserted.
In looking back upon the historical evidence which we possess, imperfect
as it is, of the condition of society at various periods of our
industrial progress, we cannot doubt that there has been a process
constantly going forward by which the circumstances of all classes have
been steadily raised. In the table of Gregory King, which we have
several times referred to, the average income of ten thousand merchants
is put down at three hundred a year; of shopkeepers and tradesmen at
forty-five pounds; of farmers at forty-two pounds; and of labouring
people at fifteen pounds. The income of gentlemen is taken at two
hundred and eighty pounds a year. The increase of the means of these
various classes at the present day as compared with the end of the
seventeenth century, has certainly been threefold. If we turn to the
passage which we have quoted from the 'Chronicon Preciosum,' originally
published in 1707, we may at once compare the advantages which a
threefold increase of means will procure. Wheat is not six pounds a
quarter, nor broadcloth two pounds fourteen shillings a yard,--which
would be the case if we trebled the prices of 1707. We have abundance of
conveniences and comforts of which the people of Queen Anne's reign had
no notion, which have been bestowed upon us by manufactures, and
commerce, and scientific agriculture.
We have already stated and illustrated the general principle that the
wages of labour are determined by the accumulations of capital, compared
with the number of labourers. Hence it necessarily results that, as has
been forcibly expressed, "the additional capital, whenever it is
productively employed, will tend as certainly to the benefit of the
working population at large as if the owner were a trustee for their
benefit."[45] But the profitable employment of capital depends very
greatly upon activity, knowledge, and foresight on the part of the
capitalist. It was for the want of these qualities that all the old
schemes for providing labour out of a common stock chiefly broke down.
Sir Matthew Hale, in his plans for employing paupers in spinning flax
and weaving cloth, knew theoretically the truth that the amount of
capital available for the payment of labour would be largely increased
by the rapidity with which it might be turned over. He says, "If it
could be supposed that the cloth could be sold as soon as made,--which
is not, I confess, reasonably to be expected--then a stock of 24_l._
would, by its continual return, provide materials and pay the workmen
for one loom's work in perpetuity." The "if" expresses the difference
between individual commercial activity and knowledge, and official
sluggishness and incapacity. But it also expresses the difference
between the commerce of our days, and that of the end of the seventeenth
century. Without roads, or canals, or railroads, how difficult was it to
bring the seller and the buyer together! All manufactures would be, for
the most part, local. The cloths of Kendal might go to the neighbouring
fairs on packhorses; and thence slowly spread through the country by
pedlers and other small dealers; and the proceeds might return to the
manufacturer at the end of a year. But the rapid turning over of capital
which begins with buying a bale of cotton at New York, and having it in
Sydney in the shape of calico in three months, with the bill that is to
pay for it drawn at Manchester, accepted in Sydney, and discounted in
London in another three months, is a turning over of capital which was
scarcely imagined by the projectors and practical traders of a century
ago.
This rapid turning over of capital, and the consequent more rapid
accumulation of the labour-fund, depends upon the confidence of the
capitalist that his capital will work to a profit. It will not so work
if he is to be undersold. If wages could press upon profit beyond a
certain ascertained limit, he would be undersold. The home competition
of localities and individuals is perpetually forcing on the most
economical arrangements in production. The foreign competition is doing
so still more. If we have increased productiveness here, through
scientific application, the same increased productiveness, from the same
causes, is going forward elsewhere. 'Price-Currents' supply a perpetual
barometer of industrial cloud or sunshine; and the manufacturer and
merchant have constantly to unfurl or furl their sails according to the
indications. Whenever there is shipwreck, the ship's crew and the
captain partake of a common calamity; and the calamity is always
precipitated and made more onerous when, from any cause, there is not
cordial sympathy and agreement.
[37] We have already noticed the ancient oppressive laws for the
regulation of labour, in Chap. VII. We recur to them here more
particularly, as illustrating the principle of Wages.
[38] See the full 'Charge' in the 'Harleian Miscellany.'
[39] See the Evidence on Poor-laws before a Committee of House of
Commons, 1837.
[40] Hearth-money was a tax upon houses according to the number of
chimneys, at the rate of two shillings a chimney, for every house
having more than two chimneys.
[41] See the passage in Dunoyer, 'Liberte du Travail,' tom. i. p. 416.
[42] Sir John M'Neill's 'Report on Free and Pauper Colonies in Holland.'
1853.
[43] Morison, 'Labour and Capital,' Appendix B.
[44] Chronicon Preciosum, 1745, p. 136.
[45] Morison, 'Labour and Capital,' p. 24.