The Wages Question: A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class

1. [1] Not only is not, but could not be. I say this to meet the suggestion that wealth, though actually not exchanged, is yet always subject to exchange in the sense that, if that particular form of wealth were to rise, or some possible substitute for it in use were to fall markedly in price, exchange would then take place, so that such wealth should still be regarded as within the domain of exchange. But the state of facts assumed is not real. No matter how much rice might advance, or other food decline in price, no human power could take all the crop out of India and bring back a food-substitute to the people, even were it Liebig's extract. The whole transportation system of India, reinforced by the revenues of the British Government, broke down under the effort, in 1873-4, to distribute to the people of certain districts of India an amount of rice equivalent to but a small portion of their usual crop. The railroads and water-courses of the United States could not take all the crops from the farms where they were raised.

2. [2] N. W. Senior, Pol. Econ., p. 54.

3. [3] "When we speak of an American farmer, we generally mean one who is the absolute owner of the land and every thing on it."—T. Sedgwick, Pol. Econ., p. 54.

4. [4] It may be said that the father and husband is bound, both morally and legally, to support his wife and children out of the product; and that the subsistence thus derived by them constitutes, in effect, their wages. To this it will be sufficient to answer, first, that the amount and character of that subsistence are not determined by contract between the parties, as in the case of what may properly be called wages, but, within the limits of the mere support of life, are wholly at the will and discretion of the head of the family, having no relation to what other persons, rendering the same character and amount of service, may be receiving next door; and, second, which settles the question, that the head of the family is equally bound to supply subsistence whether the wife and children labor or not. In the case of children too young to labor, or of an invalid wife, the obligation of the head of the family, in respect to subsistence, is precisely the same.

5. [5] P. 220.

6. [6] Chapter XII.

7. [7] Throughout the present discussion I shall waive all question of the amount derived by the government from taxation. Whether taxes be, as Professor Senior claims (Pol. Econ., p. 182-5), "a form o[???] expenditure," and hence only cognizable in the department of Consumption, it is not needful to decide here. Suffice it to say that even though government were to be regarded as, in a certain sense, a partner in the production of wealth, and a sharer in its distribution, yet, inasmuch as government always enters by force and carries away its part, determining for itself alike how much it will take and to what use it will apply what it takes, political economy can know nothing of it. As the laws are silent amid arms, economical science bows before the tax-gatherer. Whether government shall take much or little for its own purposes out of the wealth that has been produced is the business, not of the economist, but of the statesman. The methods and subjects of taxation do come within the field of political economy, but it is only because they affect the production of future wealth, its distribution, its exchange.

Part I, Chapter II

8. [8] To the considerations enumerated must be added, as Mr. Ward has shown, still another, in the case of laborers working by the piece. "When piece-work is done, you have to consider not only the price per piece paid, but also the conditions, as of machinery, etc. Thus the Hyde spinners in 1824 struck because they were getting less per piece than others, though all the time they were, by reason of improved machinery, actually earning more per day."—Workmen and Wages, p. 23.

9. [9] The shilling in America suffered a still harder fate—twenty "York shillings" having the value of but $2.50, and 20 New-England shillings the value of $3.33. In Pennsylvania the "dollar" was, at different dates, worth 4s. 6d.; 5s.; 5s 6d.; 6s.; 6s. 6d.; 7s.; 7s. 6d.—Colwell's Ways and Means of Payment, p. 99.

10. [10] Essays on the Gold Question, 1858-60.

11. [11] Works, ix. 463.

12. [12] Works, ix. 249.

13. [13] Works of J. Adams, vii. 199.

14. [14] Even when wages are paid in money, there are two methods by which their real value to the laborer may be reduced in addition to all the causes mentioned under the preceding head. These are, first, the practice of "long-pays," by which the workman is held a long time out of his wages, and obliged to purchase goods meanwhile on credit, on ruinous terms. This is sometimes necessary in new countries; but in old countries it is often resorted to needlessly, and forms one of the standing grievances of the laboring class. The second is the practice of "truck," by which the workman, though perhaps for form's sake paid in money, is compelled, under fear of discharge, to purchase goods at the employer's store. The effects of the latter practice on the welfare of the laboring classes will be discussed fully at a later stage (pp. 324-42).

15. [15] Fourth Report, Commission on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, p. 110. " Part payment in food still prevails extensively in Wales."—Frederick Purdy, Statistical Journal, xxiv. 329.

16. [16] Die Lage der ländlichen Arbeiter.

"The married farm-servants," says Mr. Petre in his Report of 1870 on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of Prussia (p. 50), " are called 'Deputaten,' or persons receiving an allowance in kind, to distinguish them from other farm-servants who all take their meals together at the farm. The 'Deputaten' receive in addition to their wages a certain allowance of corn, potatoes, etc. This primitive practice is, however, gradually giving way to the system of paying full wages in money."

17. [17] "In the departments Bouches du Rhône, Gard, and Gironde it is not customary to pay in kind. In some, this description of payment does not amount to more than 10 francs (a year). In some, it surpasses in value the amount of money payment."—Lord Brabazon's Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of France, 1872, p. 42.

18. [18] Report on the Payment of Wages Bill (1854), pp. 103-5.

19. [19] Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of Italy, 1871, p. 231.

20. [20] In Devonshire and elsewhere a "grist-corn" perquisite is recognized, by which the laborer is allowed to have grain at a fixed price per bushel, whatever the market rate. The amount so allowed to be taken ranges from two or three pecks to a bushel every fortnight.—Heath's English Peasantry, pp. 95, 96, 140, 141.

"In some counties, as Dorset, the farmer pays part of his men's wages in corn at 1 shilling per bushel below the market price."—Mr. Purdy, Stat. Journal, xxiv. 329.

21. [21] Fourth Report (1870) Commission on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, p. 58.

22. [22] Ibid., p. 110.

23. [23] See Mr. Tremenheere's Report for 1869.

24. [24] The Hon. Edward Stanhope, Assistant Commissioner, says of the cottages in Shropshire: "The point especially deserving of attention in this county is the infamous character of the cottages. In the majority of the parishes I visited they may be described as tumble-down and ruinous, not water-tight, very deficient in bedroom accommodations and in decent sanitary arrangements."—Report on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, 1868-9, p. xxxiv.

25. [25] Address as President Br. Soc. Sc. Association, 1866. Transactions, p. 9.

26. [26] P. 94.

27. [27] P.95, cf. 140, 141.

28. [28] Pp. 55, 56, 86, 87.

29. [29] "In Dumfriesshire even the keeping of a pig is often prohibited on the ground that it affords inducements to little acts of peculation." Fourth Report (1870) on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, p. 85.

30. [30] A Journey throughout Ireland (4th ed.), p. 371.

31. [31] English Peasantry, p. 113.

32. [32] Ibid., p. 115.

33. [33] Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1872, pp. 395-8.

34. [34] H. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., pp. 254, 255. W. T. Thornton on Over Population, chap. viii.

The Commissioners of 1843 reported strongly in favor of the Allotment system; they declared that it did not tend to reduce wages, but that all the proceeds of the land thus cultivated constituted "a clear addition to wages."

On the other side, Mr. Mill, in his Principles of Pol. Econ., wrote, "The scheme, as it seems to me, must be either nugatory or mischievous."—I. 441, 442.

35. [35] The industrial disadvantages of the employment of married women in factories will be spoken of hereafter. To their full extent, whatever that may be, the superiority claimed by Prof. Senior for the spinner or weaver must be discounted. Again, so far as the employment of the female head of the family in outside labor, or of very young children in any sort of labor, tends to reduce health and strength or to shorten life, this must be set off against the advantage of increased present earnings, in accordance with the principles to be noted in the paragraphs which immediately follow.

36. [36] Lectures on Wages, pp. 8-9.

It is not only true that the opportunities for extra earnings vary greatly as between different occupations, as shown by Prof. Senior's illustration, but such opportunities vary greatly within the same occupation in different localities. Thus Mr. Purdy's tables of Irish agricultural wages show that the "harvest wages" for men range from 2 shillings 6d. a week above ordinary wages, all the way up to 11 shillings.—Statistical Journal, xxv. 448-50.

37. [37] This irregularity may be greater or less according to climate or the character of the crops. Some crops require far more days of labor in the year than others. Some countries are locked in frost half the year; in others the ground opens early and freezes late. "In the countries on the Danube, these operations are spread over seven months; in the countries on the north of the Volga they must be concluded in four months."—Hearn's Plutology, pp. 74, 75. An English farmer is ploughing while a New-England farmer is hauling wood on the ice and snow. Mr. Purdy's valuable tables (Statistical Journal, xxiv. 352, 353) show that February is the worst month for employment in agriculture in England; August, the best.

Mr. Purdy gives a table which he deems fairly representative, exhibiting the divisions of agricultural wages between the seasons as follows:

Paid for Labor:
First quarter	18.9
Second "	22.1
Third "	38.6
Fourth "	20.4
	100.0

38. [38] In brickmaking, in England, it is estimated that men can be employed but 45 weeks in the year, in consequence of rain and frost. In the Northern States of America the failure of employment is for a much longer period.

39. [39] Mr. Lecky remarks of holidays in Catholic countries: "The number that are compulsory has been grossly exaggerated."—History of Rationalism, ii. 323.

Diplomatic and consular reports to the British Government give perhaps the most recent and exact information on the subject of holidays in the Greek Church.

Consul Calvert reports from Montastir that, reckoning Sundays, there are more than one hundred days in the year when the Christians voluntarily cease work (1870, p. 244). Consul Stuart states the number of days besides Sundays which the Eastern Church attempts to withdraw from labor at 48. Formerly, he says, the number was greater; but the opposition of the working classes to the loss of so much time has caused a reduction in this respect, which will doubtless proceed further (1871, p. 780). Mr. Gould gives the number of working days in Greece as 265 (1870, p. 500). Consul Sandwith gives the number of fête days in Crete as 30 (1872, p. 382). Consul Egerton states that in Russia "besides Sundays there are about 24 holidays in the year, when no work is allowed. Some are saints' days; others, state holidays" (1873, p. 111).

40. [40] Gibbon, chap. xlvii., of the Jacobites, whose five annual Lents the historian is disposed to regard as an instance of "making a virtue of necessity."

41. [41] Mr. Dudley Baxter, speaking of the operatives in this branch of industry, wrote: "We all know their periodical distresses. It may be said that these were accidents. They are not mere accidents, but incidents—natural incidents of our manufacturing economy. They are sure to recur under different forms, either from gluts, or strikes, or war, and they must be allowed for in computations of earnings."—National Income, p. 45.

"In 1829 the weavers of Lancashire and Cheshire were earning, at best, from 4s. 4½d. to 6s. per week when at work. The most favored had to wait a week or two between one piece of work and the next; and about a fourth of the whole number were out of employ altogether."—Martineau, History of England, iii. 167.

42. [42] Statistical Journal, xxiv. 501. I have sought to show elsewhere (p.391, n.) that all the time occupied by a strike is not necessarily lost.

43. [43] P. 5.

44. [44] Pp. 41, 42.

45. [45] The cost, at contract prices, of raising an orphan child to the age of 11, is computed by Mr. Chadwick (Statistical Journal, xxv. 505) at £130, or the value of a team of four first-class farm-horses.

The same eminent authority estimates the average loss of working ability, by premature deaths from preventible causes, to be at least 10 years (Stat. Journal, xxviii. 26).

"In the production of dead machinery," says Dr. Edward Jarvis, "the cost of all that are broken in the making is charged to the cost of all which are completed.... So, in estimating the cost of raising children to manhood, it is necessary to include the number of years that have been lived by those that fell by the way with the years of those that pass successfully through the period of development."—Report Massachusetts Board of Health, 1874, p. 340.

46. [46] "Le salaire d'un ouvrier doit comprendre... l'amortissement du capital employé par ses parents, avec lequel il peut alimenter son enfant qui le remplacera un jour dans la société."—Jos. Garnier, Traité d'Économie Politique, p. 462.

47. [47] P. 184.

48. [48] Report Mass. State Board of Health, 1874, pp. 341, 342.

49. [49] 50 years, i.e. from 20 to 70 years of age.

50. [50] Krankheiten der Arbeiter.

51. [51] Returns to the order of the House of Commons, 13th May, 1872.

52. [52] See the evidence collected by Mr. Jellinger Symons under the English Commission of 1841; also, Dr. Greenhow's report in 1860, in the Third Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council.

53. [53] Report of Mr. J. E. White, Asst. Commr. Employment of Women and Children, 1865.

54. [54] Sir Thomas Bazley's report for 1870 states the number of deaths from accidents in collieries and ironstone mines at 991. In the same year 373 persons were killed in works under the Factory acts; 1378 were so injured that amputation was required, while the lesser injuries footed up 16,828.

"En France, ces accidents sont beaucoup plus rares, et l'exploitation des mines n'a jamais été mise au nombre des industries qui créent une position insupportable aux ouvriers."—Théodore Fix, Les Classes Ouvrières, p. 146.

55. [55] Dr. Angus Smith, Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1865, p. 241.

56. [56] Report of the Poor-Law Commissioners of 1842, p. 200.

57. [57] Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, July, 1872, p. 98.

58. [58] The mortality among the "china-scourers" is something frightful. "In all the process the operatives are exposed to the inhaling of the fine dust with which the air of the different workshops is charged, and which dust the finer it is the longer it floats in the atmosphere and the more dangerous it becomes."—Ibid., p. 109.

59. [59] "The diseases engendered by lead-mining may be stated as asthma and chronic bronchitis."—Ibid., p. 103.

60. [60] The heat in copper-mines was found by Dr. Greenhow to be very much greater than in tin-mines. In one mine which he visited the temperature was 125°. "Steam was coming out of the shaft in volumes at the time of inspection."

61. [61] Letter of Canon Girdlestone to Mr. Heath, "Peasantry of England," p. 100.

62. [62] National Income, pp. 41, 43.

63. [63] Transactions, 1869, p. 18.

Part I, Chapter III

1. [1] Masters "prefer those laborers who earn the most wages."—Mr. Chadwick, Statistical Journal, xxv. 510.

Sir Joseph Whitworth, the great manufacturer of cannon, told Mr. Chadwick that "he could not afford to work his machines with a horse that cost less than £30."—Ibid.

2. [2] History of England, vii., pp. 229, 230.

3. [3] Prof. Senior, in his Lectures on Wages, stated the average annual wages of labor in Hindostan at from one pound to two pounds troy of silver against nine pounds to fifteen pounds troy in England.... Mr. Finnie, who was engaged by the Madras Government as superintendent of the cotton experiment from 1845-9, says, "the interest of the money invested in the purchase of a laborer in America, added to the actual cost of his maintenance, would pay for nine able-bodied men in India."—Wheeler's Cotton Cultivation, p. 100.

4. [4] "In the weaving-mills a Russian rarely has the care of more than two looms, while in England a weaver will frequently look after six." (Report of H. B. M. Consul Egerton on the Factory System of Russia, 1873, p. 111.) Mr. Batbie states that the English farmers on the shores of the Hellespont prefer to give 10 pounds sterling a year for Greek laborers to giving 3 pounds for Turkish laborers. (Nouveau Cours de l'Economie, i. 73.) Even with the best Continental labor there is a decided inferiority to English rates of production. In Switzerland the number of hands employed per 1000 spindles does not average less than 8 to 8½, against 7 in England. (Report of Mr. Gould on the Factory System of Switzerland, 1873, p. 129.)

In England, moreover, it should be noted, the machinery is almost uniformly run at a speed not known on the Continent.

5. [5] Whereas female labor in the cotton manufacture is paid at from 12s. to 15s. a week in Great Britain; at from 7s. 3d. to 9s. 7d. in France, Belgium, and Germany; at from 2s. 4d. to 2s. 11d. in Russia, the one thing which is most dreaded by the Continental manufacturers everywhere is British competition. The demand for protection is loudest in France, Austria, and Russia, where the average wages reach their minimum....

The average price of labor per day for puddlers is 7s. 6d. to 7s. 10d. in Staffordshire; 6s. 4d. in France; and from 4s. 7d. to 5s. in Belgium. Yet the average price of merchant bar-iron was £6 10s. in England, £7 in Belgium, £8 in France.—Mr. D. A. Wells' reports, as Special Commissioner U. S. Revenue.

6. [6] Brassey's Life and Labors, p. 160.

7. [7] Ibid., Preface, xvi.

8. [8] Work and Wages, p. 87.

9. [9] Work and Wages, p. 69.

10. [10] Ibid., p. 90.

11. [11] Four thousand Englishmen were sent over to work on this road.—Ibid., p. 79.

Two thousand English and Scotch were sent to Australia to work on the Queensland line.

12. [12] Ibid., p. 115.

13. [13] Ibid., p. 82.

14. [14] Social Sc. Trans., 1868, p. 524.

15. [15] January 24th, 1874.

16. [16] "I protest," so writes a farmer, "that one of the Scotchmen whom I formerly employed would do as much work as two or even three Suffolk laborers. It 'makes one's flesh creep' to see some of the latter at work."—Clifford, Agricultural Lock-out of 1874, p. 25, note.

17. [17] Second Report, p. 105. "I have myself in Northumberland heard a Northumbrian farmer declare that one of the strong big-boned women who worked in his fields was worth much more than any average southern laborer."—Clifford, Agric. Lock-out of 1874, p. 25.

18. [18] On this point of waste I select two illustrations. The first is taken from an address of George J. Holyoake, the historian of Co-operation:

"It has been calculated that the working colliers at Whitwood and Methley could, by simply taking the trouble to get the coal in large lumps, and by reducing the proportions of slack, add to the colliery profits £1500 a year. If they would further take a little extra care below ground in keeping the best coal separate from the inferior, they could add another £1500 to the profits." (Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1865, p. 482.) All this without diminishing their own earnings.

The second is the result of an experiment, noticed in the Statistical Journal (xxviii., pp. 32, 33), for the economy of coal in an engine-furnace, through giving the stokers a share in the money value of whatever saving might be effected. The result was to reduce the consumption of fuel, without loss of power, from 30 to 17.

19. [19] H. B. M. Consul Egerton, in his admirable report of 1873 (Textile Factories), notes the great irregularity of attendance at work in Russia. "It is therefore essential to have a large staff of supernumeraries who have learnt their work, so as to be ready to supply the vacant places."—P. 112.

20. [20] "It may appear incredible," remarks Mr. Carleton Tuffnell, the Poor-Law Commissioner, "that a great demand for labor may exist simultaneously with a multitude of people seeking employment and unable to find it. The real demand is not simply for labor, but trained labor, efficient labor, intelligent labor."

21. [21] M. Batbie states the results of certain experiments with the dynamometer by which it appears that while the figure 50 represents the sheer lifting-weight of a native of Van Diemen's Land, 71 represents that of an Anglo-Australian cultivator.—Nouveau cours de l'Économie politique, i. 70.

22. [22] This statement is taken from Mr. Thornton "On Labor," p. 16, n. Of the (very) "tall men" (6 feet 3 inches) enlisted in the U. S. army, 1861-5, there were of each 100,000—of English birth, 103; of Scotch, 178; of Irish, 84 (Statistical Memoirs of the Sanitary Commission, p. 159); while of the "short men" (under 5 feet 1 inch) there were in 100,000—of English, 690; of Scotch, 610; and of Irish, only 450, the proportional number of Germans in this class rising to 770, and of Frenchmen to 950, (Ibid., p. 177.) The mean height of the native soldiers was much reduced by the enlistment of large numbers of very young persons; but if we take the soldiers from 35 years upwards, we find the natives of the United States surpassing in stature those of every other nationality. Thus the mean height of soldiers from New-England was, in inches, 68,300; New-York, New-Jersey, and Pennsylvania, 68,096; Ohio and Indiana, 68,980; Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, 68.781; Kentucky and Tennessee, 69,274, etc.; while the mean height of soldiers born in Canada was 67.300; England, 66.990; Scotland, 67.647; Ireland, 67,090; France, Belgium, and Switzerland, 66.714; Germany, 66.718; Scandinavia, 67.299. (Ibid., pp. 104, 105.)

23. [23] Statistical Memoirs U. S. Sanitary Commission, p. 403. As was remarked respecting mean height, the average of the native soldiers of the U. S. army was brought down by the great number of boys enlisted.

24. [24] Speaking alike of the weaving-sheds of the cotton districts and of the woollen districts, Dr. Bridges and Mr. Holmes, in their report to the Local Government Board, in 1873, say: "The work is done in the great majority of cases by women; a considerable portion of these are married, and the practice of working until the last stage of pregnancy, and of returning to work within a month, sometimes within a fortnight, or even a week, of childbirth, is as common in the West Riding (of York) as in Lancashire." (Report, p. 33, cf. pp. 38, 39, 55.) An old factory surgeon says: "I regard the mother's return to the mill as almost a sentence of death to the child." It is also a fruitful source of permanent injury to the mother herself.

25. [25] Transactions, p. 537.

26. [26] Fourth Report (1865) of the Children's Employment Commission of 1862.

27. [27] See the reports of the Commission of 1862 on the Employment of Children, and of the Commission of 1867 on the Employment of Women and Children.

28. [28] "Each Frenchman consumes on an average 16 oz. of wheaten bread a day; each Englishman, 32 oz.; the former, 1 2/3 oz. of meat; the latter, 6 oz."—Alison, Europe, 1815-51, ch. xvii., sec. 126.

"Des expériences ont démontré que l'ouvrier français, lorsqu'il est aussi bien nourri qu'un ouvrier anglais rend à peu près autant de travail."—Batbie, Nouveau Cours de l'Économie politique, i. 71.

I should be disposed to believe that a somewhat greater difference would remain, notwithstanding equivalent subsistence, than M. Batbie's patriotism will allow him to confess. The causes adduced under the previous head must count for much.

29. [29] Mr. R. R. Torrens, M.P., stated, at the meeting of the Social Science Association in 1867, that when he was employed in sending out emigrants from Ireland in 1840, he found that "a large portion of the Irish people were living on a kind of potato called 'lumpers,' which were so inferior in quality that even pigs could not fatten on them."—Transactions, p. 670.

30. [30] Pol. Econ., p. 471. Lord Brabazon, in his report (p. 54) on the condition of the industrial classes of France, 1872, cites the opinion of Dr. Cenveilhier that the French population are, as a rule, insufficiently nourished. "Many a French factory hand never has any thing better for his breakfast than a large slice of common sour bread, rubbed over with an onion so as to give it a flavor." (Lord Brabazon, p. 52.) Mr. Locock writes from the Netherlands (Report of 1870, p. 19): "Meat is rarely tasted by the working classes in Holland. It forms no part of the bill of fare either for the man or his family." From Belgium Mr. Pakenham reports: "Very many have for their entire subsistence but potatoes with a little grease, brown or black bread, often bad, and for their drink a tincture of chickory." (Reports of 1871, p. 20.)

31. [31] Heath's English Peasantry, p. 100.

32. [32] Sir Joseph Whitworth is reported to have said that he could not afford to work a horse in his establishment which ate less than 18 lbs. of oats a day.

33. [33] "It is physically impossible that any permanent rise in wages should take place without corresponding diminution of profits."—H. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., p. 264.

34. [34] Pol. Econ., p. 107.

35. [35] Economical Position of the Br. Laborer, p. 231, note.

36. [36] Where slaves were kept and worked only for purposes of gain. Where slavery was a political and social institution, as in the Middle States of the American Union, something of grace and kindliness might come to climb up about it.

37. [37] I have never chanced to hear of any premiums offered in Devon or Dorset for the fattest and sleekest, or the most manly and athletic "team" of agricultural laborers, though there have been, all honor for it! instances of prizes given for "model cottages." "Comment! Vos cultivateurs consacrent des sommes considérables pour couvrir leurs champs d'engrais, vos industriels ne négligent aucun soin, ne reculent devant aucune dépense pour assurer et faciliter le jeu de leurs machines; et vous, vous négligez de cultiver votre champ le plus fertile, de graisser et de soigner votre machine la plus precieuse, votre machine mère, de laquelle toutes les autres dépendent, puisqu'elles en sont sorties."—Blanqui (aîné) Cours d'Économie Industrielle, ii. 352.

38. [38] Doubtless race-characteristics have very much to do with the ability to subordinate greed to real interests, and to take a large view of economy. We should expect to find the Teutonic peoples surpassing all others in this respect; the Slavonic peoples far to the rear. Mr. Consul Holmes, in his Report to the British Government on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of Bosnia in 1871, remarks that the Eastern Christians, like the Turks, "look far more to cheapness than excellence in what they purchase, and good workmanship and conscientious labor is neither appreciated nor desired" (p. 762). Mr. Consul Palgrave makes a similar remark respecting the Anatolians (p. 732). "The very appreciation of good work," writes Sir P. Francis from Turkey, "is, I believe, lost."—Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1872, p. 372.

39. [39] Edwin Chadwick. Poor-Law Report, 1842, p. 212.

40. [40] Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1866, p. 737.

41. [41] Journey Throughout Ireland, p. 379.

42. [42] Heath's English Peasantry, p. 100.

43. [43] Statistical Journal, xiii. 47.

44. [44] Stat. Journal, xxxii. 75.

45. [45] In his Alton Locke.

46. [46] See Report Poor-Law Commission, 1842, pp. 98-104.

47. [47] How, indeed, do human beings live at all under such circumstances? Fresh and vigorous constitutions would go off at a gallop in some form of active disease, under such ever-present infection. The only reason why the very miserable live under it is because they have taken on a lower type of being, which is compatible with existence in such surroundings but altogether incompatible with great exertions. "Their freedom from specific evil is only evidence that they have subsided into a coarser and lower nature. The florid, strong-pulsed man, fresh from a wholesome country dwelling, would die right off when subjected to the deficient sanitary conditions which are innocuous to the lower physical development of the very poor vegetating in the purlieus of large towns or in mud-built country cottages."—Charles Lamport, Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1870, p. 532.

48. [48] Soc, Sc. Transactions, 1867, p. 561.

49. [49] "Le travail suppose 1. l'intelligence qui conçoit et 2. le main qui exécute."—Batbie.

50. [50] Pol. Econ., p. 117.

51. [51] Ninth Census of the United States, 1870. Industry and Wealth, p. 380.

52. [52] Hearn's Plutology, p. 59.

53. [53] P. 173.

54. [54] Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1871, p. 775.

55. [55] In a debate in the House of Lords in 1875, Earl Fortescue stated that Sir Joseph Whitworth, the eminent manufacturer of arms, had expressed the opinion that "a workman who had acquired the habit of moving promptly at the word of command was worth on the average 1s. 6d. a week more than a man of equal manual dexterity who had not acquired the habit."—The Times.

56. [56] The proportion of looms to weavers in England as contrasted with the proportion which obtains in Ireland and Scotland is significant in the same regard.

	Looms in Cotton Mfr.	Weavers.
England,	165,032	57,555
Scotland,	22,621	12,114
Ireland,	3,372	1,864
	191,025	71,533

Nearly three looms to 1 weaver in England; not quite 2 looms in Scotland and Ireland. (Report, p. 16.)

57. [57] Report, p. 27.

58. [58] The famous Committee of the House of Commons on the Exportation of Tools and Machinery dwelt on the "want of arrangement in foreign manufactories," as an important reason for the superior cheapness of production in England.

In the evidence given before them is found (p. 363) the following highly-suggestive remark: "A cotton manufacturer who left Manchester seven years ago would be driven out of the market by the men who are now living in it, provided his knowledge had not kept pace with those who have been during that time constantly profiting by the progressive improvements that have taken place in that period. This progressive knowledge and experience is our great power and advantage."

59. [59] Notes of a Traveller, p. 290.

60. [60] Work and Wages, p. 117.

61. [61] P. 104.

62. [62] Statistical Journal, xxviii., p. 307.

63. [63] Prof. Cairnes, in his able work on "The Slave Power," sums up the economical defects of slave labor under three heads: "It is given reluctantly; it is unskilful; it is wanting in versatility." (P. 44.)

64. [64] "The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is, in the end, the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property can have no other interest but to eat as much and to labor as little as possible."—Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, i. 390, 391.

65. [65] Mr. Turnbull, in his work on Austria, says: "A large Bohemian proprietor, who with his brothers counted on their estates 18,000 subjects, has frequently observed to me that he found it usually more advantageous to accept even a very small part of the legal commutation-money, and to hire labor from others, than to take it in kind from those who were bound to yield it."

66. [66] Instance the action of the nobles of Hungary, at the outbreak of the revolution of 1848, in transmuting the urbarial tenure of lands into unrestricted tenure by freehold. "By this great and voluntary concession," says Alison, "the property of 500,000 families, consisting of little estates from 30 to 60 acres each, and comprehending nearly half a kingdom, was at once converted from a feudal tenure, burdened with numerous duties, into absolute property."—History of Europe, xxii. 612.

67. [67] "An activity has been here that has swept away all difficulties before it, and has clothed the very rocks with verdure. It would be a disgrace to common-sense to ask the cause: the enjoyment of property must have done it. Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert."—Travels in France, Pinkerton, iv. 122.

68. [68] How the magic of property turns sand into mold, a truer source of wealth than placers or auriferous quartz, has been shown in the maritime districts of Belgium.

69. [69] Arthur Young in 1777 described the Irish as "lazy to an excess at work, but spiritedly active at play" (Pinkerton, iii. 872.) When the Irishman has a fair chance under equal laws, he imports all this activity into his work.

70. [70] Plutology, p. 41.

71. [71] I will guard myself against a critic's sneer at the introduction of this word into a treatise on wages by citing Mr. Mill's remark, "It is very shallow, even in pure economics, to take no account of the influence of imagination."—Pol. Econ., i. 392, 893.

72. [72] "Almost invariably an unemployed day in Belgium." (Report of Mr. Consul Grattan on the condition of the industrial classes, 1872, p. 19.) Much the same story comes from Norway and Sweden, England and Scotland, whose inhabitants we reckon among the noblest peoples of the world.

73. [73] P. 67.

74. [74] Pp. 397, 398.

75. [75] Wealth of Nations, i. 86.

Part I, Chapter IV

76. [76] The Financier, August 1, 1874.

77. [77] "There is considerable evidence that the circumstances of the agricultural laborers in England have more than once in our history sustained great permanent deterioration from causes which operated by diminishing the demand for labor, and which, if population had exercised its power of self-adjustment in obedience to the previous standard of comfort, could only have had a temporary effect; but, unhappily, the poverty in which the class was plunged during a long series of years brought that previous standard into disuse, and the next generation, growing up without having possessed those pristine comforts, multiplied in turn without any attempt to retrieve them."—J. S. Mill, Pol. Econ., i. 41.

Mr. Mill here explains the whole permanent effect upon the grounds of Malthus, overlooking the equally important consideration that, without respect to the numbers of the laboring class, the efficiency of labor must have been seriously impaired by inadequate food and clothing, unhealthy dwellings, and, more than all, by the loss of hopefulness, cheerfulness, and self-respect.

78. [78] Report, p. 202.

79. [79] "Modesty must be an unknown virtue; decency, an unimaginable thing, where in one small chamber, with the beds lying as thickly as they can be packed, father, mother, young men, lads, grown and growing-up girls are herded promiscuously; where every operation of the toilet and of nature—dressings, undressings, births, deaths—is performed within the sight and hearing of all; where children of both sexes to as high an age as 12 or 14, or even more, occupy the same bed; where the whole atmosphere is sensual, and human nature is degraded into something below the level of the swine. It is a hideous picture; and the picture is drawn from life."—Appendix to the First Report of the Poor-Law Commissioners, p. 34.

80. [80] "C'est surtout pendant les époques de chômages que l'ouvrier, ne sachant comment employer see heures, hante le cabaret."—Rapport (M. Ducarre) Salaires et rapports entre ouvriers et patrons, p. 269.

Part I, Chapter V

81. [81] "The principle which guides the American farmer is to take the most paying crop which can be grown with the least cost of labor."—James Caird's Prairie Farming, p. 21.

82. [82] "In a new country and among poor settlers... poor land is a relative term. Land is called poor which is not suitable to a poor man, which, on mere clearing and burning, will not yield good first crops.... Thus that which is poor land for a poor man may prove rich land to a rich man."—Prof. Johnston's Notes on North America, ii. 116, 117.

83. [83] Prof. Cairnes's answer to those who deny the diminishing productiveness of land is absolutely conclusive. "If any one denies the fact, it is open to him to refute it by making the experiment. Let him show that he can obtain from a limited area of soil any required quantity of produce by simply increasing the outlay—that is to say, that by quadrupling or decupling the outlay, he can obtain a quadruple or decuple return. If it be asked why those who maintain the affirmative of the doctrine do not establish their views by actual experiment, the answer is that the experiment is performed for them by every practical farmer; and that the fact of the diminishing productiveness of the soil is proved by their conduct in preferring to resort to inferior soils rather than force unprofitably soils of better quality."—Logical Method, etc., p. 35.

84. [84] Be it remembered that in our community there are neither rents nor royalties.

85. [85] "The soil of England produces eight times as much food as it produced 500 years ago."—Rogers, Pol. Econ., p. 181. Of the agriculture of the former period, Prof. Rogers says: "In those days half the arable land lay in fallow. The amount produced was, to take wheat as an example, about eight bushels the acre in ordinary years, i.e., little more than a third of an average crop at the present time. There were no artificial grasses. Clover was not known, nor any of the familiar roots. As a consequence, there was little or no winter feed, except such coarse hay as could be made and spared. Cattle were small and stunted by the privations and hard fare of winter. The average weight of a good ox was under four cwt. Sheep, too, were small, poor, and came very slowly to maturity. The average weight of a fleece was not more than two pounds. With ill-fed cattle there was little or no strong manure."—Pol. Econ., pp. 157, 158.

86. [86] Pol. Econ. i. 230.

87. [87] Pol. Econ., p. 82.

88. [88] Economy of Manufactures, pp. 163, 164.

89. [89] J. E. Cairnes, Logical Method, etc., p. 36.

Part I, Chapter VI

90. [90] The Principle of Population, i. 474-6.

91. [91] The Origin of Species, chap. iii.

92. [92] Pol. Econ., p. 30.

93. [93] "Throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand, but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them."—Malthus, The Principle of Population, i. 3.

"L'accroisement des moyens d'existence et l'accroisement du capital ont nécessairement des limites dans un espace de temps donné. Au contraire, l'accroisement de la population est pour ainsi dire illimité.... Si donc, entre ces deux productions extrêmement inégales, la prévoyance humaine ne s'interpose, une calamité est imminente."—M. Chevalier, 7ème Discours, d'Overture du cours de l'année, 1846-7.

94. [94] "The same power that doubles the population of Kentucky, Illinois, and New South Wales every five-and-twenty years, exists everywhere, and is equally energetic in England, France, and Holland."—J. R. McCulloch, Pol. Econ. 226.

95. [95] Prof. Rickards, Population and Capital, p. 127.

96. [96] Indeed, the reproductive capability might even be increased during the first stages of diminishing returns. This would doubtless be so if the previous returns to labor had been so liberal as to encourage luxuriousness and some degree of effeminacy. In this case the first effects of diminished returns might be to induce a greater physical and nervous vigor.

Part I, Chapter VII

1. [1] "The cost of purchasing labor, like that of every thing else, must be paid by the purchasers. The race of laborers would become altogether extinct unless they were supplied with quantities of food and other articles sufficient for their support and that of their families. This is the lowest limit to which the rate of wages can be permanently reduced, and for this reason it has been called the natural or necessary rate of wages."—J. R. McCulloch, Pol. Econ., p. 385.

2. [2] The number of deaths actually attributed, on inquest, to starvation, and so reported in the famous Irish census of 1851, was 2041 in 1846, 6058 in 1847, and 9395 during the two years following. (Report, Part V., vol. i., p. 253.)

3. [3] It will be seen that the wages of the laborer thus made necessary must include not only his own subsistence but that of those persons, not themselves productive laborers, whose maintenance is a means to the supply of labor in the immediate future. Thus the wages of the bread-winners must provide food and care for women in the weakness of childbearing, and for children in the years of infancy. Whether they shall also provide food and care for the aged in their decrepitude, and for the crippled and infirm, is determined by other considerations, to be noted further on. These, at least, are not essential to the supply of labor; and in barbarous countries not a few, the horrid custom of making away with those who are regarded as a hopeless burden shows that the support of such is not an element of necessary wages among those peoples.

4. [4] "Happily there is but one passion of the same nature; for if there were two there would not be a single man left in the universe who would be able to follow the truth."—An Eastern writer.

5. [5] Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1871, p. 800, of. 721. In Koordistan the annual earnings of the artisan appear to range from £12 to £18.

6. [6] The eminent statistician, Dr. Engel, of Berlin, has given the following comparative statement as showing the average relative expenditure in Prussia of families of three classes, ranging from those of well-to-do artisans to those of persons in easy circumstances:

ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE.	PERCENTAGE OF THE EXPENDITURE OF THE FAMILY OF
	1. A working man, with income of $225 to $300 a year.	2. A man of the intermediate class, with income of $450 to $600 a year.	3. A person in easy circumstances, with income of $750 to $1125 a year.
	Per cent.	Per cent.	Per cent.
1. Food...	62	55	50
2. Clothing...	16	18	18
3. Lodging...	12	12	12
4. Firing and Lighting...	5	5	5
	95	90	85
5. Education, Worship, etc...	2	3.5	5.5
6. Legal protection...	1	2	3
7. Care of health...	1	2	3
8. Comfort and Recreation...	1	1.5	3.5
	100	100	100

From this table Dr. Engel deduces the following proposition: While the proportion of the total outlay upon food increases as the family becomes poorer, the percentage of outlay for clothing is approximately, and that for lodging is invariably, the same in the three classes taken for consideration. Dr. Engel seems disposed to regard this very much as a law of expenditure. I am disposed to believe, however, that the apparent conformity has been reached by merging urban and rural communities which if considered separately would show very wide differences of expenditure on the several objects indicated; and, secondly, that the extension of the inquiry to other latitudes and other social conditions would develop great diversity in these respects. The Baron Riesbeck in his Travels in Germany (Pinkerton, vi. 147, 173), in 1780, notes the very marked differences existing between Southern and Northern Germany as to the scale of expenditure on dress. The lower orders among the Turks probably expend more of their earnings relatively upon dress than the higher classes. The same may probably be assumed respecting the ordinary Danish workman, who insists on passing himself off as a gentleman on Sundays. Again, the scale of expenditure on lodging varies greatly according to social conditions. In England, Mr. Clifford says, "the agricultural laborer seldom pays, even for a good cottage, more than 1/10 of his income, and more commonly 1/12. The town laborer receiving 18 or 20 shillings weekly will certainly not pay less than 1/3; the artisan receiving 30, 35 shillings or £2 will pay 1/6 and, including rates and taxes, probably 1/5.—Agricultural Lock-out of 1874, p. 246.

In France, Lord Brabazon reports: "Whilst at about the same period town workmen were earning wages 53.32 per cent higher than agricultural laborers, these latter were paying 40.45 per cent less rent."—Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1872, p. 49.

The well-known passion of the Netherlander for having a whole house, however small, to himself, must, I think, result in a larger proportional expenditure in this direction by common laborers than by the higher classes. I note also that Dr. Engel's computations do not agree very well with those given by Mr. Scott respecting the expenditures of families in Würtemburg. (Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1872, pp. 196, 197, 205.)

7. [7] Mr. Brassey says of the Coolie laborers employed on the railways in India: "Their food consists of two pounds of rice a day, mixed with a little curry; and the cost of living on this, their usual diet, is only 1s. a week."—Work and Wages, p. 88.

8. [8] "No fewer than four great scarcities, amounting almost to famines," since the mutiny, namely, 1861-2, 1865-6, 1868-9, 1873-4.—The Duke of Argyle, quoted by London Economist, May 9, 1874.

9. [9] "A laborer in Ireland will live and bring up a family on potatoes; a laborer in England will see the world unpeopled first."—General T. Perronet Thompson.

10. [10] "Three times the number of persons can be fed on an acre of potatoes who can be maintained on an acre of wheat in ordinary seasons."—Alison's History of Europe, 1815-51, xviii., p. 11.

11. [11] Prof. Cairnes makes a remark in his Logical Method of Pol. Econ. which is liable to be misunderstood. He says: "It is not asserted that population in fact increases faster than subsistence; this would, of course, be physically impossible." In one sense of the word increase, that, namely, which the vital statisticians intend by the phrase "effective increase," Prof. Cairnes's remark is unexceptionable; but there is nothing to prevent persons from being born into the world in large numbers, for whom there is not food enough to keep them alive, and who must consequently die prematurely. Most people would say that in such cases "population in fact increases faster than subsistence." Population, of course, can not increase and remain beyond the limits of subsistence.

12. [12] "The habits of the English and Scotch laborers of the present day are as widely different from those of their ancestors in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. as they now are from the habits of the laborers of France and Spain."—J. R. McCulloch, Pol. Econ., p. 392.

13. [13] Malthus, Pol. Econ., p. 229.

14. [14] Note, for instance, the very general introduction of cornmeal in place, in part, of the potato. (See Mr. Purdy's paper in the Statistical Journal, xxv. 459-60.)

15. [15] "When the standard of natural or necessary wages is high—when wheat and beef, for example, form the principal part of the food of the laborer, and porter and beer the principal part of his drink, he can bear to retrench in a period of scarcity. Such a man has room to fall; he can resort to cheaper sorts of food—to barley, oats, rice, and potatoes. But he who is habitually fed on the cheapest food has nothing to resort to when deprived of it. Laborers placed in this situation are absolutely cut off from every resource. You may take from an Englishman, but you can not take from an Irishman. The latter is already so low he can fall no lower; he is placed on the very verge of existence; his wages, being regulated by the price of potatoes, will not buy wheat, or barley, or oats; and whenever, therefore, the supply of potatoes fails, it is next to impossible that he should escape falling a sacrifice to famine."—J. R. McCulloch, Pol. Econ., p. 396.

16. [16] Pol. Econ., pp. 70, 71.

17. [17] One pound of wool manufactured into flannel costs 3s. 1d.; 1 lb. flax into shirting, 2s. 4d.; 1 lb. cotton into shirting, 1s. The materials for a full dress of outer garments if composed of wool would not cost less than thirty shillings; while the same quantity of material of cotton, and of more durable quality, costs only 7s. 6d. to 10s. (Mr. Ashworth, quoted by Prof. Levi, Statistical Journal, xxvi. 36.)

18. [18] One hundred pounds of flax will produce about 200 yards of white cloth. One hundred pounds cotton, 300 yards of pretty equal general appearance, taking a medium set of light cloth as an example. (Mr. John Mulholland, Soc. Sc. Trans., 1867, p. 151.)

19. [19] No small sacrifice for poor folks. Mr. Gould in his very interesting Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of Switzerland, in 1872, estimates the average loss to working families from requiring the school attendance of children above twelve years of age to be £10 to £12 per annum, for each child so withdrawn from labor (p. 349). Such expenses, when made "necessary," are a deal better than dear food.

20. [20] I have before me the tax and valuation lists of a township in Massachusetts containing a smart manufacturing village. The total population of the township was about 3300. The Irish males above 18 years of age numbered 229. Of these, 128 paid taxes upon property. The total amount of estate owned by these 128 Irishmen, exclusive of all money in savings-banks (the deposits of these institutions being taxed en masse by the State without distinction of ownership), was $163,560, being an average to each holder of $1278.

21. [21] "Custom has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men, but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. In France they are necessaries neither to men nor to women, the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted."—Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ii. 467.

Mr. Senior says of shoes: "When a Scotchman rises from the lowest to the middling classes of society, they become to him necessaries. He wears them to preserve, not his feet, but his station in life."—Pol. Econ., pp. 36, 37.

22. [22] "The worst-paid class in England, the agricultural laborers, expend about two thirds of their revenues in food and one third in other objects."—Jones, Pol. Econ., p. 99.

Mr. Mill makes this strange remark respecting "the workpeople," having, presumably, those of England in mind: "They are not the principal customers, if customers at all, of most branches of manufacture." It would puzzle one to tell of what branches of manufacture the workpeople of the United States are not customers.

23. [23] Wheat-flour is very cheap in the United States, corn and oat meal relatively much cheaper. The cost of these articles can scarcely be said to govern the expenditure of an American family. Many a mechanic spends as much for milk, butter, and eggs as he does for flour and meal.

24. [24] "The great preventive check is the fear of losing decencies."—Senior, Pol. Econ., p. 38.

25. [25] The proportion of breadwinners to dependants will of course vary greatly with the habits and dispositions of the people in the respects mentioned in the text.

The results of Cantillon's computations are thus stated by Adam Smith: "Mr. Cantillon seems to suppose that the lowest species of common laborers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance in order that, one with another, they may be enabled to bring up two children; the labor of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself. But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood. The poorest laborers, therefore, according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children in order that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man."—Pol. Econ. i. 71. The rudeness of these computations appears on the face. In Belgium, in 1856, 49.3 per cent of the population were reported as pursuing gainful occupations; in the United States, in 1870, only 32.4 per cent; in England and Wales, in 1871, 51 per cent; in Scotland, 43.7 per cent.

26. [26] Contrast the Swiss and the Russian. Consul Egerton reports that an incentive to labor is the great desideratum in Russia. "In the truly agricultural districts the peasant, earning enough for his wants during the summer months, remains idle throughout the winter."—Report of 1873 (Textile Factories), p. 92, note. So much for a land where the people are universally ignorant, and are despotically governed. In Switzerland, to the contrary, Mr. Gould reports, "Men who during the short tourist season frequently earn as guides, porters, etc., enough to keep themselves and their families in comfort during the remainder of the year, may nevertheless be seen in winter willingly exposing themselves to the severest hardships for the small sum of a franc or two a day."—Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1872, p. 346.

Part I, Chapter VIII

27. [27] The substance of this and the following chapter appeared in the North American Review for January, 1875; art., The Wage-Fund Theory.

28. [28] "Elle doit être avancée par le capitaliste et le retrouver, par conséquent, dans la valeur du produit obtenu."—A. E. Cherbuliez, Précis de la Science Économique, i. 415.

29. [29] Mr. F. D. Longe, in his Refutation of the Wage-Fund Theory, insists on this distinction. Of the wealth or capital used "for the maintenance of laborers while employed in producing new goods or wealth," he says, it "may come either from their (the laborers') own resources or those of their employers, or be borrowed from bankers or elsewhere." Of the wealth "to be used for the purchase of their work," he says, it "may consist of funds belonging to the consumer or of funds belonging to the employer, or both, or may even be taken out of the very goods which the laborers produce, or their money value."

30. [30] "There is in Ireland," says Alison, "what is called the 'starving season,' which is about six weeks before the 'new harvest.'"—Hist. Europe, xxi. 204.

31. [31] "A very little consideration will render it evident that laborers whilst engaged in any particular industry can not live upon the commodity which their labor is assisting to produce. The ploughman who tills the soil from which in the following autumn the harvest will be gathered, is fed with the wealth which his master has saved; or, in other words, the master pays his laborer's wages from the wealth which he has previously saved."—Prof. Fawcett, Political Economy, p. 19.

Here we find asserted or assumed, (1) the necessity of the laborer for maintenance while the crop is growing; (2) his entire dependence on the employer for that maintenance; (3) the natural equivalency of subsistence and wages.

32. [32] I may mention, in illustration, the case of transportation companies, owning railroads, canals, steamboats, or coaches. The employees of such companies in the United States number hundreds of thousands, and they are rarely paid by the day, commonly by the week or month. Yet the companies collect all their fares for passage and a portion of their charges for freight, daily. They are thus always in debt, often to a vast amount, to their laborers (using that term in its generic sense) for services which have been rendered to them, and of which they have availed themselves to the full extent. So that the companies are virtually carrying-on their operations on capital a portion of which is advanced by their own employees. Many other examples might be given.

33. [33] "Capitalists and laborers receive large remuneration in America because their industry produces largely."—J. E. Cairnes, Some Leading Principles, etc., p. 462.

Part I, Chapter IX

34. [34] "That which pays for labor in every country is a certain portion of actually-accumulated capital, which can not be increased by the proposed action of government, nor by the influence of public opinion, nor by combinations among the workmen themselves. There is also in every country a certain number of laborers, and this number can not be diminished by the proposed action of government, nor by public opinion, nor by combinations among themselves. There is to be a division now among all these laborers of the portion of capital actually there present."—A. L. Perry, Pol. Econ., p. 122.

35. [35] "The circulating capital of a country is its wage-fund. Hence if we desire to calculate the average money-wages received by each laborer, we have simply to divide the amount of this capital by the number of the laboring population."—H. Fawcett, Economic Position of the British Laborer, p. 120.

36. [36] "The demand for labor consists of the whole circulating capital of the country, * * * * The supply is the whole laboring population."—J. S. Mill, Fortnightly Review, May, 1869.

37. [37] "The spread of this doctrine in the United States is not to be explained in the same way. It would seem to have been accepted, so far as it has been accepted, upon the authority of the English economists. Certainly the conditions which have been noted as prevailing in England during the period when the laborer's subsistence came to be identified with his wages, have at no time been known in the United States. Here the people have not been shut out from the land; the laboring classes have been able to make and have made vast accumulations, and the great bulk of wages have, since the first settlement of the country, been paid, not out of capital, but out of the completed product when harvested or marketed.

"The wage-fund seems to have been considered, we know not why, a pillar in the temple of free-trade. Certainly the line drawn in the United States between those who have accepted it and those who have combated it, or let it severely alone, appears to intimate a general sense of some such relation between the doctrines. We find no trace of it among the writers known as protectionists. Professor Bowen distinctly rejects it. Messrs. Daniel Raymond and Peshine Smith omit all allusion to it, so far as we have observed. Mr. Carey, it is true, gave it countenance in his Essay on Wages; but then Mr. Carey was a free-trader in 1835. On the other hand, Professors Vethake, Bascom, and Perry, who take strong ground against governmental interference with the methods and courses of industry, all strongly pronounce the wage-fund theory.

"Dr. Wayland, whose treatise on Political Economy, though published in 1837, would appear (see Preface) to have been mainly composed prior to the emergence in distinct form of the wage-fund theory, followed Malthus in his statement of the law of wages. (Wayland's Pol. Econ., p. 312.) Excepting Dr. Wayland, Mr. Amasa Walker is the only American writer on systematic political economy, of the free-trade school, whom we remember as giving no countenance to the wage-fund theory. It can scarcely need to be said that we regard the idea of an essential connection between the two doctrines as wholly mistaken. Free-trade rose without this theory of wages, and will surely not fall with it."—North-American Review, cxx., pp. 93, 94, note.

38. [38] We have had a right to do better than this in political economy, in the United States. "The Americans are Englishmen whose intelligence is not intimidated and whose conduct is not controlled by many of the influences derived from tradition and authority, which govern the beliefs and actions of the mother country. From the course taken by the United states, we may often correctly interpret the bent which our nation will follow as they gradually escape, for good or evil, from the domination of the past."—Address of Lord Napier and Ettrick as President of the British Social Science Association, 1872. (Transactions, p. 17.)

39. [39] "If law or opinion succeeds in fixing wages above this rate, some laborers are kept out of employment."—J. S. Mill, Pol. Econ., i. 432.

40. [40] The writer has been sharply criticised for having said in a public address at Amherst College, in 1874, that "by the wage-fund theory, whatever is in wages, is right." This has been referred to as an instance of misrepresenting an opponent's position, the more easily to refute him. I confess myself so dull of apprehension as now, not-withstanding the effect of this castigation in sharpening my wits, to be unable to understand wherein my proposition is objectionable, even on the ground of my critics. If the wage-fund comprises all that can be paid in wages; if that fund is unfailingly distributed by competition; if farther to increase wages would be to trench on capital, and thus diminish future employment, and thus work permanent injury to the laboring classes, together with the rest of the community, why is it not right that the employer should pay just such wages as he does? Why would it not be wrong were he to pay more?

41. [41] "It thus appears that if population increases without any increase of capital, wages fall; and that if capital increases without an increase of population, wages rise. It is evident, also, that if both increase, but one faster than the other, the effect will be the same as if the one had not increased at all, and the other had made an increase equal to the difference."—James Mill, Pol. Econ., p. 43.

42. [42] The view here taken of the relation of the laborer's efficiency to his wages substantially coincides with that presented by Prof. Stanley Jevons in his Theory of Political Economy, pp. 256-262, and by Prof. Hearn, of Melbourne, in his Plutology. Mr. Jevons styles his own views "somewhat heretical." Mr. J. L. Shadwell, writing in the "Independent Section" of the Westminster Review (January, 1872), advances "the efficiency of labor" as one great cause for the variations of wages, wholly independent of increase of population or of capital.

43. [43] I omit purposely all consideration of the limited monopoly of inventions created by law for the encouragement of ingenuity.

44. [44] See the remarks by Prof. Senior on the possibilities of English agriculture, quoted on p. 97.

Part II, Chapter X

1. [1] "L'économie politique que j'appellerais volontiers orthodoxe... semblait être définitivement constituée, Comme l'église de Rome, elle avait son Credo."—E. de Laveleye, Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15 1875.

2. [2] See p. 143.

3. [3] "Certes, le partage des produits du travail est digne de toute la sollicitude de quiconque a de l'intelligence et du cœur. Cependant, elle est moins urgente à discuter, et pratiquement elle sera bien moins embarrassante que celle de l'accroisement harmonique et régulier de la production."—Troisième discours d'Ouverture du cours de l'année, 1841-2.

4. [4] Let me not seem, by omission, to do injustice. Many of the writers of this school have recognized, in the fullest manner, not only the moral and social, but also the industrial, advantages of education and political freedom, in increasing the productive power of the workman; but for the distribution of wealth, they hold strictly economical forces to be sufficient.

5. [5] No man can buy anything, unless at the same time, he sells something; else he does not buy the thing he gets; it is given to him. When a man buys a pound of meat he sells a shilling, more or less. The butcher may say, I will send home the meat now, and you may hand in the shilling at the end of the week, or of the month; but the credit given does not alter the substantial relations of the parties to the transaction.

6. [6] We here assume the industrial quality of all laborers to be the same, and all employers to stand on the same footing as regards business capacity and credit.

7. [7] "Every scene of competition is called a market."—F. W. Newman, Lectures on Pol. Econ., p. 5.

8. [8] "For this class (the prolétaires) as for all, the operation of competition is two-fold. They feel it both as buyers, and as sellers of services."—Bastiat, "Harmonies of Pol. Econ.," p. 280. Doubtless; but do they feel it equally, in their two capacities? For what Prof. Cairnes calls "the excessive friction" of retail trade, see p. 313-5.

9. [9] Le point de départ des Katheder-socialisten est entiérement différent de celui des économistes orthodoxes, qu'ils designent sous le nom de Manchester-thum, on secte de Manchester, parce que c'est en effet, l'ecole des libres échangistes qui a exposé avec plus de logique les dogmes du Credo ancien."—Laveleye.—Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 July, 1875.

10. [10] See this term defined and truck practices described, pp. 324-42.

11. [11] Fawcett, Speeches, p. 130.

12. [12] The Factory Act of 1844 was passed against the opposition of the majority of English economists in Parliament and out.

13. [13] Essays in Pol. Econ. p. 251.

14. [14] The mobility of labor forms the subject of Chap. XI.

15. [15] Charles Lamb—Essays of Elis.

16. [16] Essays in Pol. Econ., p. 246.

17. [17] Count Rumford's Essays contain much interesting matter in illustration of the losses which the working classes suffer in the domestic use of what they have purchased, from the want of simple and elementary apparatus for cooking, storing, etc.

18. [18] Thus, I cannot hesitate to assent to the opinion of M. Say, that the breaking down of all the fraternities in Paris, after the Revolution of 1830, and the sudden rush, without order or discretion, of a mob of labor into trades immemorially restricted, was the cause of great disaster in 1831; that it would have been better, both for the trades and for the mass of outside labor, had the barriers been removed more gradually.

19. [19] "Employment of children in factories," p. 15. Mr. Horner, who was government inspector of factories, states that in the lace mills of Nottingham, children, 9 to 15 years of age, were frequently employed 20 hours on a stretch, from 4 A.M. to 12 at night. [p. 14.] He quotes a witness who testified that "being frequently detained in his counting-house late at night, till 12 or 1 o'clock, he has often, in going home, in the depth of winter, met mothers taking their children to the neighboring print-works, the children crying." [p. 123.]

Dr. Villermé, in his memorable report to the French Academy used the following language in writing of the factory laborers of Alsace: "The rents in the manufacturing towns and villages immediately adjoining, are so high that they are often obliged to live at the distance of a league and even a league and a half. The poor children, many of whom are scarcely seven years old, and some even younger, have to take from their sleep and their meal-hours, whatever is required to traverse that long and weary road, in the morning to get to the factory, in the evening to get home.... To judge how excessive is the labor of children in the factories, one has only to recollect that it is unlawful to employ galley-slaves more than 12 hours a day, and these 12 must be broken by two hours for meals, reducing the actual labor to ten hours a day; while the young people of whom I speak have to toil 13 hours, and sometimes 13½, independent of their meal times."

20. [20] "So understood, I hold it to be a pretentious sophism, destitute of foundation in nature and fact, and rapidly becoming an obstruction and nuisance in public affairs."—J. E. Cairnes' Essays in Pol. Econ., p. 252.

21. [21] In England, the absence of a system of registering titles has burdened the transfer of estates most oppressively.

22. [22] "L'économie politique s'appuie sur les memes principes que le politique."—8th Discours d'ouverture de l'année, 1847-8.

23. [23] "It is one thing to repudiate the scientific authority of laissez faire, freedom of contract, and so forth: it is a totally different thing to set up the opposite principle of state control, the doctrine of paternal government. For my part, I accept neither one doctrine nor the other, and, as a practical rule, I hold laissez faire to be incomparably the safer guide. Only let us remember that it is a practical rule, and not a doctrine of science; a rule in the main sound, but, like most other sound practical rules, liable to numerous exceptions; above all, a rule which must never for a moment be allowed to stand in the way of the candid consideration of any promising proposal of social or industrial reform."—J. E. Cairnes' Essays in Pol. Econ., p. 251.

Part II, Chapter XI

24. [24] If Mr. Mill had said, "Political economy considers mankind solely as occupied in acquiring and consuming wealth," the statement would have been unexceptionable. But if "Political economy considers mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth," Political economy considers mankind most falsely; and the results in economical reasoning of that unwarranted assumption have been most mischievous. Political economy is not bound to consider mankind so far as they are occupied in anything else than in acquiring and consuming wealth; but it is bound in simple honesty not to consider them as occupied in acquiring and consuming wealth when they are not, and to a degree they are not.

25. [25] Introduction to R. Jones' Pol. Econ.

26. [26] The effects of speech-differences in preventing the easy and rapid flow of labor are clearly to be seen in France and Scotland. The greater number of the Bas Bretons cannot speak or understand French, and are hence confined more closely to their native fields, than the people of any other section. [Report of H. B. M. Consul Clipperton, 1872, p. 160.]

The commissioners of the Scotch Census of 1871 found the influence of this cause very powerful in preventing emigration from the northern and western parts of Scotland, including the Isles, where the Gaelic is still spoken. [Report p. 20. cf. 4th Report (1870) on the employment of women and children in Agr., p. 117.]

27. [27] Miss Martineau notes the jealousy of "imported labor" (from Ireland) during the Napoleonic wars. [Hist, England I. 332.] Even so late as 1846, the committee on Railway Laborers reported that not only did the Irish and the Scotch not work on the same gangs with the English navvies, but they were kept apart from each other. [Report p. 5.] There was especial jealousy manifested toward the Irish importations. [Ibid. p. 52, 77.]

28. [28] The knitting frame caused stocking-making in England to be transferred from its former seat at Norwich. The woolen manufacture has, within living memory, migrated from Essex and Suffolk to the North. Between 1857 and 1861 occurred a falling off in the muslin embroidery manufacture of Ireland and Scotland, which involved a reduction in the number of persons employed of 146,000 (Statistical Journal XXIV. 516.7). About 1846, the English power-loom caused the absolute destruction of an industry which supported 250,000 workmen in Flanders. (Ibid, XXVIII, 15.) Seemingly petty changes in fashion will often produce wide-reaching effects in production. Mr. Malthus states that the substitution of shoe ribbons for buckles was a severe blow, long felt by Sheffield and Birmingham "On a smaller scale and with less notoriety," says a writer in the Athenæum, "the dismal tragedy of the cotton famine, is enacted every year in one or another of our great cities. Every time fashion selects a new material for dress, or a new invention supercedes old contrivances, workmen are thrown out of employment." Prof. Rogers gives the following piquant illustration of the effect of changes in the mere fashion of dress. "A year or two ago every woman who made any pretension to dress according to the custom of the day, surrounded herself with a congeries of parallel steel hoops. It is said that fifty tons of crinoline wire were turned out weekly from the factories chiefly in Yorkshire. The fashion has passed away and the demand for the material and the labor has ceased. Thousands of persons once engaged in this production are now reduced to enforced idleness, or constrained to betake themselves to some other occupation. Again, a few years ago, women dressed themselves plentifully with ribbons. This fashion has also changed; where a hundred yards were sold, one is hardly purchased now, and the looms of a multitude of silk operatives are idle. To quote another instance. At the present time women are pleased to walk about bareheaded. The straw-plaiters of Bedfordshire, Bucks, Hertfordshire and Essex are reduced suddenly from a condition of tolerable prosperity to one of great poverty and distress." (Pol. Econ., 1869, pp. 77-8.)

29. [29] But it may be said, if industry abandons population, and wages become reduced, this of itself constitutes a reason for industry to return, as it will have the advantage of cheap labor. This is much as if one should say: the approach of cold induces shivering: shivering is of the nature of exercise: exercise induces warmth; therefore a man may not freeze on a Minnesota prairie in an ice-storm, with the thermometer at 40 degrees below zero; and indeed the colder it gets, the more he will shake, and consequently, the warmer he will be.

30. [30] In 1870, 7,500,000 persons of the native population were living in states other than those of their birth.—See Census Reports. "The full-blooded American," says Chevalier, "has this in common with the Tartar, that he is encamped, not established, on the soil he treads upon."—Travels in the United States, p. 129.—In Russia, too, the freedom of migration from place to place, has frequently been noted. Sir Arch. Alison attributes this to the Tartar blood.—History of Europe xv, 164.—See Sir A. Buchanan's account of the industrial nomads of Russia.—Reports, H. B. M. Consuls, etc. 1870, p. 301.

31. [31] "No cause has, perhaps, more promoted, in every respect, the general improvement of the United States than the absence of those systems of internal restriction and monopoly, which continue to disfigure the state of society in other countries. No laws exist here directly or indirectly confining men to a particular occupation or place, or excluding any citizen from any branch he may at any time think proper to pursue. Industry is in every respect free and unfettered."—Albert Gallatin.

32. [32] The Advance, Dec. 10, 1874. In the last century the Irish emigration was from an altogether different class. "The spirit of emigration in Ireland," said Arthur Young in 1777, "appears to be confined to two circumstances, the Presbyterian religion and the linen manufacture."—Pinkerton, iii. 868.

33. [33] Fortnightly Review, III. 50.

34. [34] Statistical Journal, xx. 75.

35. [35] "The assumption commonly made in treatises of political economy, is that, as between occupations and localities within the same country, the freedom of movement of capital and labor is perfect." [J E. Cairnes, "Some Leading Principles," etc., p. 362.]

36. [36] Statistical Journal, xxviii. p. 12.

37. [37] A part of this effect, viz., the preference of emigration from the kingdom over migration within the kingdom, is due to the ineffable stupidity of the act of 12 and 13 Victoria (c. 103) which enables guardians of the poor to borrow money to send laborers out of the country; but does not authorize them to spend a penny in sending a person from the parish of his residence to another part of the kingdom where employment may be freely offered.

38. [38] Report on the Stoppage of Wages, p. 172.

39. [39] Wealth of Nations, I. 79.

40. [40] In discussing his extremely valuable Returns before the Statistical Society, Mr. Purdy says: "It would appear that no commodity in this country presents so great a variation in price at one time, as agricultural labor, taking the money wages of the men as the best exponent of its value. A laborer's wages in Dorset or Devon are barely half the sum given for similar services in the Northern parts of England."—Statistical Journal, xxiv. 344. Mr. Purdy refers, as among the causes of this, "to the natural vis inertiæ of the class.... and above all, a well founded dread of the miseries of a disputed poor-law settlement in the hour of their destitution."

41. [41] Professor Rogers, in his History of Agriculture and Prices, expresses the opinion that not only the transport of freight, but the transit of persons, was as free in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth, as in the eighteenth century. The roads were maintained in good order, chiefly by the monasteries, and travelling was then professional in many trades. The tiler, the slater, the mason, and the finer carpenter (who made furniture) were migratory. [Hist. I. 234-5]. Of a period a little later, Prof. Rogers says, "Labor travelled in those days (1530-1620) as freely as now; indeed, in the account books of Elizabeth, we find that mechanics for Greenwich and the Tower are procured from places as distant as Cardiff, Dorchester, Brighton, Bristol and Bridgewater."—[Statistical Journal, xxiv. 548.]

The practice of travelling or "wandering" as it is called, which has come down from this period, still prevails extensively in Germany among the younger journeymen ("Herbergen")—see Mr. Petre's report on the condition of the industrial classes, 1870, p. 56. The ease with which the German artisans are "metamorphosed into Frenchmen, Englishmen, Italians, Americans or Turks" (Mr. Strachey, Ibid p. 507) has doubtless contributed to the freedom of their movement. Not less than 8,000 German workmen were reported at Mulhouse before the war of 1870.

Consul Wilkinson reports that the settled population of the province of Macedonia is augmented in winter by five or six thousand itinerant artisans who quit their native mountains in central Albania, and distribute themselves over the province in quest of employment, [ibid p. 248]. M. Ducarre's report to the French assembly of 1875, notes the considerable proportions of the annual migration from Italy into Corsica. [p. 247.]

42. [42] Pol. Econ. p. 167.

43. [43] See p. 26.

44. [44] It is not merely by differences in the birth-rate and in the death-rate of these natural labor-populations, that the supply of labor is made to vary. The census of Scotland quoted above, shows that the proportion of males born varies greatly in the different occupations. Thus, among the workers in chemicals there are but 85.2 males to 100 female children under five years of age; among operatives in silk factories, there are 93.9, in cotton-factories, 95.3, in woolen factories 97.8; while among the agricultural population there are 105.2, among fishermen, 107.5, among general out-door laborers, 106.6, among quarry-men and brickmakers, 107.8, and among railway laborers and navvies, 117.1. See Report, p. 44. Of course the greater the proportional number of males, the greater the supply of effective labor.

45. [45] Report, p. 42.

46. [46] Wealth of Nations i, pp. 103-4.

47. [47] Some Leading Principles, etc., p. 362.

48. [48] "The founder of the cotton manufacture was a barber. The inventor of the power loom was a clergyman. A farmer devised the application of the screw-propeller. A fancy-goods shopkeeper is one of the most enterprising experimentalists in agriculture. The most remarkable architectural design of our day has been furnished by a gardener. The first person who supplied London with water was a goldsmith. The first extensive maker of English roads was a blind man, bred to no trade. The father of English inland navigation was a duke, and his engineer was a millwright. The first great builder of iron bridges was a stone mason, and the greatest railway engineer commenced his life as a colliery engineer."—Hearn's Plutology, p. 279.

49. [49] Some Leading Principles, etc., pp. 70-3.

50. [50] "That doctrine may be thus briefly stated: International values are governed by the reciprocal demand of commercial countries for each other's productions, or more precisely, by the demand of each country for the productions of all other countries as against the demand of all other countries for what it produces.... Whatever be the exchanging proportions—or, let us say, whatever be the state of relative prices—in different countries, which is requisite to secure this result, those exchanging proportions, that state of relative prices, will become normal—will furnish the central point toward which the fluctuations of international prices will gravitate."—"Some Leading Principles, etc." pp. 99, 100.

51. [51] Some Leading Principles, etc., p. [???].

52. [52] "Even sometimes as many as eighty or one hundred may be taken from a neighboring town to one farm." Report of E. B. Portman, asst. comm'r.,—Employment of women and children, 1867-8, p. 95. "At present, parents solicit employers to take children into service often so young as to be worthless."—Ibid. p. 97. "In Cambridgeshire, the children go out to work as young as six years old, many at seven or eight."—Ibid, p. 95. of. pp. 12, 15, note.

53. [53] Social Science Transactions, 1874, p. 4.

54. [54] Report of 1865, p. 13.

55. [55] "An agricultural laborer is not suddenly converted into a cotton weaver. Such a transition rarely takes place; but if there is a manufactory close at hand many of the children of the agricultural laborers will be employed therein."—Pol. Econ., p. 170.

Part II, Chapter XII

56. [56] "Whose Essay on the distribution of Wealth (or rather Rent) is a copious repertory of valuable facts on the landed tenure of different countries."—J. S. Mill, Pol. Econ., I. 297.

57. [57] Pol. Econ., p. 15.

58. [58] "You have no other peasantry like that of England. You have no other country in which it is entirely divorced from the land. There is no other country in the world where you will not find men turning up the furrow in their own freehold."—Cobden, Speeches, II, 116.

59. [59] Address of Lord Napier and Ettrick. Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1872.

60. [60] Wealth of Nations, I. 69.

61. [61] "In Tuscany," writes Sismondi, and the remark holds true of most parts of Italy where the metayer system prevails, "public opinion protects the cultivator. A proprietor would not dare to impose conditions unusual in the country, and even in changing one metayer for another he alters nothing of the rent."

"In this country (England) the cultivator of the soil and the owner of the soil are, as a rule, different persons; in other countries they are, as a rule, the same; or where they are not the same the owner of the soil rather occupies the position of a perpetual lessor or mortgagee than that of a landlord whose contracts with his tenants are constantly liable to revision."—Prof. Rogers' Pol. Econ., p. 151.

62. [62] Prof. Jones finds the origin of the metayer system of Western Europe, in Greece, from which it was adopted by the Romans, and introduced into Italy first, and France and Spain afterwards. Prof. Rogers finds that the metayer system was introduced quite generally into England after the great plague of 1348, and prevailed for about sixty years, when it was "superseded by the growth of a hardy and prosperous yeomanry, who either purchased the land in parcels, or bargained to work it with their own capital, and at a money rent." Pol. Econ., 168, 170. The fate of these yeomen in England has been noticed.

63. [63] Of the 682,237 holdings in Ireland, 512,080 are of less value than 15l. a year each, 527,000 are tenancies at will.—Statistical Journal, xxxiii, 152.

64. [64] Day-laborers in agriculture were, until recently, almost unknown in Ireland. They are now appearing in considerable numbers.—Leslie's Land Systems, etc. p. 44.

65. [65] "The unhired laborers who are peasant cultivators," according to Prof. Jones, comprised in his day "probably two-thirds of the laboring population of the globe."—Pol. Econ., p. 14.

66. [66] Pol. Econ., p. 420.

67. [67] Wealth of Nations, I, 332.

68. [68] Wealth of Nations.

69. [69] "The (third) class of hired laborers, paid from capital, has so exclusively met the eyes and occupied the thoughts of English writers on wages, that it has led them into some serious and very unfortunate mistakes as to the nature, extent, and formation of the funds out of which the laboring population of the globe is fed, and, as usual, they have misled foreign writers."—R. Jones, Pol. Econ., p. 15.

70. [70] Log. Meth. Pol. Econ. p. 139-141.

71. [71] p. 4.

72. [72] With the assistance, it may be, of his wife and minor children whose labor is, in the eye of the law, his own.

73.