Principles of Political Economy

by Arthur Latham Perry

(b) Machinery always lessens the cost of a given amount of production, otherwise there would be no motive for its introduction. But, other things being equal, the lessened cost of a commodity broadens the market for its sale. The cheaper a useful commodity is offered, the more the buyers of it the world over. The more and the better the machinery brought in, the more and the cheaper the commodities produced and the broader and better the markets to be supplied; and, therefore, the more and the more skilful the hands needed to tend the machinery and to market the products.

(c) The more commodities thus created by men and machines, and the wider the markets found for them over the earth, the more laborers are required to extract and prepare and transport the raw materials for the now augmenting commodities, and also to ship and distribute the finished products. As Chadwick says, notwithstanding the strictly factory hands have diminished one half in one place, "yet the mill population has increased, as well as the general population, the hands discharged being absorbed in other employments."

(d) These improvements in machinery, and the consequent refinements in the skill of the laborers, cheapen also of course the commodities consumed by the laborers themselves, and therefore a given rate of wages, to say nothing of a rate sure to enlarge under these circumstances, now secures for the laborers a higher grade of comforts.

More and better and more durable machinery, consequently, so far forth, tends at once to enhance the rate of laborers' wages and increase the purchasing power of the unit in which wages are paid.

To return now to the main line of discussion under the present head, we have shown by proof positive that there is nothing either in new machinery introduced, or in higher wages paid in connection with such machinery, or in shortened hours made possible by these two, to lessen the Demand of Capitalists for the personal services of Laborers; because, there is nothing in all these, commercial and industrial freedom being presupposed, to lessen the Profits of the Capitalists, which profits are the sole motive actuating them as such. That high wages and short hours are rather an advantage to Profits in connection with skilled laborers and fine machinery, than a disadvantage when compared with long hours and low pay and poor implements, is clearly shown by Chadwick in the passage quoted comparing England with English Bombay, where the working hours are 60% more and the wages greatly less and the cost of the machinery very little; "twenty shillings' worth of bundled yarn may be produced at a cost of from 2d. to 3d. less in Manchester than in Bombay"; call it 2½d. less; that is, it costs the Bombay spinner more than 1% per pound of yarn more to spin it than it costs the Manchester spinner! For truth and decency's sake, then, let us have done with the gabble in this country about the advantages of "pauper labor" over skilled, of low wages over high, of cheap machinery over dear!

The penetrating reader will perceive, that the root of this whole matter lies in the breadth and quickness of the Markets, in which the commodities produced by the laborers and capitalists may be sold against other commodities, and against Services and Credits; if the markets of the world are free to all to buy in and to sell in, which seemingly two things are precisely one and the same thing, then the Demand of Capitalists for the services of laborers to create and market salable commodities wherever these may be wanted, can apparently never slacken on the whole; because, the desires of men which the efforts of other men may satisfy commercially, are indefinite in number and unlimited in degree; and, therefore, the Wages of the skilled laborers, the commercial freedom of the nations being presupposed, are likely to be on the whole on a steady rise throughout the world; and the amount and excellence of the machinery on a similar rise, since Capitalists can always under these circumstances see their Profits looming up ahead of them,—the profits of an endlessly diversified and marketable Production.

The chief reason at any rate, and almost the only reason in common sight, why little England has surpassed in commercial prosperity of every sort every other nation on the globe during the past forty years, as evidenced by these statistics of Sir Richard Temple and other abounding proofs on sea and land, is in the fact, that her statesmen of the last generation came to perceive clearly, and then helped the people to see, that a market for products is products in market; that her traditional tariff-barriers to keep foreign goods out kept in equally domestic goods that wanted to get out for a profit, and so down went the tariff-barriers little by little, accursed alike by God and Englishmen, never to be set up again around the shores of the land of Cobden and Bright and Elliott; and to-day we read, that the average annual Earnings per head of the entire population of the United Kingdom, men and women and children, English and Irish and Scotch, are $176, while the annual average Profits of Capital within the three kingdoms is 14%.

(3) In the last place here, we must now look at the Demand for the personal services of Professional laborers. These are persons, who have done something more with reference to their life-work than serve an apprenticeship to a trade, or acquire some mechanical skill in connection with some kind of machinery. An Education rather than an Apprenticeship is implied in Professional laborers. Knowledge of the bodies and of the minds of men; acquaintance with some one section at least of the general laws that pervade the universe; some confidence (the more the better) in God, who created and governs the world; are all requisite to a reasonable success on the part of Professional laborers. The Demand for their services, and of course also the Return made to them for such services, will largely depend on such superior knowledge and confidence acquired by such persons, and involved in their services. Clergymen, physicians, lawyers, statesmen, literators, actors, teachers, and scientific experts, may serve as our chief examples of Professional laborers.

(a) "All that a man hath will he give for his life." When men fall sick, or those fall sick who are dear to them, they send for the doctor. Scarcely any trait of human nature is more universal than this. And the trait puts honor on human nature, because it implies a relatively high estimate of the worth of life in the mind of the patient, and also a relatively high confidence in a certain class of one's fellow-men. As Society progresses, and as Christianity deepens the sense of the worth of the individual life, and knits a stronger tie of confidence between man and man, a change is slowly coming over the relations between physicians and their patients; people do not wait to fall sick before they send for the doctor, so much as they formerly did; some individuals and families are establishing connections with a medical adviser, who studies their constitutions and habits of life beforehand, guides them in general sanitation, and thus both he and they are better ready for curatives in times of illness. Gladstone has long had such an attendant, with the best of results as he thinks, and strongly commended such action to John Bright, but too late to save the latter from what was thought to be premature death in consequence of imprudent and ill-advised handling of his health. In a few cases in England and the United States an annual salary is paid a physician for general care of the family's health, whether sickness befall or not, instead of the more usual fees on consultation and attendance. Dr. Munn of New York receives such an annual salary from Mr. Jay Gould. But in whatever way medical services are paid for, the Demand for them is constant and intense. The motive to buy them is immediate and personal, not mediate and remote, as in the case of capitalists and laborers of the second class.

It is to be noticed further in respect to physicians, and indeed in respect to all professional laborers much more than in respect to other laborers, that much knowledge has been gained by them for its own sake, out of pure love for it, rather than for the sake of merely selling their services as laborers; while this does not diminish in the least the commercial character of their services, it tends to beget on the part of the buyers of them a stronger confidence in the men who render them, so that the Demand for such services and consequently the pay for them is enhanced by the trust reposed in the laborers on the ground of something acquired by them for other than selling purposes, and which indeed cannot be sold; and superior character also, as well as superior knowledge, which is wholly moral in its basis and not mercantile at all, affects the Demand for the services of the possessor of it to increase it, on the ground of a naturally stronger trust in him as a professional laborer, and at the same time tends to increase his Wages by limiting the circle of those who can offer in competition such services on the background of such superior knowledge and character.