Irish Mud-cabin.
The wages of labour cannot be reduced below the standard necessary to support the labourer and his family whilst he produces. If he cannot obtain this support he ceases to be a producer. He is starved out of existence; or he falls upon the public fund for the support of want; or he becomes a beggar or a thief. In states of society where there is no accumulating capital, the labourer necessarily receives low wages, because he maintains himself at the minimum of subsistence. Our poet Spenser, writing nearly three centuries ago upon the miseries of Ireland, describes the cottiers as inhabiting "swine-sties rather than houses." Swift, long after, describes the same state of things:—"There are thousands of poor wretches who think themselves blessed if they can obtain a hut worse than the squire's dog-kennel, and an acre of ground for a potato plantation." This condition of society unhappily lasted up to our own day. If the Irish cottier had been a labourer for wages instead of deriving his miserable living direct from the land, he would have been no better off, unless his desire for something higher than the coarsest food, and the most wretched lodging, had set some limit to the increase of population beyond the increase of capital. Population necessarily increases faster than subsistence when there is no restraint upon the increase by the disposition to accumulate on the part of the labourer. There may be accumulation in the form of his money-savings; and there may be accumulation in an increase of the conveniences of life by which he is surrounded. When there is neither money saved nor comforts increased—when there is no accumulation for the gratification of other wants than that of food—competition is driving the labourers to the lowest point of misery. The competition in Ireland was for the possession of land, at an extravagant rent, out of the labour upon which the cottier could only obtain the very lowest amount of necessaries for his subsistence. If, in the habits of the whole body of the peasantry, clothes and furniture had been as necessary as potatoes, the oppressive exactions of the landlords must have yielded to what then would have been the natural rate, whether we call it profit or wages, necessary for the maintenance of that peasantry; and the necessity, on their part, for maintaining the average status of their class, would in a considerable degree have kept down the inordinate increase of the people. A century ago the great body of the working-people of England ate rye bread, which is cheaper than wheaten. If all the workers were to come back to rye-bread, the rate at which they could be comfortably maintained would be somewhat less; and unless the accumulation from the economy were expended universally in some improved accommodation, labourers would gradually arise who would be contented with the smaller amount necessary for subsistence, and the greater number of labourers seeking for wages would depress the amount paid to each individual labourer.
"In England and Scotland," says Mr. Morison, "the classes living by wages form the majority of the population." It has been estimated by Mr. Greg that the annual amount paid in wages is a hundred and forty millions sterling; to which may be added twenty millions for the board of domestic servants. The profits of all the operations of industry to the capitalists are estimated by Mr. Morison at ninety millions. The census returns show that there were three hundred and fifty-four thousand masters in trades, and farmers, employing fourteen hundred thousand men. This gives a proportion of about four men employed to one employer. Compared with the estimate of profits it shows that each employer, assuming the calculation to be correct, would derive a revenue of two hundred and fifty pounds a year as the recompense of his capital, skill, and risk. This is not so large an aggregate profit as is ordinarily supposed. The men employed would each receive a revenue of one hundred a year. But we must add a large number to the men receiving wages, who would not be returned by their employers; and the calculation of payments must be further diminished by the consideration that in many branches of industry, and in factory labour especially, a very large number of females are employed, as well as boys. But the fact of the general proportion of wages to profits is sufficiently striking to show that the inequality of the condition of the labourer and the employer is not so extravagantly great as we have been accustomed of late years to hear asserted.
In looking back upon the historical evidence which we possess, imperfect as it is, of the condition of society at various periods of our industrial progress, we cannot doubt that there has been a process constantly going forward by which the circumstances of all classes have been steadily raised. In the table of Gregory King, which we have several times referred to, the average income of ten thousand merchants is put down at three hundred a year; of shopkeepers and tradesmen at forty-five pounds; of farmers at forty-two pounds; and of labouring people at fifteen pounds. The income of gentlemen is taken at two hundred and eighty pounds a year. The increase of the means of these various classes at the present day as compared with the end of the seventeenth century, has certainly been threefold. If we turn to the passage which we have quoted from the 'Chronicon Preciosum,' originally published in 1707, we may at once compare the advantages which a threefold increase of means will procure. Wheat is not six pounds a quarter, nor broadcloth two pounds fourteen shillings a yard,—which would be the case if we trebled the prices of 1707. We have abundance of conveniences and comforts of which the people of Queen Anne's reign had no notion, which have been bestowed upon us by manufactures, and commerce, and scientific agriculture.
We have already stated and illustrated the general principle that the wages of labour are determined by the accumulations of capital, compared with the number of labourers. Hence it necessarily results that, as has been forcibly expressed, "the additional capital, whenever it is productively employed, will tend as certainly to the benefit of the working population at large as if the owner were a trustee for their benefit."[45] But the profitable employment of capital depends very greatly upon activity, knowledge, and foresight on the part of the capitalist. It was for the want of these qualities that all the old schemes for providing labour out of a common stock chiefly broke down. Sir Matthew Hale, in his plans for employing paupers in spinning flax and weaving cloth, knew theoretically the truth that the amount of capital available for the payment of labour would be largely increased by the rapidity with which it might be turned over. He says, "If it could be supposed that the cloth could be sold as soon as made,—which is not, I confess, reasonably to be expected—then a stock of 24l. would, by its continual return, provide materials and pay the workmen for one loom's work in perpetuity." The "if" expresses the [difference] between individual commercial activity and knowledge, and official sluggishness and incapacity. But it also expresses the difference between the commerce of our days, and that of the end of the seventeenth century. Without roads, or canals, or railroads, how difficult was it to bring the seller and the buyer together! All manufactures would be, for the most part, local. The cloths of Kendal might go to the neighbouring fairs on packhorses; and thence slowly spread through the country by pedlers and other small dealers; and the proceeds might return to the manufacturer at the end of a year. But the rapid turning over of capital which begins with buying a bale of cotton at New York, and having it in Sydney in the shape of calico in three months, with the bill that is to pay for it drawn at Manchester, accepted in Sydney, and discounted in London in another three months, is a turning over of capital which was scarcely imagined by the projectors and practical traders of a century ago.
This rapid turning over of capital, and the consequent more rapid accumulation of the labour-fund, depends upon the confidence of the capitalist that his capital will work to a profit. It will not so work if he is to be undersold. If wages could press upon profit beyond a certain ascertained limit, he would be undersold. The home competition of localities and individuals is perpetually forcing on the most economical arrangements in production. The foreign competition is doing so still more. If we have increased productiveness here, through scientific application, the same increased productiveness, from the same causes, is going forward elsewhere. 'Price-Currents' supply a perpetual barometer of industrial cloud or sunshine; and the manufacturer and merchant have constantly to unfurl or furl their sails according to the indications. Whenever there is shipwreck, the ship's crew and the captain partake of a common calamity; and the calamity is always precipitated and made more onerous when, from any cause, there is not cordial sympathy and agreement.
[37] We have already noticed the ancient oppressive laws for the regulation of labour, in Chap. VII. We recur to them here more particularly, as illustrating the principle of Wages.
[38] See the full 'Charge' in the 'Harleian Miscellany.'
[39] See the Evidence on Poor-laws before a Committee of House of Commons, 1837.