There is a passage in Wordsworth's 'Excursion' in which he describes the benevolent and philosophical hero of his poem, a pedler, listening to the complaints of poverty, and searching into the causes of the evil:—
"Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts, Huts where his charity was blest; his voice Heard as the voice of an experienced friend. And, sometimes, where the poor man held dispute With his own mind, unable to subdue Impatience, through inaptness to perceive General distress in his particular lot; Or cherishing resentment, or in vain Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd And finding in herself no steady power To draw the line of comfort that divides Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven, From the injustice of our brother men; To him appeal was made as to a judge; Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd The perturbation; listen'd to the plea; Resolv'd the dubious point; and sentence gave So grounded, so applied, that it was heard With soften'd spirit—e'en when it condemn'd."
The poor man is accustomed to hold dispute with his own mind; he thinks his particular lot is worse than the general lot; his soul is perplexed in considering whether his condition is produced by a common law of society, or by the injustice of his fellow-men; the experienced friend listens, discusses, argues,—but he argues in a temper that produces a softened spirit. The adviser soothes rather than inflames, by dealing with such questions with "an understanding heart." He unites the sympathising heart with the reasoning understanding.
Now, we may fairly inquire if, during the many unfortunate occasions that are constantly arising of contests for what are called the rights of labour against what is called the tyranny of capital, those who are the most immediate sufferers in the contest are addressed with the "understanding heart?" If argument be used at all, the principles which govern the relations between capital and labour are put too often dictatorially or patronisingly before them, as dry, abstract propositions. They are not set forth as matters of calm inquiry, whose truths, when dispassionately examined, may be found to lead to the conclusion that a steadily-increasing rate of wages, affording the employed a greater amount of comforts and conveniences, is the inevitable result of increasing capital, under conditions which depend upon the workers themselves. The result is generally such as took place in a recent Lancashire strike, where one of the leaders exclaimed, "The sooner we can rout political economy from the world, the better it will be for the working-classes." It might, indeed, as well be said, the sooner we can rout acoustics from the world, the better it will be for those who have ears to hear; but the absurdity would not be corrected by a mathematical demonstration to those who did not comprehend mathematics. The same person held that political economy was incompatible with the gospel precept of doing unto others as we would be done unto, because it encourages buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest; and he necessarily assumed that political economy recommends the capitalist to buy labour cheap and sell it dear. We have not learnt that calmly and kindly he was told, in the real spirit of political economy, that it is impossible that, by any individual or local advantage the capitalist may possess, he can long depress wages below the rate of the whole country, because other capitalists would enter into competition for the employment of labour, and raise the average rate. If Wordsworth's experienced friend had heard this perversion of the meaning of the axiom about markets, he would have said, we think, that to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest simply means, in commerce, to buy an article where its cheapness represents abundance, and to sell it in a place where its dearness represents a want of it and a consequent demand,—even as he, the pedler, bought a piece of cloth at Kendal, where there was plenty of cloth, and sold it for a profit at Grasmere, where there was little cloth. The business of mercantile knowledge and enterprise is to discover and apply these conditions; so that, if a trader were to buy hides in Smithfield and carry them to Buenos Ayres, he would reverse these conditions,—he would buy in the dearest market and sell in the cheapest. Political economy—the declaimer against it might have been told—says that to produce cheap is essential to large demand, and constantly-increasing demand; but it does not say that cheap production necessarily implies diminished wages. It says that cheap production, as a consequence of increased production, depends upon the constantly-increasing use of capital in production, and the constantly-diminishing amount of mere manual labour compared with the quantity produced—which result is effected by the successive application of all the appliances of science to the means of production. At every step of scientific improvement there is a demand for labour of a higher character than existed without the science. At every extended organization of industry, resulting from an extended demand, not only skilled labour, but trusted labour, becomes more and more in request; and the average amount of all labour is better paid. A bricklayer is paid more than the man who mixes his mortar, because one is a skilled labourer, and has learnt his art by some expenditure of time, which is capital. The merchant's bookkeeper is paid more than his porter, because the one has an office of high trust and responsibility, and the other a duty to perform of less importance, and for which a far greater number of men wanting hire are fitted. We could wish that not only "in ragged huts," but in well-appointed houses, were the things better understood that political economy really does say.
Feed the hungry.
The process which has been steadily going on amongst us for increasing the demand for skill and trustworthiness has no doubt produced a diminution of the funds for employ in which neither skill nor trust is required. Thus a great amount of suffering is constantly presented to our view, which benevolence has set about relieving, in our time, with a zeal which shows how fully it is acknowledged that the great principle, to "Love one another," is not to evaporate in sentiment, but is to be ripened in action. As a nation, England was never indifferent to the command, "Feed the hungry." The art of Flaxman has shown this "act of mercy" in its most direct form. But the "understanding heart" has discovered that many of the miseries of society may be relieved by other modes as effectually as by alms-giving, and perhaps much more effectually. Whether some of these efforts may be misdirected, in no degree detracts from the value of the principle which seeks the prevention of misery rather than the relief. One of the most obvious forms in which misery has presented itself in our large cities, and especially in London, has arisen from the competition amongst labour which may be called unskilled, because there are a numerous unemployed body of labourers at hand to do the same work, in which there is no special skill. This was the case with the sempstresses of London; and the famous 'Song of the Shirt' struck a note to which there was a responding chord in every bosom. But the terrible evils of the low wages of shirt-making would not have been relieved by an universal agreement of the community to purchase none but shirts that, by their price, could afford to give higher wages to the shirt-makers. The higher wages would have infallibly attracted more women and more children to the business of shirt-making. The straw-platters, the embroiderers, the milliners would have rushed to shirt-making; and, unless there had been a constantly-increasing rate of price charged to the wearers of shirts, and therefore a constant forced contribution to the capital devoted to shirt-making, the payment to one shirt-maker would have come to be divided amongst two; and the whole body, thus doubled by a rate of wages disproportioned to the rate of other labour requiring little peculiar skill, would have been in a worse condition in the end than in the beginning.
Whatever suffering may arise out of the competition that must exist between mere manual labour, and also between that labour which is displayed in the practice of some art easily learnt, capable of exercise by both sexes, and in which very young children may readily engage—it is scarcely fair that those who witness the suffering of the employed at very low wages should instantly conclude that the employers are extortioners and oppressors. A branch of trade which seems inconsiderable as regards the article produced is often found in a particular locality, and furnishes employment to large numbers. In the London parish of Cripplegate there are great quantities of toothbrushes made. The handle is formed by the lathe, in which skilled labour is employed. The hair is cut by machinery. The holes in the handle in which the hair is inserted are also pierced by machines. But the insertion of the hair, and the fastening it by wire, are done by hand. Excellent people, who, with a strong sense of Christian duty, enter "ragged huts" to relieve and to advise, see a number of women and children daily labouring at the one task of fastening the hair in toothbrushes; and they learn that the wages paid are miserably low. They immediately conclude that the wages should be higher; because in the difference between the retail price of a toothbrush and the manufacturing cost there must necessarily be large profits. They say, therefore, that the wholesale manufacturer is unjust in not giving higher wages. But the retail price of toothbrushes, however high, does not enable the manufacturer, necessarily, to give a payment more considerable than the average of such labour to the women and children who very quickly learn the art of fastening the hair. The price he can pay is to be measured by the average price of such labour all over the country. It is not in the least unlikely that the manufacturer in Cripplegate may not receive a fourth of the price at which a toothbrush is sold in Saint James's. The profits are determined by the average of all his transactions. He has to sell as cheaply as possible for the export trade. If he sell dear, the export-trader will see if he cannot buy a hundred thousand toothbrushes at Havre instead of London. It is nothing to the exporter whether he obtain a profit out of French or English toothbrushes. Again. The manufacturer sends a hundred thousand toothbrushes to a wholesale dealer at Glasgow, who supplies the retailers throughout Scotland. But before the Scotch warehouseman will repeat the order, he will ascertain whether he can buy the article cheaper at Birmingham; and one per cent. lower will decide against Cripplegate. Now, in all these domestic labours involving small skill, the question is whether the miserably-paid workers can do anything more profitable. Mr. Mayhew says that some large classes "do not obtain a fair living price for their work, because, as in the case of the needle-workers and other domestic manufacturers, their livelihood is supposed to be provided for them by the husband or father; and hence the remuneration is viewed rather as an aid to the family income than as an absolute means of support." It is not what is "supposed," or what is "viewed," that determines the question. It is what really is. Such employ may, unhappily, be sought by many as "an absolute means of support." But if there be an almost unlimited number who seek it as "an aid to the family income," there is no possibility of preventing a competition, perfectly equal as regards the wages of labour, but wretchedly unequal in the application of those wages.
The miseries that are so frequently resulting from the competition of unskilled labour are also results from what we will venture to call uncapitalled labour, attempting to unite wages with profits. Upon a large scale, the miseries of Ireland, which finally collapsed in the terrible famine, were produced by labour trenching upon the functions of capital without possessing capital. In 1847 there were in Ireland five hundred thousand acres of land in more than three hundred thousand holdings, thus supplying the only means of maintenance to three hundred thousand male labourers and their families, but averaging little more than an acre and a half to each tenant. There are not more than nine hundred thousand labourers and farmers to the twenty-five million cultivated acres in England and Wales—about one labourer to every thirty-eight acres, and about one farmer capitalist to every hundred and ten acres. Nor is the effect of uncapitalled and unskilled labour—for uncapitalled labour is for the most part unskilled—less remarkable in manufactures than in agriculture. Many are familiar with the minute details of low wages and suffering—of the oppressions attributed to masters and middle-men—which are contained in a series of papers by Mr. Henry Mayhew, published in 'The Morning Chronicle' in 1849-50, under the title of 'London Labour, and London Poor.' Nothing could be more laudable than the general object of these papers, which, in the preface to a collected edition of a portion of them, was "to give the rich a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under these sufferings, of the poor;" and to cause those "of whom much is expected, to bestir themselves to improve their condition." But, at the same time, it would be difficult to say how the condition of particular classes of these sufferers was to be improved, except by such general efforts as would raise up the whole body of the people in knowledge and virtue, and by directing the labours of those who, without skill or capital, were struggling against skill and capital, into courses of industry more consonant with the great modes of productiveness all around them. One example may illustrate our meaning—that of "the garret-masters of the cabinet-trade." The writer we have mentioned says that wages had fallen 400 per cent. in that trade, between 1831 and 1850; but he also says that the trade was "depressed by the increase of small masters—that is to say, by a class of workmen possessed of just sufficient capital to buy their own materials, and to support themselves while making them up." Taking the whole rate of wages,—the payment to the unskilled as well as the skilled workmen—it would be difficult not to believe that the average reduction was quite as great as represented. A cabinet-maker tells this tale:—