CHAPTER XXII.
Power of skill—Cheap production—Population and production—Partial and temporary evils—Intelligent labour—Division of labour—General knowledge—The Lowell Offering—Union of forces.
We have thus, without pretending to any approach to completeness, taken a rapid view of many of the great branches of industry in this country. We have exhibited capital working with accumulation of knowledge; we have shown labour working with skill. We desire to show that the counter-control to the absorbing power of capital is the rapidly developing power of skill—for that, also, is capital. Knowledge is power, because knowledge is property. Mr. Whitworth, whose Report on American Manufactures we have several times quoted, says that the workmen of the United States, being educated, perform their duty "with less supervision than is required when dependence is to be placed upon uneducated hands." He adds, "It rarely happens that a workman, who possesses peculiar skill in his craft, is disqualified to take the responsible position of superintendent, by the want of education and general knowledge, as is frequently the case in this country." This is a reproach which every young person in our land ought, as speedily as possible, to wipe out. The means of education may not be quite so universal here as in the United States; but they are ample to produce a large increase of that skill and that trustworthiness which are the most efficient powers which those who work for their living can possibly command, for elevating their individual positions, and for elevating the great body of workers throughout the realm. One of the most essential steps towards the attainment of this elevation is the conviction that manual labour, to be effective, must adapt itself almost wholly to the direction of science; and that under that direction unskilled labour necessarily becomes skilled, and limited trust enlarges into influential responsibility.
Those who have taken a superficial view of the question of scientific application say, that, only whenever there is a greater demand than the existing means can supply, is any new discovery in mechanics a benefit to society, because it gives the means of satisfying the existing wants; but that, on the contrary, whenever the things produced are sufficient for the consumers, the discovery is a calamity, because it does not add to the enjoyments of the consumers; it only gives them a better market, which better market is bought at the price of the existence of the producers.
All such reasoning is false in principle, and unsupported by experience. There is no such thing, nor, if machines went on improving for five hundred years at the rate they have done for the last century, could there be any such thing, as a limit to the wants of the consumers. The great mass of facts which we have brought together in this book must have shown, that the cheaper an article of necessity becomes, the more of it is used; that when the most pressing wants are supplied, and supplied amply by cheapness, the consumer has money to lay out upon new wants; that when these new wants are supplied cheaply, he goes on again and again to other new wants; that there are no limits, in fact, to his wants as long as he has any capital to satisfy them. Bear in mind this; that the first great object of every invention and every improvement is to confer a benefit upon the consumers,—to make the commodity cheap and plentiful. The working man stands in a double character; he is both a producer and a consumer. But we will be bold to say that the question of cheapness of production is a much more important question to be decided in his favour as a consumer, than the question of dearness of production to be decided in his favour as a producer. The truth is, every man tries to get as much as he can for his own labour, and to pay as little as he can for the labour of others. If a mechanic, succeeding in stopping the machine used in his own trade, by any strange deviation from the natural course of things were to get higher wages for a time, he himself would be the most injured by the extension of the principle. When he found his loaf cost him two shillings instead of sixpence; when he was obliged to go to the river with his bucket for his supply of water; when his coals cost a guinea a bushel instead of eighteen pence; when he was told by the hosier that his worsted stockings were advanced from a shilling a pair to five shillings; when, in fact, the price of every article that he uses should be doubled, trebled, and, in nine cases out of ten, put beyond the possibility of attainment;—what, we ask, would be the use to him of his advance in wages? Let us never forget that it is not for the employment of labourers, but for the benefit of consumers, that labour is employed at all. The steam-engines are not working in the coal-pits of Northumberland, and the ships sailing from the Tyne to the Thames, to give employment to colliers and to sailors, but to make coals cheap in London. If the people of London could have the coals without the steam-engines and the ships, it would be better for them, and better for the rest of the world. If they could get coals for nothing, they would have more produce to exchange for money to spend upon other things; and the comforts, therefore, of every one of us would be increased.
This increase of comfort, some may say, is a question that more affects the rich than it affects the great mass. This again is a mistake. The whole tendency of the improvements of the last four hundred years has not only been to lift the meanest, in regard to a great many comforts, far above the condition of the rich four hundred years ago, but absolutely to place them, in many things, upon a level with the rich of their own day. They are surrounded, as we have constantly shown throughout this book, with an infinite number of comforts and conveniences which had no existence two or three centuries ago; and those comforts and conveniences are not used only by a few, but are within the reach of almost all men. Every day is adding something to our comforts. Our houses are better built—our clothes are cheaper—we have a number of domestic utensils, whose use even was unknown to our ancestors—we can travel cheaply from place to place, and not only travel at less expense, but travel ten times quicker than the richest man could travel two hundred years ago. The bulk of society is not only advancing steadily to the same level in point of many comforts with the rich, but is gaining that knowledge which was formerly their exclusive possession. Let all of us who are producers keep fast hold of that last and best power.
We have endeavoured to show throughout this book that the one great result of machinery, and of every improvement in art, is to lessen the cost of production; to increase the benefit to the consumer. But it is a most fortunate arrangement of the social state, as we have also shown, that cheap production gives increased employment. The same class of false reasoners who consider that the wants of society are limited, cry out, it is better to have a population of men than of steam-engines. That might be true, if the steam-engines did put out the men; but inasmuch as they increase the productions by which men are maintained, they increase the men. What has increased the population of England nearly ten-fold during the last five hundred years, but the improvement of the arts of life, which has enabled more men to live within the land? There is no truth so clear, that as the productions of industry multiply, the means of acquiring those productions multiply also. The productions which are created by one producer furnish the means of purchasing the productions created by another producer; and, in consequence of this double production, the necessities of both the one and the other are better supplied. The multiplication of produce multiplies the consumers of produce. There are, probably, upon the average, no more hats made in the year than there are heads to wear them; but as there are twenty-one millions of heads of the British subjects of Queen Victoria, and there were only five millions of the British subjects of Queen Anne, it is self-evident that the hat-makers have four times as much work as they had a century and a half ago. What has given the hat-makers four times as much work? The quadrupling of the population. And what has quadrupled the population? The quadrupling of produce—the quadrupling of the means of maintaining that population. It is a remarkable fact, derived from the official returns, that whilst our exports of home produce and manufactures have increased about twofold in price since the commencement of the century, they have increased eight-fold in quantity. Their real or declared value indicates the price. What is called the official value indicates the quantity. What is true of our exports is also true of our home-consumption. The great multiplication of produce is accompanied, proportionately, with a far greater diminution of price.
There is a just and eloquent passage in the Registrar-General's Report upon the Census of 1851, which we gladly copy:—
"With all that we now see around us, it is difficult to place ourselves in the position of the people of 1751; and to understand either the simplicity of the means, or the greatness of the task which has since been achieved by the people of England and Scotland. It is evident, however, that if the whole that they have accomplished had been proposed as a project, or been held out as the policy of the greatest minister then living, its difficulty and grandeur would have overwhelmed him with confusion. If in the height of power he had thus addressed the people of Britain, would he not have been heard with justifiable incredulity?—'These islands and Ireland are occupied by the men of many separate states that are now happily united. After the settlement on the land of tribes, fleets, and armies of Celts, of Saxons, of Danes, and of Normans—and after centuries of patient culture, its fertile soil sustains seven millions of people in its whole length from the Isle of Wight to the Shetland Islands. We cannot—for the mighty power is not given us—say, let there be on the European shores of the Atlantic ocean—three Great Britains. But the means exist for creating on this land, in less than a hundred years, two more nations, each in number equal to the existing population, and of distributing them, over its fields, in cottages, farms, and towns, by the banks of its rivers, and around its immemorial hills: and they will thus be neither separated by longer roads, nor wider seas, but be neighbours, fellow-workers, and fellow-countrymen on the old territory; wielding by machines the forces of nature, that shall serve them with the strength of thousands of horses, on roads, and seas,—in mines, manufactories, and ships. Subsistence shall be as abundant as it is now, and luxuries, which are confined to the few, shall be enjoyed by multitudes. The wealth of the country—its stock and its produce—shall increase in a faster ratio than the people. All this shall be accomplished without any miraculous agency, by the progress of society,—by the diffusion of knowledge and morals,—by improvements,—and improvements chiefly in the institution of marriage—'that true source of human offspring,' whence,
'Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother, first were known.'"