We have here the necessary result of consolidation of land—itself the result of an attempt to compel the whole people of the world to compete with each other in a single and limited market for the sale of raw produce. With every increase of this competition, the small proprietor has found himself less and less able to pay the taxes to which he was subjected, and has finally been obliged to pass into the condition of a day-labourer, to compete with the almost starving Irishman, or the poor native of Scotland, driven into England in search of employment; and hence have resulted the extraordinary facts that in many parts of that country, enjoying, as it does, every advantage except a sound system of trade, men gladly labour for six shillings ($1.44) a week; that women labour in the fields; and that thousands of the latter, destitute of a change of under-clothing, are compelled to go to bed while their chemises are being washed.[145]
Driven from the land by the cheap food and cheap labour of Ireland, the English labourer has to seek the town, and there he finds himself at the mercy of the great manufacturer; and thus, between the tenant-farmer on the one hand, and the large capitalist on the other, he is ground as between the upper and the nether millstone. The result is seen in the facts heretofore given. He loses gradually all self-respect, and he, his wife, and his children become vagrants, and fall on the public for support. Of the wandering life of great numbers of these poor people some idea may be formed from the following statement of Mr. Mayhew[146] :—
"I happened to be in the country a little time back, and it astonished me to find, in a town with a population of 20,800, that no less than 11,000 vagabonds passed through the town in thirteen weeks. We have large classes known in the metropolis as the people of the streets."
It will, however, be said that if cheap corn tend to drive him from employment, he has a compensation in cheaper sugar, cotton, coffee, rum, and other foreign commodities—and such is undoubtedly the case; but he enjoys these things at the cost of his fellow labourers, black, white, and brown, in this country, the West Indies, India, and elsewhere. The destruction of manufactures in this country in 1815 and 1816 drove the whole population to the raising of food, tobacco, and cotton; and a similar operation in India drove the people of that country to the raising of rice, indigo, sugar, and cotton, that must go to the market of England, because of the diminution in the domestic markets for labour or its products. The diminished domestic consumption of India forces her cotton into the one great market, there to compete with that of other countries, and to reduce their prices. It forces the Hindoo to the Mauritius, to aid in destroying the poor negroes of Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil; but the more the sugar and cotton that must go to the distant market, the higher will be the freights, the lower will be the prices, the larger will be the British revenue, the greater will be the consumption, and the greater will be the "prosperity" of England, but the more enslaved will be the producers of those commodities. Competition for their sale tends to produce low prices, and the more the people of the world, men, women, and children, can be limited to agriculture, the greater must be the necessity for dependence on England for cloth and iron, the higher will be their prices, and the more wretched will be the poor labourer everywhere.
The reader may perhaps understand the working of the system after an examination of the following comparative prices of commodities:—
1815. 1852.
——- ——-
England sells—
Bar iron, per ton…. £13 5s. 0d. ….. £9 0s. 0d.
Tin, per cwt……… 7 0 0 ….. 5 2 0
Copper " ……… 6 5 0 ….. 5 10 0
Lead " ……… 1 6 6 ….. 1 4 0
England buys—
Cotton, per lb……. 0 1 6 ….. 0 0 6
Sugar, per cwt……. 3 0 0 ….. 1 0 0
While these principal articles of raw produce have fallen to one-third of the prices of 1815, iron, copper, tin, and lead, the commodities that she supplies to the world, have not fallen more than twenty-five per cent. It is more difficult to exhibit the changes of woven goods, but that the planters are constantly giving more cotton for less cloth will be seen on an examination of the following facts in relation to a recent large-crop year, as compared with the course of things but a dozen years before. From 1830 to 1835, the price of cotton here was about eleven cents, which we may suppose to be about what it would yield in England, free of freight and charges. In those years our average export was about 320,000,000, yielding about $35,000,000, and the average price of cotton cloth, per piece of 24 yards, weighing 5 lbs. 12 oz., was 7s. 10d., ($1.88,) and that of iron £6 10s. ($31.20.) Our exports would therefore have produced, delivered in Liverpool, 18,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 1,100,000 tons of iron. In 1845 and 1846, the home consumption of cotton by the people of England was almost the same quantity, say 311,000,000 pounds, and the average price here was 6-1/2 cents, making the product $20,000,000. The price of cloth then was 6s. 6-3/4 d., ($1.57 1/2,) and that of iron about £10, ($48;) and the result was, that the planters could have, for nearly the same quantity of cotton, about 12,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 420,000 tons of iron, also delivered in Liverpool. Dividing the return between the two commodities, it stands thus:—
Average from: 1830 to 1835. 1845-6. Loss.
——————- ——————- ———- ——-
Cloth, pieces…. 9,250,000 … 6,250,000 … 3,000,000
And iron, tons… 550,000 … 210,000 … 340,000
The labour required for converting cotton into cloth had been greatly diminished, and yet the proportion, retained by the manufacturers had greatly increased, as will now be shown:—