d. Infanticide; as among the Chinese.
2. Emigration; as a means of draining off the surplus labourers.
3. Limitation of apprentices in skilled trades; as a means of preventing the undue increase of particular occupations. This, however, is advocated not by economists, but generally by operatives.
4. Prevention of family work; or the discouragement of the labour of the wives and children of operatives. This, again, cannot be said to be an “economist” remedy.
B. Increase of the circulating capital, or sum set aside for the payment of the labourers.
1. By government imposts. “Governments,” says Mr. Mill, “can create additional industry by creating capital. They may lay on taxes, and employ the amount productively.” This was the object of the original Poor Law (43 Eliz.), which empowered the overseers of the poor to “raise weekly, or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, &c., such sums of money as they shall require for providing a sufficient stock of flax, hemp, wool, and other ware or stuff, to set the poor on work.”
2. By the issue of paper money. The proposition of Mr. Jonathan Duncan is, that the government should issue notes equivalent to the taxation of the country, with the view of affording increased employment to the poor; the people being set to work as it were upon credit, in the same manner as the labourers were employed to build the market-house at Guernsey.
C. The extension of the markets of the country; by the abolition of all restrictions on commerce, and the encouragement of the free interchange of commodities, so that, by increasing the demand for our products, we may be able to afford employment to an extra number of producers.
The above constitute what, with a few exceptions, may be termed, more particularly, the “economist” remedies for low wages.
D. The regulation of the quantity of work done by each workman, or the prevention of the undue economizing of labour. For this end, several means have been put forward.