Labour and the Popular Welfare

by W. H. Mallock

Now, as we are going to take the industry of agriculture for our example, we shall mean by rent a portion of the agricultural products derived from Human Exertion applied to a given tract of soil. Of such products let us take corn, and use it, for simplicity’s sake, as representing all the rest; and that being settled, let us go yet a step further; and, for simplicity’s sake also, let us represent corn by bread; and imagine that loaves develop themselves in the soil like potatoes, and, when the ground is properly tilled, are dug up ready for consumption. We shall figure rent therefore as a certain number of loaves that are dug up from a given tract of soil. Now everybody knows that all soils are not equally good. That there is good land and that there is poor land is a fact quite familiar even to people who have never spent a single day in the country. And this means, if we continue the above supposition, that different fields of precisely the same size, cultivated by similar men and with the same expenditure of exertion, will yield to their respective cultivators different numbers of loaves.

◆1 We will illustrate this by the case of three men of equal power tilling three fields of unequal fertility.

◆¹ Let us take an example. Tom, Dick, and Harry, we will say, are three brothers, who have each inherited a field of twelve acres. They are all equally strong, and equally industrious: we may suppose, in fact, that they all came into the world together, and are as like one another as three Enfield rifles. Each works in his field for the same time every day, digs up as many loaves as he can, and every evening brings them home in a basket. But when they come to compare the number that has been dug up by each, Tom always finds that he has fifteen loaves, Dick that he has twelve, and Harry that he has only nine; the reason being that in the field owned by Harry fewer loaves develop themselves than in the fields owned by Tom and Dick. Harry digs up fewer, because there are fewer to dig up. Let us consider Harry’s case first.

◆1 Labour must be held to produce so much as is absolutely necessary for its own support.

◆¹ Each of the loaves is, we will say, worth fourpence; therefore Harry, with his nine loaves, makes three shillings a day, or eighteen shillings a week. This is just enough to support him, according to the ideas and habits of his class. If his field were such that it yielded him fewer loaves, or if he had to give even one of the loaves away, the field would be useless; it would not be cultivated at all, either by him, or by anybody, nor could it be; for the entire produce, which would then go to the cultivator, would not be enough to induce, or perhaps even to make him able, to cultivate it. But, as matters stand, so long as the entire produce does go to him, and to no one else, we must take it for granted that his exertion and his field between them yield him a livelihood which, according to his habits, is sufficient; for otherwise, as I have said, this field neither would nor could be cultivated. And it will be well here to make the general observation that whenever we find a class of men cultivating the utmost area of land which their strength permits, and taking for themselves the entire produce, their condition offers the highest standard of living that can possibly be general amongst peasant cultivators: from which it follows that, unless no land is cultivated except the best, the general standard of living must necessarily require less than the entire produce which the best land will yield. We assume then that Harry, with his nine loaves a day, represents the highest standard of living that is, or that can be, general amongst his class.

And now let us turn from Harry’s case to the case of Tom and Dick. They have been accustomed to precisely the same standard of living as he has been; and they require for their support precisely the same amount of produce. But each day, after they have all of them fared alike, each taking the same quantity from his own particular basket, the baskets of Tom and Dick present a different appearance to that of Harry. There is in each of the two first a something which is not to be found in his. There is a surplus. In Dick’s basket there are three extra loaves remaining; and in Tom’s basket there are six. To what then is the production of these extra loaves due? Is it due to land, or is it due to the exertions of Tom and Dick? Mill, as we have seen, would tell us that this was an unmeaning question; but we shall soon see that it is not so.

◆1 But whatever is beyond this is the product not of Labour, but of Land;

It is perfectly true that it would be an unmeaning question if we had to do with one of the brothers only—say with Harry, and only with Harry’s field. Then, no doubt, it would be impossible to say which produced most—Harry or the furrows tilled by him,—whether Harry produced two loaves and the furrows seven, or Harry seven and the furrows two. And as to Harry’s case more must be said than this. Such a calculation with regard to it would be not only impossible, but useless; for even if we convinced ourselves that the land produced seven loaves, and Harry’s exertion only two, all the loaves would still of necessity go to Harry. In a case like this, therefore, it is quite sufficient to take account of Human Exertion only. Agricultural labour, in fact, must be held to produce whatever product is necessary for the customary maintenance of the labourer. ◆¹ But if this is the entire product obtained from the worst soil cultivated, it cannot be the entire product obtained from the best soil; and the moment we have to deal with a second field,—a field which is of a different quality, and which, although it is of exactly the same size, and is cultivated every day with precisely similar labour, yields to that labour a larger number of loaves,—twelve loaves, or fifteen loaves, instead of nine,—then our position altogether changes. We are not only able, but obliged to consider Land as well as Labour, and to discriminate between their respective products. A calculation which was before as unmeaning as Mill declares it to be, not only becomes intelligible, but is forced on us.

◆1 As we shall see by comparing the case of the man tilling the best field with that of the man tilling the worst.

◆¹ For if we start with the generalisation derived from Harry’s case, or any other case in which the land is of a similar quality that one man’s labour produces nine loaves daily, and then find that Tom and Dick, for the same amount of labour, are rewarded respectively by fifteen loaves or by twelve, we have six extra loaves in one case, and three in the other, which cannot have been produced by Labour, and which yet must have been produced by something. They cannot have been produced by Labour; for the very assumption with which we start is that the Labour is the same in the last two cases as in the first; and according to all common-sense and all logical reasoning, the same cause cannot produce two different results. When results differ, the cause of the difference must be sought in some cause that varies, not a cause that remains the same; and the only cause that here varies is the Land. Accordingly, just as in Harry’s case we are neither able nor concerned to credit the Land with any special part, or indeed any part, of the product, but say that all the nine loaves are produced by Harry’s Labour, so too in the case of Tom and Dick we credit Labour with a precisely similar number; but all loaves beyond that number we credit not to their Labour, but to their Land—or, to speak more accurately, to certain qualities which their Land possesses, and which are not possessed by Harry’s. In Dick’s case these superior qualities produce three loaves; in Harry’s case, they produce six.