Labour and the Popular Welfare

by W. H. Mallock

Now were the question merely one of literary or philosophical propriety, this inclusive use of the word Labour might be defensible; but we have nothing to do here with the niceties of such trivial criticism. We are concerned not with what a word might be made to mean, but what it practically does mean; and if we appeal to the ordinary use of language,—not only its use by the mass of ordinary men, but its most frequent use by economic writers also,—we shall find that the word Labour has a meaning which is practically settled; and we shall find that this meaning is not an inclusive one, but exclusive. ◆¹ We shall find that Labour practically means muscular Labour, or at all events some form of exertion of which men—common men—are as universally capable, and that it not only never naturally includes any other idea, but distinctly and emphatically excludes it. For instance, when Mill in his Principles of Political Economy devotes one of his chapters to the future of the “Labouring Classes,” he instinctively uses the phrase as meaning manual labourers. When, as not unfrequently happens, some opulent politician says to a popular audience, “I, too, am a labouring man,” he is either understood to be saying something which is only true metaphorically, or is jeered at as saying something which is not true at all. Probably no two men in the United Kingdom have worked harder or for longer hours than Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury; yet no one could call Mr. Gladstone a labour member, or say that Lord Salisbury was an instance of a labouring man being a peer. The Watts, the Stevensons, the Whitworths, the Bessemers, the Armstrongs, the Brasseys, are, according to the formal definition of the economists, one and all of them labourers. But what man is there who, if, in speaking of a strike, he were to say that he supported or opposed the claims of Labour, would be understood as meaning the claims of employers and millionaires like these? It is evident that no one would understand him in such a sense; and if he used the word Labour thus, he would be merely trifling with language. The word, for all practical purposes, has its meaning unequivocally fixed. It does not mean all Human Exertion; it emphatically means a part of it only. It means muscular and manual exertion, or exertion of which the ordinary man is capable, as distinct from industrial exertion of any other kind; and not only as distinct from it, but as actively opposed to and struggling with it. Since, then, we have to deal with distinct and opposing things, it is idle to attempt to discuss them under one and the same name. ◆² To do so would be like describing the Franco-Prussian War with only one name for both armies—the soldiers; or like attempting to explain the composition of water, with only one name for oxygen and hydrogen—the gas. Accordingly, for the industrial exertion—exertion moral and mental—which is distinct from Labour and opposed to it, we must find some separate and some distinctive name; and the name which I propose to use for this purpose is Ability.

◆1 In this book it will be called Ability.

◆2 There is, however, a deeper distinction between the two than the fact of one being mental and the other muscular.

◆¹ Human Exertion then, as applied to the production of wealth, is of two distinct kinds: Ability and Labour—the former being essentially moral or mental exertion, and only incidentally muscular; the latter being mainly muscular, and only moral or mental in a comparatively unimportant sense. ◆² This difference between them, however, though accidentally it is always present, and is what at first strikes the observation, is not the fundamental difference. The fundamental difference is of quite another kind. It lies in the following fact: That Labour is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual, which begins and ends with each separate task it is employed upon, whilst Ability is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual which is capable of affecting simultaneously the labour of an indefinite number of individuals, and thus hastening or perfecting the accomplishment of an indefinite number of tasks.

◆1 The vital distinction is that the Labour of one man affects one task only; the Ability of one man may affect an indefinite number.

◆¹ This vital distinction, hitherto so entirely neglected, should be written in letters of fire on the mind of everybody who wishes to understand, to improve, or even to discuss intelligibly, the economic conditions of a country such as ours. Unless it is recognised, and terms are found to express it, it is impossible to think clearly about the question; much more is it impossible to argue clearly about it: for men’s thoughts, even if for moments they are correct and clear, will be presently tripped up and entangled in the language they are obliged to use. Thus, we constantly find that when men have declared all wealth to be due to Labour, more or less consciously including Ability in the term, they go on to speak of Labour and the labouring classes, more or less consciously excluding it; and we can hardly open a review or a newspaper, or listen to a speech on any economic problem, without finding the labouring classes spoken of as “the producers,” to the obvious and intentional exclusion of the classes who exercise Ability; whereas it can be demonstrated, as we shall see in another chapter, that of the wealth enjoyed by this country to-day, Labour produces little more than a third.

Let us go back then to the definitions I have just now given, and insist on them and enlarge them and explain them, so as to make them absolutely clear.

◆1 Familiar examples will show the truth of this.

Labour, I said, is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual, which begins and ends with each separate task it is employed upon; whilst Ability is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual which is capable of affecting simultaneously the labour of an indefinite number of individuals. ◆¹ Here are some examples. An English navvy, it is said, will do more work in a day than a French navvy; he will dig or wheel away more barrow-loads of earth; but the greater power of the one, if the two work together, has no tendency to communicate itself to the other. The one, let us say, will wheel twelve barrow-loads, whilst the other will wheel ten. We will imagine, then, a gang of ten French navvies, who in a given time wheel a hundred barrow-loads. One of them dies, and his place is taken by an Englishman. The Englishman wheels twelve loads instead of ten; but the rest of the gang continue to wheel ten only. Let us suppose, however, that the Englishman, instead of being a navvy, is a little cripple who has this kind of ability—that he can show the navvies how to attack with their picks each separate ton of earth in the most efficacious way, and how to run their barrows along the easiest tracks or gradients. He might quite conceivably enable the nine Frenchmen to wheel fifteen barrow-loads in the time that they formerly consumed in wheeling ten; and thus, though the gang contained one labourer less than formerly, yet owing to the presence of one man of ability, the efficacy of its exertions would be increased by fifty per cent. Or again, let us take the case of some machine, whose efficiency is in proportion to the niceness with which certain of its parts are finished. The skilled workman whose labour finishes such parts contributes by doing so to the efficiency of that one machine only; he does nothing to influence the labour of any other workman, or facilitate the production of any other machine similar to it. But the man who, by his inventive ability, makes the machine simpler, or introduces into it some new principle, so that, without requiring so much or such skilled labour to construct it, it will, when constructed, be twice as efficient as before, may, by his ability, affect individual machines without number, and increase the efficiency of the labour of many millions of workmen. Such a case as this is specially worth considering, because it exposes an error to which I shall again refer hereafter—the error often made by economic writers, of treating Ability as a species of Skilled Labour. For Skilled Labour is itself so far from being the same thing as Ability, that it is in some respects more distinct from it than Labour of more common kinds; for the secret of it is less capable of being communicated to other labourers. For instance, one of the most perfect chronometers ever made—namely, that invented by Mudge in the last century—required for its construction Labour of such unusual nicety, that though two specimens, made under the direct supervision of the inventor, went with an accuracy that has not since been surpassed, the difficulty of reproducing them rendered the invention valueless. But the great example of this particular truth is to be found in a certain fact connected with the history of the steam-engine—a fact which is little known, whose significance has never been realised, and which I shall mention a little later on. It may thus be said with regard to the production of wealth generally, that it will be limited in proportion to the exceptionally skilled labour it requires, whilst it will be increased in proportion to the exceptional ability that is applied to it.

◆1 We shall now be able to describe Capital accurately as Ability controlling Labour.