[36] See Encyclopædia Britannica, first and earlier editions. The product of each smelting furnace in use in 1780 was two hundred and ninety-four tons annually. In 1788, these same furnaces were producing, by the aid of new inventions, five hundred and ninety-four tons.
[37] According to Arthur Young’s estimates, the earnings of an agricultural family, consisting of seven persons all capable of work, would be about fifty-one pounds annually. This gives a little over seven pounds a head; but when the children and others not capable of work are taken into account the average is considerably lower. The wages, however, of the artisan class being higher, the average amount per head taken by the whole working population would be about seven pounds.
[38] About £1 12s. per head would have to be set down to land, were the land question being dealt with. But for the purpose of the above discussion, land may be ignored, as it does not affect the problem.
[39] This fact has been commented on with much force by Mr. Gourlay in a paper contributed by him to the National Review.
[40] The matter may also be put in this way. There are ninety-nine labourers engaged on a certain work at which there is room for a hundred. The ninety-nine men produce every week value to the amount of ninety-nine pounds. There are two candidates for the hundredth place: one a labourer, John; and one, a man of ability, James. If John takes the vacant place, we have a hundred men producing a hundred pounds. If James takes the vacant place, the productivity of labour by his action is (we will say) doubled, and we have a hundred men producing a hundred and ninety-eight pounds. No amount of theory based on the fact that James could do nothing without the ninety-nine labourers can obscure or do away with the practical truth and importance of the fact that the exertion of James will produce ninety-eight pounds more than the exertion of John; and any person with whom the decision rested, which of these two men should take the hundredth place, would base their decision on this fact.
[41] I say practically as absurd, meaning absurd and practically meaningless in an economic argument. There are many points of view from which it would be philosophically true.
[42] The examples given above might be multiplied indefinitely. Maudslay was brought up as a “powder-boy” at Woolwich. The inventors of the planing machine, Clements and Fox, were brought up, the one as a slater, the other as a domestic servant. Neilson, the inventor of the hot-blast, was a millwright. Roberts, the inventor of the self-acting mule and the slotting-machine, was a quarryman. The illustrious Bramah began life as a common farm-boy.
[43] By labouring classes is meant all those families having incomes of less than a hundred and fifty pounds a year. The substantial accuracy of this rough classification has already been pointed out. No doubt they include many persons who are not manual labourers; but against this must be set the fact that, according to the latest evidence, there are at least a hundred and eighty thousand skilled manual labourers who earn more than a hundred and fifty pounds. And, at all events, whether the classes in question are manual labourers or not, they are, with very manifest exceptions, wage-earners—that is to say, for whatever money they receive they give work which is estimated at at least the same money value. A schoolmaster, for instance, who receives a hundred and forty pounds a year gives in return teaching which is valued at the same sum. School teaching is wealth just as much as a schoolhouse; it figures in all estimates as part of the national income; and therefore the schoolmaster is a producer just as much as the school builder.
[44] This corresponds with Arthur Young’s estimate of wages for about the same period.
[45] Statisticians estimate that in 1860 the working classes of the United Kingdom received in wages four hundred million pounds; the population then being about twice what it was at the close of the last century. In order to arrive at the receipts of British Labour, the receipts of Irish Labour must be deducted from this total. The latter are proportionately much lower than the former, and could not have reached the sum of eighty million pounds. But assuming them to have reached that, and deducting eighty million pounds from four hundred million pounds, there is left for British Labour three hundred and twenty million pounds, to be divided, roughly speaking, amongst twenty million people; which for each ten millions yields a hundred and sixty million pounds.