THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 551 
 
 T5632s1 
 
 OCCHflMIfllU 
 
,. -.v.; v.;, 7 :5f;,4..M> 
 
 3 'Civ';. ; 
 
 3?'4V'^ ■• r 
 ® ■ - 
 
 m: 
 
 ilf'.,v 
 
 .'i'it'i.'. v": 
 
 Hf ■■" 
 
 vj \i'\. , i J 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/eightchaptersonhOOroge 
 
/ 
 
 f: 
 
 
EIGHT CHAPTE:^S ; 
 
 ON THE HISTORY OP 
 
 ^ A'oi 
 
 VOKK AND WAGES 
 
 BEING A REPRINT OP CHAPTERS VIII., XII., XIV., XV., XVII., 
 XVIII., XIX.^ XX., OF 
 
 ‘^SIX CENTURIES OF WORK AND WAGES'’ 
 
 Br 
 
 JAMES E. THOEOLD EOGEES, M.P. 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 “sis centuries op work and WA8ES.” 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHKIN & CO. 
 
 TATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
A:' 
 
8 ' 2 * 
 
 5 0 ' 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE EAMENE AND THE PLAGUE 
 
 1 
 
 CHAPTEE TI. 
 
 LABOUK ANE WAGES 27 
 
 CHAPTEE HI. 
 
 WAGES OE LABOUE AETEE THE EISE IN PBICES , • .55 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE EIs^GLTSH POOE LAW , 80 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 AGEICULTUEE AND AGEICULTUEAL WAGES IN THE EIGHTEENTH 
 
 CENTUET . . . 106 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 WAGES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUET 130 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 THE PEESENT SITUATION 155 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 JAEMEjDIES .... 181 
 
PEE FACE. 
 
 rPHE following chapters, extracted from my larger work, 
 and printed in a cheap form, have been published sepa- 
 rately in order that they may reach those who might be 
 deterred by larger volumes, and especially by those portions 
 of them w’hich deal with political history and bygone social 
 conditions. I have, therefore, printed those chapters only 
 which deal with comparatively modern facts. 
 
 It is significant and instructive, that at present persons 
 are beginning to take a novel but profound interest in the 
 condition and the history of those who live on wages, and 
 to consider the narrative of their fortunes to be as interest- 
 ing and important as constitutional antiquities, to be more 
 important than military and diplomatic annals. 
 
 It is still more significant, that the political economist 
 appears to be returning to his proper and ancient function, 
 that of interpreting the causes vrhich hinder the just and 
 adequate distribution of wealth, and that he is putting into 
 the background those airy and unreal speculations which 
 have, during the last . three-quarters of a century, been 
 made his main business, to the serious injury of the prac- 
 tical lessons which he might have inculcated. 
 
 JAMES E. THOEOLD EOGEES. 
 
 OXFOED. 
 
SOME CHAPTEES^^ 
 
 ON 
 
 WOEK AND WAGES. 
 
 Dear Years — Famine in England — Causes of the Famine — Effects of the 
 Famine of 1315-16 — Commutation of Labour Rents — The Beginning 
 of the Black Death — Its Appearance and Progress in Europe, and in 
 England — The Loss of Life — The Memories of the Plague— Persecution 
 of the Jews — Recovery of the Population— Effects of the Plague — 
 Attempts of the Legislature and King — The Statute of Labourers — 
 Obedience to the Statute impossible — Exaltation of Wages and Effects 
 on Agricultural Profit illustrated by Facts — The Actual Rise in 
 Agricultural Wages, General and in Harvest Work, Threshing, Reaping 
 Mowung, Thatching — The Rise in Artizans' Wages — The Effect on 
 Prices of Agricultural and other Products — Position of the Capital- 
 ist Landowner — Position of the Tenant Farmer, of the Peasant 
 Labourer. 
 
 HE average price of a quarter of wheat for the 280 years, 
 
 1261-1540, is 5s. l\\d. During this long period there were 
 years of exceptional plenty and of exceptional scarcity, the range 
 being from 25. lO^cA, the average of the year 1287, the lowest, 
 and 105. in 1316, the highest recorded. The latter year is, 
 how^ever, one of the famine. In 1315, the average was about 
 Is. 2d. lower. In 1438, the price w^as 145. l^d. In 1527, it 
 is nearly 135. On two other occasions it nearly reaches 125. On 
 four occasions it is a little over IO 5 . Four shillings, according 
 to Walter de Henley, was a price below remuneration, unless the 
 
 CTIAPTEE I. 
 
 THE FAMINE AND THE PLAGUE. 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 Work and Wa^^es. 
 
 crop was more than six bushels to the acre. In ordinary years, 
 the price varies between 4^. 6d, and 65 . 6d. There are, of course, 
 prices paid which are greatly above the highest average, and 
 others which are a great deal below the lowest. If there be any 
 scarcity, the market is always at its highest in May, because the 
 stock of the past harvest is falling low, and the prospects of the 
 next are uncertain. Thus, the harvest of 1315 was found after 
 Christmas to have been exceedingly deficient. That of 1316 was 
 as bad, so low that the scarcity was hardly lightened during any 
 part of the period between harvest and harvest. The highest 
 !][uotation of wheat in modern English history was in March 1801, 
 when it was returned at 15 65 . 2d. This, however, is not much 
 more than double the customary price of that time. In the two 
 years 1315-16, the average was nearly three times, and on one 
 occasion, five times, the ordinary price. 
 
 I do not think, however, that the climate of England from the 
 forty-fifth year of Henry III. to the thirty-first of Henry YIII., 
 280 years in all, could be treated as extraordinarily capricious or 
 treacherous, since in only ten of the years did the price of wheat 
 nearly reach or exceed double the average, the two greatest 
 scarcities of 1316 and 1438 being separated by an interval of 122 
 years, and the third, that of 1527, occurring after an interval of 
 eighty-nine years. It may be stated, too, that when the harvest 
 is bad, it is always worst on a belt which lies between the Thames 
 and the Wash, and includes the Midland and Eastern Counties. 
 Hence the whole of the country is seldom similarly affected. South 
 Wales and the southern promontory of Cornwall and Devon 
 being generally more favoured when bad harvests afflict the Mid- 
 land and Eastern Counties. This is even seen at the commence- 
 ment of the great famine of 1315-16, for during the first year, 
 the Welsh and extreme West were not so seriously injured. In 
 the second year, the ruin is universal. As may be expected, corn 
 is generally cheapest in the early winter, dearest in the early 
 summer, even when the price is at an average, unless the previous 
 year has been one of comparative scarcity, when the purchase of 
 seed always affects the average. If the prospects of the coming 
 year are of abundance, the rise in l\Iay and J une is very slight, 
 and hardly appreciable. There is, I think, reason to conclude. 
 
The Famine and the Plague, 
 
 3 
 
 on looking at the course of the wheat markets, that information 
 as to the aggregate crop was very widely diffused, and that corn 
 was sent to very considerable distances for sale. There were horses 
 and carts in plenty, the rate of carriage was low, and the bailiff 
 could easily reach a market where there was a demand. Beyond 
 question, the surplus produce of country places was taken to the 
 nearest towns, and sometimes to those which were at a distance. 
 
 T he c axLsa of bad harvests is always excessive rain. In the 
 years 1315-16, we are told that the wet was incessant, and much 
 of the corn never ripened. Contemporary writers tell us that the 
 poorer classes were constrained to live on unwholesome or disgust- 
 ing food, and that numbers of them perished from famine. An 
 attempt was made to procure corn from the Continent, and 
 ordinances were published fixing maximum prices — of course with- 
 out avail — and prohibiting the consumption of beer, as was done 
 in 1800 with the distilleries. To add to the distress, a pestilen- 
 tial murrain broke out among the cattle, and the bailiff’s rolls 
 bear testimony to the universality of the disease, and the magni- 
 tude of the losses. It is said by chroniclers, that in the universal 
 scarcity, numbers of servants and domestics were discharged ; 
 that, made desperate, these people became banditti ; and that the 
 country folk were constrained to associate themselves in arms, 
 in order to check the depredations of those starving outlaws. 
 
 That the famines of this unfortunate period led to a consider- 
 able loss of life is proved by the unquestionable rise in the rate of 
 agricultural wages after their occurrence. This is visible in the 
 payments made for threshing corn, and still more markedly in 
 those for reaping, where the rise is fully a penny an acre, the 
 exaltation in the rates for oats and rye, previously the lowest paid, 
 being the most considerable. The same rise is seen in payments 
 for mowing, for thatching, and for women’s labour. Now it is 
 generally the case that, unless the labourer is paid at a rate which 
 leaves him no margin over his necessary subsistence, an increase 
 in the price of his food is not followed by an increase in the rate 
 of w’ages, this result being arrived at only when there is a 
 scarcity of hands. ^Ye shall see, when w^e come to deal with the 
 w’nges of the sixteenth century, how slight w^as the rise in their 
 amount compared with that of other values. Now the exigencies 
 
4 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 of# the weather put certain opportunities within the reach of the 
 labourers which, as their numbers had now become scantier, they 
 could easily use. The immediate rise in the wages of labour after 
 the famine of Edward the Second’s reign is as i£.ach as from 23 
 to 30 per cent., and a considerable amount of this becomes a per- 
 manent charge on the costs of agriculture. That part which is 
 permanent amounts to 20 per cent, on an average. 
 
 The habit of cutting corn high up on the straw, and therefore 
 of avoiding weeds, must have materially shortened the drying- 
 process, and subsequently that of threshing out the grain. Hence 
 I conclude, if the corn only ripened, the mere presence of rain was 
 not so injurious as it came to be, when, at a later period, the corn 
 was cut low with the weeds. That this change took place is 
 proved by the statement of Eitzberbert, who advises that corn 
 used for home consumption should not be screened too carefully, 
 as the seeds of many weeds in corn supply a notable quantity of 
 meal which might well be saved for flour. In Arthur Young’s 
 times, it is again clear that wheat was cut high on the stalk. 
 
 During the reign of Edward II., the practice became increas- 
 ingly general to accept money compensations in lieu of labour 
 rents, and by the end of the first quarter of the century the ruljg 
 had become almost universal. It was to the interest of both 
 parties that these commutations should be effected. It was a 
 vexation to the tenant that he should be called away from the 
 work of his own holding to do the lord’s labour. It is plain, from 
 Walter de Henley’s statement, quoted above, that the bailiff had 
 no little trouble in getting the due quota of work from the tenant^ 
 some three roods of first ploughing a day, or an acre of second 
 stirring. Hence, if the lord could get a fair money compensation 
 for the labour, he could spare the cost of the bailifi’s supervision 
 over unwilling labourers. And as money was more useful than 
 the work he got, as well as perhaps more profitable in the end, 
 he would be induced to make liberal terms with his tenants in 
 villeinage, even if he were not morally constrained to take the 
 alternative in money, which was prescribed as an alternative in 
 case the labourer, for any cause, made default in the field. At 
 the same time he could, unless he made a special bargain, save 
 the allowances which he made of bread and beer, and the license 
 
The Famine and the Plague. 
 
 5 
 
 of every day taking as large a sheaf as the serf could lift on his 
 sickle from the corn crops. These commutations would be 
 entered on the manor rental, and would tend to assimilate the 
 tenure of the surf, now increasingly called a tenant by copy or 
 custom, with that of the freeholder who sat at a fee farm rent, 
 besides familiarising all parties with the redemption of those con- 
 tingencies which affected the status of a serf. Ultimately the 
 money payments would be deemed to be fixed and determinate 
 liabilities, the satisfaction of which was a discharge of all the old 
 labour rents, and the proffer of which was a tender which the 
 steward was bound to accept. I do not mean to say that the 
 change was invariable, for there is evidence that the monasteries 
 clung to the old system longer than lay lords did, and it is alleged 
 that, while the regular clergy urged on these lords the expediency 
 and humanity of enfranchising their serfs, they failed to practise 
 in their own persons the moderation which they commended to 
 their patrons and their penitents. 
 
 The period which intervened between the last of three bad 
 harvests and the great event to which I shall next advert was 
 one of exceptional prosperity. The harvests were generally 
 abundant, the wages of labour had been permanently improved, 
 and all kinds of produce were cheap. The early days of the great 
 war did not impair the general well-being of the English people. 
 The supremacy of England on the sea was assured, and the famous 
 battle of Crecy was fought, less considerable in its immediate 
 consequences than in the exalted reputation which it conferred 
 on English arms. But this country, and all Europe with it, was 
 on the verge of a great calamity, the most extensive in its imme- 
 diate incidence, and the most significant in its ultimate effects, of 
 all events which have happened in the history of this country, 
 and, indeed, of all Europe. 
 
 The Black Death is alleged to have had its origin in the centre 
 of China, in or about the year 1333, and is reported to have been 
 accompanied by various phenomena in the earth and atmosphere 
 of a very novel and destructive character, such, indeed, as were 
 noticed as long ago as in the plagues of Athens and the simul- 
 taneous visitations at Borne, or the mortality which prevailed in 
 northern Europe near three centuries before our era. and at the 
 
6 
 
 JVork and Wages, 
 
 terrible pestilence which visited the known world in the age of 
 Justinian. So in later times the cholera and the influenza were 
 traced to particular spots in India or China, which had been deso- 
 lated by earthquakes, as Justinian’s plague was said to have had 
 its origin at Pelusium. Nearly every infectious or contagious 
 disease which has desolated mankind appears to have had its origin 
 in the farthest East, and to have travelled along thence to Europe, 
 though the yellow fever is said to be a product of the West. It 
 is alleged, that before it reached the West, the Black Death 
 exhausted itself in the place of its origin. Like most other 
 plagues, it was infinitely more destructive at the commencement 
 of its career, than after it had endured for a time. This is not to 
 be accounted for by the fact that the weakest members of the 
 community naturally succumbed the first, for we are told that it 
 killed the strong, and that, just as with the Asiatic cholera, when 
 it is most virulent, many of those attacked perished speedily, and 
 before the disease had developed its most characteristic symptoms. 
 It appears, indeed, and the impression is confirmed by scientific 
 research, that when some new infection or contagion is developed, 
 the whole population is specially liable to the assaults of the 
 disease, and that sometimes it may totally perish, as in all likeli- 
 hood the ancient occupants of the ruined cities in Central America 
 have disappeared without leaving any sign, other than their 
 stupendous buildings, of their existence. So also diseases familiar 
 to us in England, and now become mild, are specially deadly to 
 those races into which they have been for the first time intro- 
 duced. In course of time, either the original virus of the disease 
 is weakened, or those who are most susceptible of it are removed 
 by death, or remedial measures are discovered which check or 
 extinguish it. For more than three centuries the plague wasted 
 England, though at no time, it seems, so seriously as at its first 
 and last visitations. 
 
 The Black Death, as our forefathers called it, from the dark 
 purple blotches which appeared on the skin, when the blood and 
 tissues had become wholly disorganized through the virulence of 
 the disorder, still lingers in the East, under the name of the 
 Levant, or Oriental, plague. Even now we are occasionally 
 informed of some outbreak in an Eastern plague spot, where the 
 
7 
 
 The Famine and the Plague, 
 
 hateful Turk has reduced every one to squalid poverty and misery, 
 and whence Europe is again threatened. But the progress of 
 sanitary science has probably put an end to the worst ravages of 
 a disease which was so terrible more than five centuries ago. In 
 England it does not seem to have been assisted by any prevalent 
 distress among the people, as the Athenian plague was by over- 
 crowding, as that of Cadiz was in 1800, or as the last visitation of 
 small-pox was by the miseries of the Eranco-German war. The 
 period just before the plague was one of prosperity and abun- 
 dance; and though our forefathers were immeasurably unclean in 
 their habits and surroundings, and remained unclean for centuries 
 afterwards, the best conditions of life do not appear to have given 
 an immunity from the plague. Among the victims of the first 
 year were one of Edward’s daughters and three Archbishops of 
 Canterbury. So the narrative given us by Boccacio proves that 
 all classes were equally afiected, for the ladies and gentlemen who 
 retire in the Decameron to tell each other stories in a country 
 house on the road to Fiesole had all of them lost relations by the 
 plague. The Black Death visited Christ Church, Canterbury, 
 very lightly, for a century before the prior had laid on pure water 
 from the hills to the monastery. 
 
 The Black Death first attacked Europe in Cyprus at about the 
 end of the year 1347, and was accompanied by great convulsions 
 of the earth, and by atmospheric disturbances. Many persons 
 who were seized with^e disorder died instantly. The plague 
 seemed not only to the frightened imagination of the people, but 
 even to the more sober observation of such men of science as lived 
 at the time, to be moving forward with slow progress from the 
 desolated East, under the form of a dark and foetid mist, which 
 settled on the garden of the Lord, and left it a howling wilder- 
 ness. On January 25th, 1348, an earthquake had laid waste 
 great part of the peninsulas of Italy and Greece. Meanwhile the 
 mischief was steadily progressing along the basin of the Medi- 
 terranean, for the caravan traffic was carrying it everywhere, as 
 the pilgrimages to and from Mecca disseminate disease in the 
 homes and cities of returning devotees. The Black Death 
 appeared at Avignon in January 1348, was in Florence by the 
 middle of April, and had thoroughly penetrated France and 
 
8 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 Germany by August. It entered Poland in 1349, reached Sweden 
 in the winter of the same year, and Norway, by infection from 
 England, at about the same time. It spread even to Iceland and 
 Greenland, — the former, a well-wooded country and fairly flourish- 
 ing Colony of Norse origin; the latter a region with which 
 commilnications had been kept up for centuries. We are told 
 that, among the physical changes which ensued from the Black 
 Death, or preceded and aided it, vast icebergs were formed on the 
 eastern side of Iceland and on the whole coast of Greenland, and 
 effectually cut off all communication between the Old World and 
 those parts of the New which heretofore had been familiarly 
 visited. In 1351 it reached Bussia, after having inflicted its first 
 severities on the rest of Europe, and having taken the circuit of 
 the Mediterranean. It is probable that the caravan trade through 
 liussia had been at this time suspended, and that the natural spread 
 of the disease had been checked by the barrier of the Caucasus. 
 
 On the 1st of August, 1348, the disease made its appearance in 
 the seaport towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly westwards 
 and northwards, through Devon and Somerset, to Bristol. In 
 order to arrest the progress of the mortality, the authorities of 
 Gloucestershire prohibited all intercourse with the citkens of 
 Bristol. It was in vain ; the plague spread to Oxford, where it 
 was terribly destructive, and travelling slowly in the same 
 measured way, reached London by the 1st of November. It 
 appeared in Norwich on the 1st of January, and thence spread 
 northwards. Later in the year 1349, the Scotch made one of 
 their customary raids into England, and, as they ravaged the 
 north, invented an oath, “ By the foul death of the English.’^ 
 On their retreat they were attacked by the pestilence in the 
 forest of Selkirk, and the northern part of the island suffered as 
 seriously as the more populous south. 
 
 The mortality was no doubt enormous and appalling. It is 
 probable that one-third of the population perished. To be sure, 
 panic always exaggerates numbers. One chronicler says that nine 
 out of ten died. Similar amplifications, which have been heed- 
 lessly accepted by writers who are inexperienced in possibilities, 
 are found in all the chroniclers. We are told that sixty thousand 
 persons perished in Norwich between January and July, 1349. 
 
The Famine and the Plague, 
 
 9 
 
 Norwich was probably the second city in the kingdom at the 
 time, and Norfolk was certainly the richest county ; but the 
 number is twice as much as the population of both city and county 
 at the time. Joshua Barnes, the author of a diffuse life of 
 Edward III., pretends to give exact information as to the persons 
 who died in the principal English cities. His numbers are 
 undoubtedly untrustworthy. The nearest estimate to likelihoo 1 
 w’hich I have seen is that of Knighton. He was a canon of 
 Leicester, and lived a short time after the events. He tells m 
 that the deaths in the three parishes of Leicester town were 1,480. 
 Even this number I believe to be exaggerated, for there is reason 
 to conclude that at this time the population of Leicester was 
 under 3,500. 
 
 Every town had its plague-pit. That of London was a spot 
 ‘afterwards occupied by the Charterhouse, and purchased for the 
 purpose of sepulture by Sir Walter Manny, one of Edwards 
 j captains. Some years ago, being at Cambridge while the founda- 
 tions of the new Divinity School were being laid, I saw that the 
 I ground was full of skeletons, thrown in without any attempt at 
 I Older, and I divined that this must have been a Cambridge 
 I plague-pit. I have no doubt that the principal place of burial for 
 the Oxford victims was at some part of New College garden, for 
 I when Wykeham bought the site, it appears to have been one 
 which had been previously populous, but was deserted some thirty 
 years before during the plague, and apparently made a burial- 
 ground by the survivors of the calamity. Hecker estimates the 
 loss of population in Europe at twenty-five millions, a moderate 
 and probable calculation. 
 
 No doubt the ravages of the pestilence were more general 
 among the poorer classes. But, as I have already stated, the 
 more opulent were not unaffected by it. The disease made havoc 
 kmong the secular and regular clergy, and we are told that a 
 iDotable decline of learning and morals was thenceforward observed 
 imong the clergy, many persons of mean acquirements and low 
 lharacter stepping into the vacant benefices. Even now the 
 ftoister of Westminster Abbey is said to contain a monument in 
 me great flat stone, which we are told was laid over the remains 
 '.If the many monks who perished in the great death. The novelist 
 
10 
 
 JVork and Wages, 
 
 Boccacio dwells on the elTect which the mortality caused in the 
 character of the survivors, and how panic or despair made men 
 callous, reckless, superstitious, heartless, cruel, and licentious ; 
 and Sismondi, in his great history of the French people, and of ’ 
 the Italian Bepublics, has collected contemporaneous evidence to 
 the same effect. 
 
 The Black Death formed an epoch, and, for many years after- 
 wards, facts were computed according to their nearness from the • 
 great pestilence. A century after the event, Gascoigne makes it 
 the era of the new departure in Oxford, after which learning, 
 morality, and the adequate discharge of duties began to wane ; 
 the universities were, relatively speaking, deserted, and the whole 
 spirit of society was changed. It is said by Sir Harris Nicolas 
 that of the three years, 1349, 1361, and 1369, in which note was 
 made of the extraordinary virulence of a disease now become 
 sporadic, the first pestilence was said to have lasted four months ; ^ 
 the second through the winter, for eight months and nineteen ; 
 days ; the third for nearly three months. These dates of dura- 
 tion, given centuries after the event, cannot be accepted as 
 authentic, but they are indirect testimony of the singular 
 impression which the calamity left on the mind of England. I 
 have been struck with the fact, from more trustworthy sources, 
 when I have noted certain entries made in the records of several i 
 Hertfordshire manors, where the plague appears to have been \ 
 specially deadly. In these manors it was the practice for thirty 
 years to head the schedule of expenditure with an enumeration of 
 the lives which were lost and the tenancies which were vacated 
 after the great death of 1348. Nor have I any doubt, if some 
 antiquary were to have the patience to peruse and tabulate the 
 taxing rolls of Edward I., and compare the names of residents in 
 the several manors with the entries of tax-paying inhabitants 
 resident in the same manors after the great plague, he would find 
 that thousands of names perish from the manor registers, as that 
 of the Oldhams did from Cuxham. It may be noted that the 
 foundation of colleges in Oxford, which was rapidly proceeding 
 before this stupendous event, ceased for many years, when it waj^ ^ 
 taken up with renewed vigour. ' 
 
 At first, as is constantly the case in times of panic, there was i x 
 
The Famine and the Plague. 
 
 II 
 
 suspicion that the disease was the work of human agencies. As 
 usual, the Jews were credited with having contrived the calamity. 
 They were charged with poisoning the wells, and throughout 
 France, Switzerland, and Germany, thousands of these unhappy 
 people were destroyed on evidence derived from confessions 
 obtained under torture, or even from the fact of their religion and 
 origin. They were protected as far as possible by the Emperor, 
 Charles IV., whose own influence in Germany was very circum- 
 scribed. They escaped persecution, too, in the dominions of 
 Albrecht of Austria. It is said that the large J ewish population 
 of Poland is due to the fact that Casimir the Great was induced, 
 by the entreaties of Esther, a favourite Jewish mistress, to give 
 them harbour and shelter in his kingdom. The story is curiously 
 corroborated by the respect which is still paid by the Podolian 
 Jews at the present time to the memory of this second Esther, 
 who, being taken into the harem of another king, also alien to 
 the race of Israel, remembered her kindred in the day of their 
 trouble, and to the generosity of the Polish monarch who yielded 
 to her wish. It ought to be added that Clement VI. forbad the 
 persecution of the Jews at Avignon, where the pope was still 
 residing. The English people was saved from being tempted to 
 the crime of murdering the Jews, because the king’s grandfather 
 had expelled the whole race from England. And yet, in this our 
 own day, one sometimes wonders whether we have really escaped 
 from the contingency, even in countries calling themselves civil- 
 ised, of witnessing again the bigotry, the malignity, the spirit of 
 hatred which accepts impossible lies, for which there was the 
 excuse of ignorance in the Middle Ages, but not the shadow of 
 an excuse now. 
 
 We learn from contemporary accounts, and here we can trust 
 them, that a rapid growth of population followed on the destruc- 
 tion of the Black Death. It is said that after this event, double 
 and triple births were frequent ; that marriages were singularly 
 fertile ; and that, in a short time, the void made by the pestilence 
 was no longer visible. The repressive check of a high standard of 
 living was removed by the ease with which the survivors could 
 obtain that standard, and accumulate from a considerable margin 
 beyond it. The physiologists of the time, however, averred that 
 
12 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 1 
 
 the human race suffered a permanent diminution in the number 
 of teeth, which had been always possessed by those who were born 
 before the visitation of the Black Death. I make no doubt that , 
 the population speedily righted itself, as it has done on many 1 
 other occasions when a sudden or abnormal destruction of human life ' 
 has occurred in a people and the people has a recuperative power, i 
 That they had this power is proved by the events which followed, j 
 Probably a third of the population perished. Froissart made 
 the same estimate a generation later, when fear had ceased to dis- j 
 turb the judgment ; and, as I have said, it is described as having j 
 ■ been peculiarly deadly to persons in the vigour of life. It is cer- \ 
 j tain that the immediate consequence of the plague was a dearth 
 of labour, an excessive enhancement of wages, and a serious diffi- 
 culty in collecting the harvests of those landowners who depended 
 ' on a supply of hired labour for the purpose of getting in their ^ 
 crops. We are told that these crops were often suffered to rot in 
 the fields for want of hands ; that cattle and sheep roamed at 
 large over the country for lack of herdsmen ; that land went out 
 of cultivation ; and that the grandees were utterly impoverished. 
 
 I have referred already to the collateral evidence of an extraordi- 
 nary falling off in the assessments under customary taxes. Many 
 of the lords excused their tenants’ rents lest they should quit their 
 holdings from a want of labour and the increasing and excessive 
 cost of materials ; the omission of rent sometimes extending to 
 a half, sometimes for a term of years, as the landowner could 
 arrange with the tenant. So, says Knighton, they who had let 
 lands on labour-rents to tenants, such rents as are customary in 
 villeinage, were compelled to relieve and remit such labour, and 
 either to utterly excuse them or to rehabilitate their tenants on 
 easier terms and less payments, lest the loss and ruins should 
 become irreparable and the land lie utterly uncultivated.” It 
 appears, therefore, that in the panic, the confusion, and the loss 
 which ensued on the Great Plague, that process which, as I said 
 before, was going on already, the commutation of labour-rents fori 
 money payments, was precipitated; that the lords readily gavb 
 in to compositions; and that even less than had hitherto beenj^. 
 demanded in exchange for the service was arranged for the future.! 
 The plague, in short, had almost emancipated the surviving serfs‘ 
 
The Famine and the Plague. 
 
 15 
 
 I shall point out below what were the actual eflects of this- 
 great and sudden scarcity of labour. At present I merely con- 
 tinue the narrative. Parliament was broken up when the plague- 
 was raging. The king, however, issued a proclamation, which he 
 addressed to William, the primate, and circulated among the 
 sheriffs of the different counties, in which he directed all officials 
 that no higher than customary wages should be paid, under the 
 penalties of amercement. The king s mandate, however, was 
 universally disobeyed, for the farmers were compelled to leave 
 their crops ungathered, or to comply with the demands of the 
 labourers. ^When the king found that his proclamation was 
 unavailing, he laid, we are told, heavy penalties on abbots, priors, 
 barons, crown tenants, and those who held land under mesne lords,, 
 if they paid more than customary rates. But the labourers 
 remained masters of the situation. Many were said to have been 
 thrown into prison for disobedience ; many, to avoid punishment 
 or restraint, fled into forests, where they were occasionally cap- 
 tured. The captives were fined, and obliged to disavow under- 
 oath that they would take higher than customary wages for the- 
 future. But the expedients were vain, labour remained scarce,, 
 and Avages, according to all previous experience, excessive. 
 
 As soon as Parliament could meet, the proclamation was reduced 
 ;to the form of a statute, which remained, with the proclamation, 
 ;a law, till both were formally repealed by 5 Elizabeth, Cap. 4. 
 The statute contained eight clauses (1) No person under sixty 
 years of age, whether serf or free, shall decline to undertake farm 
 labour at the wages which had been customary in the king’s- 
 twentieth year (1347), except they lived by merchandize, were 
 regularly engaged in some mechanical craft, were possessed of 
 private means, or were occupiers of land. The lord was to have 
 the first claim to the labour of his serfs, and those who declined 
 to work for him or for others are to be sent to the common gaoL 
 (2) Imprisonment is decreed againt all persons who may quit ser- 
 vice before the time which is fixed in their agreements. (3) Na- 
 other than the old wages are to be given, and the remedy against 
 those who seek to get more is to be sought in the lord’s court. 
 (4) Lords of manors paying more than the customary amount are- 
 bo be liable to treble damages. (5) Artificers are to be liable^ 
 
 / 
 
14 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 to the same conditions, the artificers enumerated being saddlers, 
 tanners, farriers, shoemakers, tailors, smiths, carpenters, masons, 
 tilers, pargeters, carters, and others. (6) Food must be sold 
 at reasonable prices. (7) Alms are strictly forbidden to able- 
 bodied labourers. (8) Any excess of wages taken or paid can be 
 seized for the king’s use towards the payment of a fifteenth and 
 tenth lately granted. The statute provides for the difference 
 between summer and winter wages, and guards against the emi- 
 gration of the town population to country places in summer. In 
 answer to complaints from the employers of labour, the Statute of ! 
 Labourers is constantly re-enacted, with accumulated penalties, 
 and precautions, — penalties sometimes laid on the labourer only, . ■ 
 sometimes or the employer, sometimes on both. An attempt,^ 
 ^^hich was, I believe, premature, was made to enforce apprentice- 
 ship in handicrafts at the beginning of the fifteenth century, with ' 
 the view of making the agricultural labourers an ever-increasing 
 residuum, and thereby securing cheap labour for the tenant and 
 the lord. 
 
 The statute of Labourers may have induced some slight effect 
 on the wages of farm labourers. The peasantry were under the 
 eye of the lord s steward or bailiff, and might have been denounced 
 and punished if they claimed more than the law allowed them. 
 But they had great power of combination,— a power which they 
 used, perhaps, in a manner which made it very difiicult to enforce 
 the statute, for the enforcement of it is given to the manor court, 
 where the goodwill of the tenants was essential to harmonious 
 action between lord and tenants. This combination the statute 
 called the “malice of servants in husbandry.” But there was 
 the pretence of submission to the statute in the bailiff’s rolls, 
 which might have been taken in evidence. After the Black 
 Death, payments are frequently entered in these rolls, at aparticulnr 
 rate, and this a very exalted one. These pajunents are drawn 
 through with a pen, and a less sum substituted. Thus, in 1349, 
 on one estate, the bailiff enters 5(7. as the price at which wheajt 
 "\\ as threshed. A line is drawn through the figure and Zd, 
 substituted. In the next year, wheat, rye, peas, and vetches ar|e 
 thieshed at 6c7., barley at 3(7., oats at 2(7. But a pen is drawii 
 through these rates, and 2|c7., 1|(7., and \d. are substituted. lla 
 
TJie Famine and the Plague, 
 
 15 
 
 'the same year, bailey is reaped at Is. 2d. at first, but the sum is 
 altered to Is. Very many of these instances could be quoted. 
 Occasionally, but rarely, the hirer of labour makes similar 
 changes in artizans’ labour, as though to show obedience to the 
 statute. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that these transparent erasures are 
 simulated, and that they point to evasions of the statute. The 
 labourer, if he did not receive his full money wages, was compen- 
 sated in some covert way to the full extent of the previous entry, 
 and by some means which would not come under the penalties 
 of the law, and the process by which these penalties might be 
 enforced. There might be larger allowances at harvest time, a 
 more liberal concession of common rights, or, as I have often seen, 
 a license given to a shepherd to turn his own sheep into the lord’s 
 pasture, or some analogous equivalent to a necessary, but, under 
 the statute, an illegal money payment. Even though we take 
 the substituted entries, we shall find that a great rise in the 
 wages of labour was efiected. We know that this rise was in 
 direct contravention of the law, — a law created in the interest of 
 those who employed labour, and, therefore, who wished to have it 
 cheap, and who might be within the risk of the penalties imposed 
 on employers for violating that law which they had probably 
 [been instrumental in enacting, but were compelled to incur. 
 Besides, the wages of many kinds of labourers whose callings 
 were enumerated in the statute were not afiected by the law at 
 *all. These men took their full increase. It was no marvel that 
 IParliament constantly complained that the Statute of Labourers 
 was not kept. The marvel is that they did not see that it could 
 not possibly be kept. But the straits in which the capitalist 
 landowner found himself were sufficiently serious for any one; 
 and the landowner might be pardoned for believing, that if he 
 could fix, as he thought he could, the price of provisions and 
 materials, he could also fix the price of labour. He clung to this 
 delusion for centuries, and at one time he seemed to have achieved 
 what he desired. But he paid for his remedy in a far more 
 ruinous way than that of giving what would have been in the end 
 chenper labour than he actually procured. 
 
 ‘ I mentioned in a previous chapter that the rate of profit 
 
i6 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 derived from agrieultural operations, after all charges had been' 
 deducted and an average allowance had been made for rent, when|< 
 the occupier was also lord, was about 20 per cent, on the capital) 
 invested, about 2 per cent, being represented by the rents of* 
 assize and manorial receipts. This estimate has been taken fromj 
 an actual balance-sheet, in a year of average, or rather more thanj- 
 average, fertility, but when the price of stock was, on the others 
 hand, rather high, and so returned more than the ordinary profit 
 to the farmer. Still, it will be remembered that the superin^ 
 tendence by the bailiff was a heavy charge on the owner’s profits,' 
 or, at least, was a charge from which the small proprietor was’ 
 free. It will be obvious that, with such a rate of profit before 
 them, landowners, who possessed by inheritance a large amount 
 of live and dead stock, would naturally cultivate their land them- 
 selves. There was, indeed, no way in which they could use their 
 property to equal advantage. a 
 
 In the year which I have taken, 1332-3, the outlay, though in' 
 some particulars large, is, on the whole, very much an average. 
 The charges which come under the head of necessary expenses 
 are rather high, but the bad debts are very low, and the cost of 
 labour is so. small as to suggest that some part of the regular cost i 
 of farm labour must have been omitted or put under another ] 
 head. In another year we shall find a large cost incurred for | 
 fittings to the mill ; in a second, a serious loss in customary or | 
 ordinary rents ; in a third, a heavy loss of stock, and the conse-^a 
 quent necessity of large purchases. An enormous quantity of 
 cider was this year produced from the orchard, and, therefore? 
 the spring must have been mild and the summer genial. On the 
 whole I cannot but think that the year was in no way exceptional, := 
 and that the rate of profit on agricultural operations was neither j 
 unduly exalted nor unduly depressed. \ 
 
 Now if we take the balance-sheet of the same estate in the ! 
 year 1350-1, we shall see the full efiects of the loss of life aficl j 
 the scarcity of hands which ensued from the plague. The who|e 
 family of the bailiff, as I have more than once said, had perisheclL 
 The rents of assize have sunk to one-third their former amounjt. 
 The fulling-mill is abandoned ; there is no tenant for it. Mo 
 one will give more than 22^. for the co n-mlll — the previous re At 
 
The Famine and the Plague. 
 
 17 
 
 having been 505. ; and next year there is no tenant to be found at 
 all. The exits of the manor are a little more than a fourth of the 
 sum previously received, and the profit of the court is not a tenth. 
 The harvest had been poor, for notwithstanding the loss of 
 population, the price of wheat was 50 per cent, above the average, 
 and the crop was small, the sales being less than two-thirds of the 
 earlier year. The profits of the dairy are about throe-fifths of 
 those in 1332, and about half the amount of stock is sold. On 
 the other hand, the expenses are very heavy. The outlay is cut 
 down ; but little is spent on repairs, nothing but what is ab- 
 solutely necessary in order that farm operations should be carried 
 on is bought. Labour in harvest time and in the manor house 
 costs three times what it did in 1332. There is a great increase 
 in the cost of all services, and of such articles as depend mainly 
 on labour for their manufactured value. 
 
 The expenses exceeded the receipts. The new bailiJT, however, 
 possesses a quantity of wool, the accumulations of two years. He 
 had no doubt kept it in hand in the hopes of more remunerative 
 prices. He had good reason for this caution, for wool had been 
 sold at little more than three-fifths the money value which it 
 realised in 1332. Then there were some of the chattels of the 
 deceased bailiff and his family, which could hardly be reckoned 
 among the profits of the farm, but an accidential escheat. With- 
 out them the profit for the year is only 4 per cent., with them it 
 is 5|. In all these calculations I have taken corn and stock at 
 their average prices for the year, when the actual value of any 
 item is not given, as is of course the case with anything except 
 what is actually bought and sold. In the next year the owners 
 of the estate did not lose heart, they sowed a larger breadth of 
 corn than usual, and strove to carry on their operations, only 
 to meet with a second failure. Four years later, in 1354, there 
 were lower prices and greater plenty. But the old rates of 
 profit on such farming operations as had been carried on by the 
 capitalist landowner had entirely passed away, never to be re- 
 covered, at least to their full amount. Sooner or later, labour must 
 be hired at the old prices, or a new system must be adopted. 
 
 Although I am by no means convinced that the erased figures 
 were not paid to the labourer, and that the substituted amounts 
 
 2 
 
i8 
 
 IVork and Wages, 
 
 were, I have always assumed that the after -thought was the 
 real payment. Even under these circumstances the rise in agri- 
 cultural labour was enormous; and if, as we are told, the 
 young and healthy were the principal victims of the disease, the 
 quality of the labour must have been considerably deteriorated. 
 
 In the autumn of the year 1349, the fullest effect is induced 
 on the price of agricultural labour, in the Eastern, Midland, and 
 Southern Counties. The cost of threshing wheat is nearly 
 doubled in the first division, that of barley and oats considerably 
 more than doubled. In the Midland and Southern Counties the 
 rise is even greater for wheat and barley, but oats, in the south, 
 are still threshed at the old rates. The price in the west is raised, 
 but in a far less degree, and, indeed, it appears that Western 
 England did not suffer so much from the disease and the conse- 
 quent paucity of hands as the greater part of the rest of the 
 country did. But the prices of this year are panic rates. Even 
 if the Statute of Labourers had not been passed, a fall would have 
 ensued, though the price of labour, proclamations and statutes 
 notwithstanding, did not ever fall to its old rates. 
 
 If we take the whole period from 1350 to 1400, when the 
 prices paid for labour had been steadied by custom, and examine 
 the divisions of England which it will be convenient to take, we 
 shall find that the final rise in the prices of threshing, taking the 
 three principal kinds of grain together, is 60 per cent, in the 
 Eastern Counties, 73 in the Midland, 48 in the Southern, 37 in 
 the Western, and 59 in the ISTorthern. The most notable rise is 
 that in the payment for threshing oats. But the prices paid for 
 this service had been very low, and, as may be expected, the 
 dearth of hands told far more on low-priced labour than it did on 
 high-priced. This is strikingly illustrated in the price of women’s 
 labour. Before the plague, women were employed in field work, 
 as in reaping straw after the corn was cut, in hoeing, in planting 
 beans, in washing sheep, and sometimes in serving the thatcher 
 and tiler. Generally they are paid at the rate of a penny a day, 
 but sometimes less. After the plague, women’s labour is rarely 
 recorded, but they are seldom paid less than twopence, sometimesi 
 as much as threepence, a day. The same facts are observed ini 
 boys’ labour, which becomes much dearer. 
 
Jhe Famine and the Plague, 
 
 19 
 
 The rise in the wages of harvest work is equally suggestive. 
 Naturally the increase should be less as the rate in the old time 
 was higher. But against this is to be set the opportunity which 
 the labourer had of pressing his claim in a time of urgency. In 
 the first place, the rate is equalized, or nearly so. Before this 
 event, the highest price was paid for barley, the lowest for rye 
 and oats. Now the same, or nearly the same, rate is secured for 
 all. The price, too, is constantly rising. The old average was 
 about ^\d. an acre. It rises at once to 7c?. and 7|c?., and soon is 
 much more, so that it is evident that the Statute of Labourers 
 was from the first entirely inoperative as regards harvest work. 
 Eor the ten years, 1371-80, it is more than double what it was 
 before the plague. We shall see hereafter how serious were the 
 consequences which ensued from this progressive exaltation in the 
 price of harvest labour. About 1770, as Young tells us in his 
 ‘‘ Eastern Tour,” vol. iii., the rate for reaping wheat, the only 
 wn reaped, was 5^. an acre ; for mowing other corn, Is. In the 
 decade I am referring to it is 10c?. all round, though nearly every 
 kind of grain was below the average price. With corn of all 
 kinds at an average of 3s. 8|c?., and reaping at 10c?. the acre, the 
 peasant in Young’s time got a little more than one-tenth of the 
 price of a quarter of wheat for his labour, and the fourteenth cen- 
 tury peasant about two-ninths of the value of the whole produce. 
 
 The general rise of harvest work, however, if we omit the 
 exceptional period 1371-90, is 59| per cent., the reaping of the 
 acre of wheat and barley rising by 51, bigg by 44, rye by 47, 
 beans, peas, and vetches by 59, and oats by 69 per cent. But 
 after the plague, the cultivation of bigg and rye becomes increas- 
 ingly rare. Had this not occurred, I am convinced that the 
 invariable rule in prices, whether of labour or food, — that in a 
 general rise of anything in demand, what was paid for or 
 purchased at the lowest rate previously gets the largest increase 
 subsequently — would have been again exhibited. The rise efiected 
 in the labour of mowing grass is not so considerable. But it is 
 found to be 34 per cent, above the old rates. I should not expect 
 that so notable an increase would be efiected in the rate at which 
 grass was mowed by the acre, as in ordinary harvest work. The 
 mower is hired at a time when — I am speaking of the fourteenth 
 
20 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 century, when early summer ploughing for root-crops was 
 unknown — agricultural labour is least in demand, and, therefore, 
 better bargains could be made for it. But at the same time, if 
 we refer to the parallel already cited, the prices paid for labour 
 in the middle of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the 
 facts when compared are very striking. The ratepaid for mowing 
 grass, on the authority of this writer, Arthur Young, was a maxi- 
 mum of 2s. 6d. an acre, but was ordinarily 2s. At the latter rate 
 the labourer received no more than the equivalent of a twenty- 
 fourth part of a quarter of wheat ; at the former rate it was about 
 a nineteenth ; whereas before the plague the rate was about a 
 thirteenth of the quarter ; and in the latter part, ^^e., after the 
 plague, it rose to one-tenth. I have already observed that in the 
 eighteenth century the price paid for mowing an acre of corn is 
 far less than that given for mowing an acre of grass. 
 
 The price paid for the thatcher’s labour is equally suggestive. 
 He was practically a farm-servant, employed to keep buildings 
 in repair, when the thatch was worn out or imperfect, as occasion 
 required, but constantly to cover stacks after harvest, and hay- 
 ricks before harvest. His labour attains a slight and permanent 
 rise after the great famines of 1315-21, but a far greater rise 
 afterwards. He is always accompanied by a help or homo. 
 This assistant is ordinarily a woman, and the wages are frequently 
 paid conjointly, though sometimes separately. This is explained 
 by the fact that the help was very often the thatcher’s wife 
 or daughter, or perhaps young son. When the wages are paid 
 separately before the plague, the rate is about a penny a day : 
 afterwards it rises to 2|6Z., or by an increase of 125 per cent. 
 
 How we might expect that a thatcher’s employment was 
 influenced generally by the two causes which affected or moderated 
 labour prices. His services were occasionally needed when the 
 roofing of houses and barns was to be done, and if his wages 
 were over high, this demand might be economized. But no such 
 economy was possible in the roofing of ricks and haystacks. 
 Hence we should expect that the rise in his wages would not 
 equal that of other kinds of farm labour. It is actually 48 per 
 cent. But if we take the payments made to himself and hi^ help 
 together, the proportion is sure to be enhanced by the extrd- 
 
The Famine and the Plague. 
 
 21 
 
 ordinary increase made for the helper’s services. It is found to 
 amount to 79 per cent. Even this is less than the amount paid 
 for the two services taken separately. I conclude, that if the 
 help was, as I have said, his wife, daughter, or young son, a 
 slightly lower rate of remuneration would be agreed on than that 
 demanded or paid when the bailiff or employer was hiring two 
 persons whose bargains with him were independent. 
 
 It is necessary to follow out the facts in the wages of artizans. 
 These are chiefly the carpenter, the mason, the tiler, the tiier and 
 help, the slater, the slater and help, and the sawyer, either by 
 the day and the couple, or by the hundred feet of plank ; this 
 latter, the only kind of piece work which can be conveniently 
 handled, being taken as almost identical with the day’s work 
 of a pair of sawyers. The others are paid by the day. 
 
 There are two kinds of carpenters regularly employed. The 
 one is engaged on ordinary farm work, and was in frequent 
 requisition. The other was employed for the more difficult 
 business of house building, and the more delicate business of 
 joinery, for which there was plenty of occupation in the domestic 
 buildings of the more opulent classes. The best paid carpenter 
 gets about 25 per cent, above the average paid to common 
 carpenters,though, in taking a general average, I have thought it 
 fair to include the former’s wages with those of all others, as he 
 may have been engaged at lower rates, or even the same rate if he 
 were a good workman, on commoner kinds of employment. Here 
 the same facts appear. He gets a slight permanent rise after 
 the great famines, and a large one after the great plague. The 
 common carpenter’s wages experience an enhancement of 48 
 per cent., and, exactly in accordance with the rule laid down 
 as the regulator of prices, the highest kind of carpenter’s work 
 gets a rise of only 42 per cent. Masons, however, are more 
 fortunate. The rise in their wages is 60 per cent. It is very 
 probable that the combination which these artizans were able 
 to effect, the regulations by which they might govern their trade, 
 and the manner in which they were certainly associated together 
 under the title of free masons (as is proved by the fact that these 
 combinations were made felony by 3 Hen. YI., cap. 1), would 
 have enabled them to take full advantage of the situation. The 
 
22 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 tilers^ wages rose only 34 per cent. But the joint wages of the 
 tiler and help rose 90 per cent. The evidence of the slaters' 
 wages is less clear. The calling was confined to some of the 
 Midland Counties, where fissile oolite had long been used for 
 roofing, and, as we have seen, the general rise in the rate of 
 wages was very great. It would seem that the increase is 60 
 per cent, in this kind of labour The rise in the wages of the 
 pair of sawyers is 70 per cent., and that of sawing by the 
 hundred feet is nearly the same amount. 
 
 The rise in agricultural labour is, all kinds of men's work being 
 taken together, about 50 per cent. ; and of women's work, fully 
 lOO per cent. When taken together, the rise in the ^vages of 
 artizans' labour is almost exactly the same as that effected in the 
 case of the husbandmen. The result is marked, universal, per- 
 manent, and conclusive, even if we had not on record the 
 complaints of the landowners in Parliament that the Statute 
 of Labourers was entirely inoperative. 
 
 The peculiarity of the situation is that, while every kind of 
 agricultural produce experiences no rise, everything to which labour 
 adds its principal value is exalted proportionately. Thus the price 
 of wool, though temporarily depressed, recovers, though only to its 
 old rate. There is no appreciable alteration in the market value 
 of cheese, butter, and eggs, in the price of the different kinds of fat 
 and candles. The price of wax and cider remain the same ; and so 
 does that of firewood, except during the very height of the plague. 
 But there is a rise of 50 per cent, in the price of charcoal. 
 
 The price of salt is nearly doubled, that of lime and iron more 
 than doubled. The price of laths rises 60 per cent., of tiles 
 75. Crests, ^.e., ridge tiles, are three times as dear as they were 
 before the plague ; and the different kinds of nails, such as were 
 fashioned by the town smith, and sold by retail to his customers, 
 are proportionately enhanced. Quite as great is the exaltation, 
 in the price of millstones, articles which the lord was constrained 
 to buy if he were to get the profits of his most lucrative franchise,^ 
 the manor mill. The price of hurdles, which are generally^ 
 purchased, is exactly doubled : of horse-shoes more than doubled^! 
 as are also horse-shoe nails and plough gear. The share and th^ 
 shoe are almost doubled. The iron clouts, by which the fram©^ 
 
The Famine and the Plague. 
 
 23 
 
 and axles of a cart are strengthened, are nearly trebled in cost ; 
 and the nails by which they were fastened rose as other nails did. 
 Plain wheels— that is, wheels formed from the trunk of a tree, 
 with holes bored through them for the axles to run on— are 
 more than doubled in price. Wheelwrights’ wheels are nearly 
 trebled; and the iron framework cf a pair of cart-wheels, one 
 of the most costly parts of agricultural furniture, rose by 130 
 per cent. There was scarce an article needed for agricultural 
 operations, the cost of which was not doubled instantly after the 
 calamity occurred, and which did not remain at these exalted and 
 ruinous rates. Even the coarse canvas, which was employed for 
 fans, mill-sails, and sacks, was nearly doubled in price. The 
 hair-cloth used for drying malt was more than doubled, as was 
 linen for shirts and sheets, and that which was used for table, 
 with most of which probably, if not with all of which, the peasant 
 dispensed. The least rise was effected in woollen cloth, one of 
 the indirect illustrations of the fact that the domestic manufacture 
 of woollen goods was a very general, and also what is called 
 a bye industry. Lead, again, a metal used very frequently and 
 generally in the Middle Ages, was more than doubled in price. 
 Tin, pewter, or solder articles, substantially the^ same, rose 60 
 per'cent. ; while little increase occurred in the price of brass a.nd 
 copper vessels. They were probably economized, and, lasting 
 a long time, few purchases were made of them. ^ 
 
 I have stated before that in the face of these serious changes in 
 the value of these articles, on the regular and cheap supply of 
 which the success of capitalist agriculture in the fourteenth 
 century so largely depended, there was no corresponding rise in 
 the price of provisions. The different kinds of grain are not 
 appreciably dearer, beyond what is occasionally due to the un- 
 favourable character of the seasons. Oxen and cows are a little 
 dearer, but in no such degree as to suggest that there was any 
 rise of general prices to account for the change. The price of 
 horses is absolutely stationary. There is no change in the price 
 of sheep or in that of pigs. Poultry, too, is similarly unchanged 
 in money value. The loss of the agriculturist was confined to 
 the cost of labour and the products of labour, and the only thing 
 which could have been sacrificed was rent, or rather, under the 
 
24 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 circumstances which prevailed at the time, the profits of capitalist 
 Imsbandry. The fact that these profits had to bear the first 
 shock of the crisis, and therefore that a little time intervened in 
 which the landowner could look round him, and probably take 
 some new departure, and so keep his fixed rents, probably saved 
 English society from a severer shock than it would have otherwise 
 experienced. JSTo doubt, as we indeed have seen, these fixed rents 
 were at first reduced and generally imperilled. In many cases, 
 vv^here the landowner had leased his land, and had abandoned 
 cultivation on his own account, he was constrained to remit a 
 portion, or even, as Knighton says, to effect a new and permanent 
 composition with his old tenants ; for just as rent, when agri- 
 culture improves and a country progresses, is a constantly 
 increasing quantity, so when a serious reverse takes place, when 
 labour is dearer and deteriorates, or capital is lost or scanty, or 
 agricultural profits are otherwise depressed, it is natural, nay, 
 inevitable, that rent should have its reverses, and decline in value 
 and quantity, even for a time to a vanishing point. We shall see 
 hereafter how the English landowners of the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries applied themselves, when they found that 
 parliamentary regulations were futile and misleading, to the 
 .solution of the great problem which lay before them. 
 
 One article of food rose greatly in price, was, in fact, doubled 
 in amount. This was fish, especially herrings, an article which 
 derives all its value from human labour, the raw material, so to 
 speak, being free to all. The consumption of herrings was all but 
 universal, even in the inland counties of England, large numbers 
 of them being salted and smoked, or pickled without being 
 smoked, and called in the former case red, in the latter white, 
 herring. It would seem that the barrel or cade of smoked 
 herring was marketed earlier than the barrel of white herring ; 
 for the former is found in the purchases long before the latter. 
 But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the art of the 
 fish-curer had not reached that amount of skill and variety which 
 was common in the fifteenth, and we know from various sources 
 that mu«ch capital and enterprise were devoted to deep-sea fishing ^ 
 in many of the eastern ports and at Bristol during the reigns of . 
 the House of I ancaster. \ 
 
The Famhie and the Plague. 
 
 25 
 
 All at once, then, and as by a stroke, the labourer, both 
 peasant and artizan, became the master of the situation in 
 England. The change was as universal as it was sudden. The 
 lord found on all sides a stationary and retrograde market for 
 every kind of produce, in which he dealt as a seller, and a rapidly 
 advancing market for everything he needed as a buyer. Even if 
 he should succeed, after making desperate efforts, in recovering 
 labour at the old prices ; if the old but deep-seated delusion that 
 law can regulate prices should turn out in the end to be possible 
 as regards the wages of farm hands; should the police of the 
 manor be only armed with sufficient power for the purpose, he 
 was still confronted with the difficulty that everything he wished 
 to buy, beyond the labour employed on his own fields, had risen 
 by 50 or 100 or even 200 per cent. Even on his estate nearly 
 one-half of the charges of cultivation set down to the credit side 
 of the bailiff’s account are derived from outlay, over the amount 
 of which no proclamation, statute, or ordinance could have had 
 any influence whatever, and the exaltation of price on these items 
 alone would reduce his profits to a minimum. If the value of his 
 own produce had risen to an equivalent, the void would be filled, 
 but no Act of Parliament could be devised by which the producer 
 should be able to compel the consumer to pay 50 or 100 or 
 200 per cent, more for bread and beer, beef and mutton, pork 
 and poultry. Besides, he was not the only dealer. A number of 
 industrious and prosperous tenants were settled round his manor 
 house, who tilled their own lands, from which they could not be 
 evicted ; on the profits and improvements of which he could not, 
 as long as they paid their dues, lay his clutches, and it was certain 
 that if he strove to force an enhanced price for what his bailiff 
 had to sell, they would undersell him. They were protected 
 against him, as he was against the king, by custom, — a custom 
 which he dared not break if he could, and could not if he dared. 
 No position could be more unsatisfactory. If he left matters 
 as they were, ruin to all appearance was imminent. If he strove 
 to remedy the mischief by violent or unusual means, the danger 
 was serious. We shall see, by-and-by, that he tried the remedy 
 of force, and signally failed. 
 
 The peasant farmer shared the new charges which were put on 
 
26 
 
 Work and Wa^es. 
 
 his calling, but not in the same degree. The costs of the harvest 
 to the lord amounted to £3 135. 9d, before the plague, they are 
 swelled to .£12 105. 10c?. in the year following it. From this 
 charge the surviving peasant farmer was free. He found his own 
 labour on his own holding, and hired none. Besides, he could, 
 after his work was over, hire himself and his children out at the 
 enhanced rates ; or, if he had thriven and saved, he could double 
 his own holding, and that on easy terms, for the lord was seeking 
 tenants, not tenants seeking lords. Perhaps the household of the 
 miller was desolate and without inhabitants, and he was one of 
 those who offered less than half the old rent for it ; or, maybe, he 
 aspired to the bailiff’s vacant place, for the lord was not going to 
 desert his old calling without an effort. Only he could now save 
 his wife and daughter from field labour, and set them to spinning 
 and weaving for the household ; perhaps do better at that than 
 they did at the drudgery of the field. The tools had decome dear, 
 the sickle and scythe were doubled in price, and the shares and 
 plough-shoes were going the same way. But he would patch up 
 his stock of husbandry tools in the winter, and rub along for a 
 time with the old, as his lord did. 
 
 The free labourer, and for the matter of that, the serf, was, in 
 his way, still better off. Everything he needed was as cheap as 
 ever, and his labour was daily rising in value. He had bargained 
 for his labour rent, and was free to seek his market. If the 
 bailiff would give him his price, well ; if not, there were plenty of 
 hands wanted in the next village, or a short^ distance off. If an 
 attempt was made to restrain him, the Chiltern Hills and the 
 woods were near, and he could soon get iinto another county. 
 There w^as no fear in these times that the lord could spare to 
 follow him, or that they who wanted his^ service would freely give 
 him up. He had slaved and laboured at th^ farm, and now his 
 chance was come, and he intended to use it. So the peasant 
 farmer and the labourer were to try conclusions with the 
 landlord. We shall see how the struggle was fought out. Tho 
 machinery which the former used had been long in preparation, 
 though no one guessed its efiiciency. 
 
 1 
 
 ) 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 LABOUR AND WAGES. 
 
 The Fifteenth Century the best Time for the Labourer — The Working: Hours 
 of the Day, and Yearly Wages — The Labourers’ Board — Spread of Piece- 
 work — The Wages of the Agricultural Labourer — The Impressment of 
 Labourers, and Journey Allowances — Prices of Food do not increase, 
 while Labourers’ Wages are increasing — The Great Plague — The Civil 
 War — The Effect of the latter on Husbandry and Wages imperceptible, 
 and the People indifferent — The Lollards probably friendly to the 
 House of York — The Sweating Sickness — The Capitalist Artizan in the 
 Fifteenth Century — The Decay of Towns — The Increase of Sheep Feed- 
 ing in the Sixteenth Century — The Debasement of the Currency — Its 
 Effects on Wages — The Confiscation of the Guild Lands — The Origin 
 and Uses of their Property — The Guilds like the Oxford Colleges — 
 Induced Weakness of the English Labourer — No Rise in Rents, and the 
 Reason — The Statute of Apprenticeship — The Result of these Changes, 
 Pauperism — The Cost of maintaining Labour illustrated — Elizabeth’s 
 Expedient of making the Coin only Two- thirds its nominal Value. 
 
 I FIND that the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the 
 sixteenth were the golden age of the English labourer, if we 
 are to interpret the wages which he earned by the cost of the 
 necessaries of life. At no time were wages, relatively speaking, 
 so high, and at no time was food so cheap. Attempts were con- 
 stantly made to reduce these wages by Act of Parliament, the 
 legislature frequently insisting that the Statute of Labourers 
 should be kept. But these efibrts were futile; the rate keeps 
 steadily high, and finally becomes customary, and was recognised 
 by Parliament. It is possible, that as the distribution of land 
 became more general, and the tenancy of land for terms of years 
 became habitual, the phenomenon which has often been noticed 
 as characteristic of peasant proprietorship, a high rate of wages 
 paid to the free labourer, may have been exhibited in the period 
 on which I am commenting. 
 
 The wages of the artizan during the period to which I refer 
 
28 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 were generally, and through the year, about ^d, a day. Those 
 of the agiicultural labourer were about 4:d, I am referring to 
 ordinary artizans and ordinary labourers. Persons who plied a 
 craft in which greater skill was needed, perhaps one which was 
 rarely procurable except from a distance, received more. Thus, 
 the carpenter, taken generally,.gets a little under — it is a very i 
 small fraction — 6(i. He was constantly employed in agricultural 
 operations and for domestic business. Put the plumber, who 
 might not be so regularly employed or was hired from a distance, 
 gets ^d. on an average. The mason, whose labour was likely to 
 be suspended during winter time or in very bad weather, gets the ^ 
 full average. The joiner, who is employed in finer carpentry, is 
 better paid than the average carpenter. It should be noted, too, 
 that as the century goes on, the wages of labour tend decidedly I 
 upwards. Hor is there any material difierence, with one notable 5 
 exception, in the payments made for labour all over England. It 
 IS equally well paid throughout the whole country. The exception | 
 is London, where the wages were from twenty-five to thirty per 1 
 cent, over the rates paid in other places. This increase may be \ 
 due either to the cause that the guilds made labour in London 
 comparatively scarce, or to the greater cost of living in London, ' 
 for general prices are, as a rule, higher in or near the metropolis ; 
 or to the fact that the best craftsmen sought London as a place J 
 of employment, and were better paid, because worth more than 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Theie is no reason to think that these labourers were paid well . • 
 because their employment was precarious. Men got just as good J 
 wages in the fifteenth century, whether they were employed for a ^ 
 day or a year. Hor, as I have already observed, were the hours 
 long. It is plain that the day was one of eight hours. Hor was 
 the period of winter wages, when the pay was lessened, consider- 
 able, for the short-pay season is, when such a period is specified, ' 
 only the months of December and January. Sometimes the 
 labourer is paid for every day in the year, though it is certain , 
 that he did not work on Sundays and the principal holidays. ^ 
 Thus, at Windsor, in 1408, four carpenters got 6d, a day, and six ; 
 got 5d., for 365 days in the year, ^.e., the former receive .£9 2^. 6d, \ 
 for their years wages, the latter ^7 12s. Id., the rate per day 
 
29 
 
 Labour and Wages. 
 
 and the amount for the year being specified in each case. 
 These men were no doubt in the service of the king, and the king, 
 as I shall show presently, was a very good paymaster; but he is 
 not the only person who hires labour on these liberal terms. At 
 York cathedral, six masons got 85. a year each; six others 
 .£7 I65. ; six more, £6 3s.; and one carpenter gets <£7 5s. 4d. 
 This is in 1415, when the prices of labour had not risen to their 
 full amount. 
 
 Very often the labourer is fed. In this case, the cost of main- 
 tenance is put down at from 6d. to 8d. a week. Sometimes the 
 labourer is paid as though he were fed, and a further allowance 
 for his board is given him, this probably being paid to some per- 
 son who has contracted to feed him at a rate. Sometimes the 
 food is given in, and the labourer’s wages are paid at the full 
 average. This is especially the case when the workman is hired 
 by opulent corporations and on their premises. There was always 
 a servants’ table in these establishments, and the workman is 
 bidden to it without stint or grudging. I find, for example, at 
 some of the Oxford colleges that ordinary rates are paid, and the 
 workman is fed into the bargain. Food was so abundant and 
 cheap that it was no great matter to throw it in with wages. 
 
 Piece work becomes more common in artizans’ labour. In the 
 earlier time, for instance, the pair of sawyers were generally paid 
 by the day, occasionally by the hundred feet, i.e., the long 
 hundred of 120, the pair evidently being understood to be compe- 
 tent to get through such a quantity in a day. In the earlier time 
 the piece price is a little less than the day price. In the fifteenth 
 century it is a little more. This is evidence of an upward 
 tendency. When the reaction, on which I shall hereafter com- 
 ment, begins, the former state of things is reversed in an exag- 
 gerated form, piece work falling below the remuneration of day 
 work. So lapng tiles and slates by the thousand, splitting laths 
 by the hundred, walling by the yard, casting and rolling lead, by 
 the hundredweight, making plate by the ounce, and doing 
 ceiling work by the yard, are found, and are generally well paid. 
 
 The agricultural labour gets about id. a day for his work ; but 
 in harvest time 6d. The practice of paying this person by tho 
 day instead of by the piece becomes commoner than it was. But 
 
30 Work a7td Wages. 
 
 piece payments are progressively higher than they were in the 
 dearest period of the fourteenth century. The man (homo) who 
 is employed as a help to the thatcher or tiler, and often to the j 
 mason, later on to the bricklayer, is paid at the rate of agricul-1 
 tural labourers in ordinary times, or a little less. This help was 
 sometimes a woman, as was generally the case in the earlier 
 period ; and thus it is seen that women’s work, when of what we 
 may call an unskilled kind, was equally well paid with that of 
 men. Piece work in the harvest field was paid at even higher 
 rates than during the famous years of the fourteenth century, in 
 which the labourer’s combinations were so effectual and so alarm- " 
 ing to employers. The full price of a labourer’s board was a shil- i 
 ling a week, often considerably less ; his wages were twice or three 
 times the cost of his maintenance under contract. In 1467, two ’ 
 girls are hired to work, and are paid 2d. a day. They are also * 
 boarded, and this is put at 2d. a day more. In the same year, I 
 at Selborne Priory, in Hampshire, the board of men is put at 2d., ' 
 of women at Hd, ^ - 
 
 ^ t 
 
 The king, who pressed labour at his pleasure, and from all parts ' 
 of England, for he sends for workmen from distances of 150 miles, ' 
 paid his agent in the business handsomely. This official some- ; 
 times also got a handsel for not taking workmen who were • 
 employed by private individuals and on works where despatch and I 
 convenience were important. But he cannot succeed in misusing { 
 the king’s press, as Falstaff' does, for he is paid by results, and 1 
 would no doubt run considerable risks if he sent inefficient work- \ 
 men. The men are also well paid. They are frequently boarded j 
 on contract, and we shall see presently how important is the •L® 
 information which these contracts give. They were also paid a | 
 viaticum on coming to and going from their work, at so much | 
 per mile of distance. One reads, too, of free-masons who get ^ 
 a slightly higher pay than ordinary craftsmen do ; of principal 1 
 masons, who receive an annual fee, besides their daily wages; and i 
 of master masons, like that one at York in 1423, who was' paid 1 
 .£10 a year. X 
 
 From 1260 to 1400 inclusive, the price of wheat is 5s. 10|(7. a* 
 •quarter. Prom 1401 to 1540 inclusive, it is 5s. ll|d, and this* 
 •slight increase of a penny a quarter is due to the dearer years of I 
 
Labour and Wa^es 
 
 31 
 
 bhe period, 1521-1540. Had it not been for the rise induced on 
 the general average, the price would have been 5«. 8|c?., or 3d. a 
 :iuarter less. But, including these dearer years in the average, 
 every kind of grain, except wheat and peas, is cheaper in the 
 fifteenth and part of the sixteenth centuries than it was in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth. Now, notwithstanding the extraor- 
 dinary cheapness of provisions (a fact to which public men turned 
 their attention in the sixteenth century, by comparing the prices 
 of the past with current experiences), there is no evidence that 
 the wages of labour were depressed, or that the payment for 
 service was the least affected by the low price of food. I do not, 
 indeed, imagine that the economist who duly corrects his infer- 
 ences from a wide range of facts, would be under the impression 
 that such a result would necessarily ensue, or, indeed, unless there 
 y^ere other causes at work, conclude that the tendency of popula- 
 tion would be to grow up to the limits of subsistence, as it grew 
 for special causes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 We shall see in the course of this inquiry that an excess of 
 population is quite compatible with no increase in numbers, 
 and that the misery of the working classes can be frequently 
 ascribed to other causes besides their own improvidence and 
 recklessness. 
 
 There occurred during this long period from the accession of 
 Henry IV. to the dissolution of the great monasteries a number 
 of social facts to which one should refer. And, in the first 
 place, to the waste of human life by pestilence and other causes. 
 
 The Great Plague was said to have visited England twice 
 in the fourteenth century after its first appearance, in 1361 
 and in 1369. But there is no information of a contemporary 
 kind as to its ravages on these subsequent occasions, and though 
 it is exceedingly likely that the disease remained endemic, it does 
 not appear to have recurred with alarming severity. The farm 
 accounts of the time make reference abundantly to the losses of 
 1348, but none speak of the return of the disease at the later 
 dates, though we are told that the summer of 1361-2 was ex- 
 ceedingly hot and dry, and we know that though the price of 
 wheat was low, that of other kinds of grain was abnormally high. 
 iBut in 1369-70, all kinds of grain were very dear,— dearer than 
 
32 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 at any time since the great famine of 1315 and 1316, a convincini 
 proof that the summer and autumn were cold and wet, and that 
 therefore, the temperature was unfavourable to the spread o 
 contagion ; and I, therefore, set little store by the computatioi 
 ^ven by Sir Harris Nicolas, on the authority of a King-at-arm! 
 in the reign of Charles I., as to the duration, and even as to th< 
 occurrence, of these visitations. The notes I find of plagues ir 
 the fifteenth century are in 1477, 1478, and 1479, when unusual 
 mortality seems to have prevailed in the Eastern Counties ; and 
 during the sixteenth, in 1521, in 1538, in 1545 and 1546, when 
 it was at Cambridge and Oxford; in 1555 and 1556, in 1570 and 
 in 1579. ^ All these are reappearances of the Levant plague; for 
 another disease, which occurred for the first time in the fifteenth 
 century, will be treated separately. In some of these cases, the 
 note IS of precautions taken against a possible visitation ; hut in 
 1679, the Norwich register expressly states that 4,918 people- 
 died, a loss of life which must have been as serious as that in 
 the first attack. But I cannot discover that the wages of labour 
 were affected by any of these occurrences of the fifteenth century,' 
 nor in those of the sixteenth, until the general change in money 
 values puts it out of one’s power to infer anything from such 
 events. I conclude, therefore, that the steadiness with which 
 high relative wages were secured was in no sense due to the^ 
 losses which labour suffered from pestilence. The existence of( 
 this formidable disease may have checked the growth of popula-S 
 tion ; hut if abundant evidence as to the rate of wages and silence! 
 as to the loss of life are to go for anything, it did not create .ai 
 sensible void in the number of labourers. ^ 
 
 From 1455 to 1485, the country suffered from civil war. I 
 doubt the statements made in chronicles as to the number 
 of combatants engaged in the struggle. In the first battle of 
 St. Albans we have been told that five thou.sand persons were slain. 
 It is almost certain that not much more than half that number 
 were in action. It was an accidental skirmish, provoked, as is 
 alleged by contemporary writers and even eye-witnesses, by the 
 king’s party. Henry had liberated Somerset from the Tower, 
 and Yoik felt, or professed to feel, that his life was in danger. 
 Nor do I doubt that, if we could arrive at the actual facts of *the 
 
33 
 
 Labour and Wages. 
 
 case, the combatants in the other battles were far fewer than the 
 narrative affirms. 
 
 There was abundance of wealth in England possessed by the 
 partizans, especially by the Duke of Fork’s party, which was 
 strong in London and the Eastern Counties. In the first period 
 of the war, indeed till after the battle of Wakefield and the 
 second fight at Sfc. Albans, the sole purpose of the Yorkist party 
 seems to have been the reform of abuses in the administration. 
 It is true that the unfortunate murder of Tresham, and the 
 development of violent partizan feeling in the Commons, made 
 men, I conclude, despair of constitutional remedies against 
 misgovernment. Matters were further complicated by the fact 
 that, after Parliament had appointed York Protector, and had 
 continued his office till he should be discharged of it by Parlia- 
 ment, Margaret contrived to create such a diversion in favour of 
 the royal party that York surrendered his authority little more 
 than two months after he had it granted him, and the queen 
 went off with her husband and son into the county of Chester, — by 
 which I believe is meant the city of Coventry, — the stronghold of 
 the Lancastrian party, and there undertook the management of 
 afiairs. I make no doubt that during this period the Yorkist 
 faction settled their differences and consolidated their plans. 
 
 The soldiers of fortune, who had long been familiar with 
 partizan warfare in France and had now returned to England, 
 were numerous enough for the armies of the rivals. In this the 
 Yorkist party had an advantage, for Warwick was in command 
 of the fleet and was governor of Calais — offices which he would 
 certainly not have retained if the king’s party had at all suspected 
 the direction to which affairs were tending. When they were 
 discovered, Margaret took thfe decisive step of summoning the 
 Coventry Parliament, which was said to have been packed, and 
 in which Tresham’s son was Speaker, and of passing a sweeping 
 bill of attainder by which York and all his partizans were pro 
 scribed. 
 
 We are told that house was divided against house, that 
 families were rent by factions, and that partizanship invaded even 
 monasteries and colleges. Our great dramatist, as is well known, 
 has illustrated the passions of the day with tragic incidents in his 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 plays of Henry VI. But in this I suspect there is the special 
 pleading of the Tudor writers, who wished to represent in the 
 strongest way how great were the blessings which came in with 
 the accession of the family under which they lived, and how healing 
 had been the pacific policy of the first Tudor prince. I can only 
 say, that though I have read hundreds of private documents 
 compiled for private inspection only during the whole of this 
 period, I have never met with any significant allusion to the 
 troubles which were impending or the scenes which were enacted. 
 It is true, that, in the summer of 1460, between June 26th and 
 July 8th, just before the battle of Northampton, where Grey de 
 Buthin, the murderer of Tresham, deserted to the Yorkist party, 
 and so insured the defeat of the king’s troops, the provost and 
 fellows of King’s College, Cambridge, who had despatched two of 
 their number to Coventry the year before, and had induced the 
 University of Cambridge to celebrate the obsequies of the king’s 
 warrior father, were exceedingly anxious for news, and sent no 
 lc"^s than eight times in the twelve days to obtain information as 
 to the king’s affairs and his doings. It was natural enough ; 
 the college was Henry’s favourite foundation, which a year 
 before had received its last statutes from the king, in which all 
 disciples of the heretics Wiklif and Pecok were proscribed. 
 Besides, the chapel was unfinished, and the king was making an 
 annual grant for its completion. 
 
 During the struggle between the rival houses, it seems to me 
 that the people were absolutely indifferent. It w^as not a war of 
 sieges but of battles, in which the combatants appear to have 
 sought out some secluded spot, and to have fought out the combat. 
 I have never seen or read of any injury done to neutrals, except 
 the outrages of Margaret’s northern army in the beginning of 
 1461, — deeds which led to the instant deposition of Henry and 
 the coronation of Edward. The war, as I believe, was as distant 
 from the great mass of English people, and was as little injurious 
 in its immediate effects, as summer lightning is. If it was 
 followed by the destruction of human life, the loss did not fall on 
 the working men of England, but on the nobles and professional 
 condottieri. It had no bearing on work and wages. At the same 
 time it is not wonderful if the partizans on either side believed 
 
Labour and Wages, 
 
 35 
 
 that the rest of the country took sides in their struggles. One of 
 the commonest and most persistent delusions into which parties 
 fall is that of imagining that the rest of the world has as keen 
 an interest in their affairs as they have themselves. A strong 
 upheaval of national feeling is a rare event. Its continuity 
 beyond the occasion of its first activity is rarer still. The farmer 
 and workman, during the last half of the fifteenth century, must 
 have had only a transient and languid interest in the faction fight I 
 which was going on around them. 
 
 It is exceedingly likely that the Lollards were active enemies of 
 the House of Lancaster when the issue was fairly before them. 
 John of Gaunt had been the friend and the patron of Wiklif ; and 
 the reforming party, who finally overthrew the Government and 
 put an end to the reign of Richard II., was identified with those 
 who had been willing to strip the Church of its overgrown wealth. 
 But Henry Bolingbroke had made his peace with the persecutors, 
 and compelled, in deference to them, the civil authorities to 
 execute the sentences of ecclesiastical tribunals. The Lollards | 
 pit at Norwich always had its stake and faggots ready, and we 
 may be pretty sure that the Norwich weavers had no love for 
 their persecutors, whom they identified with Henry and his 
 bishops. So I can quite understand that the authorities of the 
 city were doing no unpopular act when they clothed and paid 
 forty hired soldiers to join the king at Tewkesbury fight, and aid 
 in the final discomfiture of the House of Lancaster and its chiefs, 
 as they had sheltered the queen and her daughter a short time 
 before the king’s triumphant return. So the same citizens the 
 year following gave a handsome present to the Duke of Gloucester 
 in a gilded purse, fed his actors, and put in prison those who 
 spoke evil of the duke and the king. 
 
 After the battle of Bosworth, a new and fatal disease occurred 
 in England. It is remarkable that for a long period it was 
 confined to this country, or to Englishmen, though at last it 
 broke out in Germany and the Low Countries. Its appearance 
 was at special and well-defined periods, its duration being on each 
 occasion brief. While it lasted, it was specially destructive, 
 especially in the towns. So local was it that it did not reach 
 Scotland or Ireland. The Sweating Sickness broke out in 
 
36 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 Henry's army during its march to London. It appears to have 
 had its origin, according to the chroniclers of the time, in the 
 Welsh mountains, and to have been primarily due to the priva- 
 tions which Henry's army underwent before he reached his foe 
 and gained the timely treason of the Stanleys. The disease was 
 a violent inflammatory fever, accompanied by great prostration, 
 general disorder of the viscera, great oppression of the brain, 
 a lethargic sleep, and a profuse fetid perspiration, which flowed 
 from the patient in streams. So deadly was it," says Holinshed, 
 copying the exaggerated language of the older annalists, that 
 not one in a hundred recovered." The course of the disease was 
 very brief, the crisis being always over in a day and a night. 
 Men who had been quite well at evening were often dead in the 
 morning. It attacked robust and vigorous people more fre- 
 quently than the weak, and went from east to west through the 
 kingdom. Two lord mayors and six aldermen were victims to 
 the disease in a week. 
 
 It visited the country again in 1506, though on this occasion 
 the malady was not so severe. As before, its ravages were con- 
 fined to England. In 1517, it appeared for a third time, when 
 it was as destructive as it had been thirty years before, and was 
 particularly deadly in the Universities. It also attacked Calais, 
 but it was noticed that it afiected only the English inhabitants 
 of the town. The fourth visitation was in 1528 and 1529. It 
 was so destructive that the time was known afterwards as the 
 Great Mortality. The period was one of scarcity, almost of 
 famine, and it was noticed that the smut " first appeared in 
 wheat in this year. On this occasion it attacked Northern Ger- 
 many, beginning at Hamburg, where it is said that 1,100 persons 
 died in twenty-two days. Thence it spread to Dantzic, Cologne, 
 and the Low Countries, and afterwards to Amsterdam, Copen- 
 hagen, and Stockholm. The last visitation of the disease was in 
 1551, when it was described by Dr. Keyes, or Cains, the founder 
 of a well-known and distinguished Cambridge college. Since that 
 time it has not re-appeared in England, though epidemics closely 
 resembling the described symptoms of the sweating sickness have 
 occurred in modern times, especially in Northern Germany and 
 North-eastern France. 
 
Labour and Wages, 
 
 37 
 
 The sweating sickness, though alarming for its virulence and 
 the rapidity of its course, was not so destructive of human life 
 as the plague had been and still was. Still it is desirable to give 
 a brief account of it, because not only are the effects of pestilence 
 marked on the social condition and moral character of nations, 
 but the many economical consequences of plagues are more 
 lasting and more significant than those of famines. Famine, 
 indeed, has rarely occurred in England, for a reason which I 
 have frequently given. But the habits of the people were 
 favourable to pestilence. Every writer during the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries who makes his comments on the customs and 
 practices of English life, adverts to the profuseness of their diet 
 and the extraordinary uncleanliness of their habits and their 
 persons. The floor of an ordinary Englishman’s house, as Erasmus 
 describes it, was inconceivably filthy, in London filthier than 
 elsewhere, for centuries after these events. The streets and open 
 ditches of the towns were polluted and noisome beyond measure. 
 The Englishman disdained all the conditions of health, and in the 
 large towns the deaths, to judge from the returns up to the 
 eighteenth century, greatly exceeded the births. When pestilence 
 was abroad, the town folk, not always welcome visitors, hurried 
 into the country ; the students of colleges sought their country 
 seats, generally provided by the foundation against those 
 occasional risks of town life, and there perhaps encountered 
 nothing much more serious than a dunghill heaped with all sorts 
 of festering ofial at their doors. But the residence was only 
 temporary, the townsman and the student had no love for 
 country life, and when the danger was over, the shop-keeper and 
 artizan returned to their guild houses, the student and the monk 
 to common hall and refectory. 
 
 I cannot, therefore, conclude that either the civil disturbances 
 of the fifteenth century or the visitation of disease, sporadic from 
 the re-appearance of the old pestilence, or endemic at times from 
 the occurrence of the new, materially affected the population of 
 England during the period before me. It must not be imagined 
 that the outbreak of a new disease such as the sweating sickness 
 is evidence by itself of a low vitality among the people. We are 
 expressly told that the victims of this disease were constantly the 
 
38 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 strong and healthy, not the weakly, the infirm, or the young. 
 The disease, it is supposed, sprung from the privations to which 
 Henry Tudor's army were exposed. But it is constantly the case 
 that an epidemic which has its origin in the privations of one set 
 of people, or even in a foreign nation, may seriously affect those 
 who have not been brought under the conditions to which the 
 first outbreak of the disorder is due. It is, I think, admitted 
 that the severe and destructive outbreak of small-pox which 
 passed through many parts of Europe, and our own country 
 in particular, some ten years ago, was directly traceable to 
 the sufferings which the French and German armies under- 
 went in the war of 1870, just as it is probable that the 
 ravages of the same disease at the conclusion of the seven- 
 teenth century were not obscurely connected with the wars of 
 Louis XIY. 
 
 One notable fact in the economy of the fifteenth century is the 
 development of the capitalist artizan. At a previous period of 
 social history in England, this personage has scarcely an existence. 
 The farmer, landowner, or noble, the monastery, or lay corpora- 
 tion, when it wants products on which the craftsman's labour is 
 required, buys the material in a raw state, and hires the smith 
 or other artizan to fashion it. Thus iron and steel, lead and 
 copper, or brass, stone, and lime are either purchased raw and in 
 bulk, or, as in the case of the latter articles named, are manu- 
 factured from chalk or limestone, or quarried by the person who 
 requires to use them. There are always, indeed, some articles 
 which the purchaser buys ready made. Such, for instance, are 
 lath nails, and, in certain parts of England, particularly the 
 Eastern Counties, othei nails, these being, I am convinced, 
 manufactured by the local smith, when he is not being engaged 
 in legular employment by others. But other iron articles were, 
 at the commencement of the century, regularly manufactured 
 from the employer's material. In course of time finished articles 
 were more and more purchased from what is evidently the stock 
 of the craftsman. Take, for instance, a farmer's waggon. In 
 early times, every part of this is constantly fashioned on the spot 
 as I have described. In course of time, the farmer buys the cart 
 frame from one person, the wheels from another, and the iron- 
 
Labour and Wages. 
 
 39 
 
 work, the most costly part of the whole, from a third. Later on 
 he purchases the whole article complete from the wheelwright. 
 The same is the case with ordinary ironwork. First he hires the 
 smith to fashion it from his stock ; then he buys the article from 
 the smith by weight ; then he bargains for the article he needs 
 at a price, without reference to weight. The special department 
 in which the custom of buying materials lasts the longest is in 
 building. In the Midland Counties the purchase of bricks and 
 tiles, stone and lime, is continued, though often with special 
 contracts for particular work, in which the items are not given, 
 till the epoch of the Parliamentary wars. In the Eastern 
 Counties, the old system lasted longer. But in the middle of the 
 fifteenth century, small repairs were often done by craftsmen, 
 who send in their charges with a bill of particulars. Now the 
 growth of this system proves that the artizan was beginning to 
 accumulate such capital as would enable him to wait for and 
 deal with customers, and therefore is indirect evidence that 
 wealth was growing. 
 
 I have referred before to the fact, that in the first half of tlie 
 fifteenth century, grants of fifteenths and tenths were made with 
 a fixed deduction from the total, afterwards increased, for the 
 relief of towns which were decayed or temporarily impoverished, 
 and that generally certain towns were named. It is highly 
 probable that some of this decay is due to the spread of woollen 
 and linen manufactories into country places, where the charges 
 of the town dues and the restrictions of the guilds did not apply. 
 But in the year 1515 (by 6 Henry YIII., cap. vi.), complaint 
 is made of the decay of towns and the growth of pastures. The 
 Act states that, in places where there used to be two hundred 
 persons, men, women, and children, who used to be occupied and 
 also lived by the growing of corn and other grain, and the herding 
 of cattle, and the increase of man^s sustenance, the number is 
 lessened, and the husbandry, which is the greatest commodity of 
 the realm for the sustenance of man, is greatly decayed, that 
 churches are destroyed, divine offices neglected or suspended, and 
 that public health and safety are endangered, by various causes,’^ 
 pointing to urban depopulation. The owners of these houses are 
 bidden to rebuild them under pain of forfeiture to the king or 
 
40 
 
 Work and JVa^es, 
 
 the lord, and the pasture lands are to be restored to tillage. The 
 statute is re-enacted in the following year. 
 
 Acts of Parliament in the sixteenth century complain that 
 enclosures of arable and common fields are made for the purpose 
 of laying them down in pasture, and that there is a serious 
 increase in sheep breeding, accompanied by a great enhancement 
 in the price of sheep and wool. The complaint about enclosures 
 is as old as the fifteenth century, when the land hunger of the 
 age led to encroachment on common pastures, and the forcible 
 extinction of rights over common land. I do not, indeed, find 
 that the price of sheep has risen generally as high as the Act 
 of 1533 asserts it to have been, but wool was undoubtedly dear, 
 being in some places nearly Ss. the tod, — a price, however, which 
 was frequently reached as early as the beginning of the fifteenth 
 century. The preamble to the Act states that some persons keep 
 as many as 24,000 sheep, and some from 20,000 to 5,000, and the 
 statute enacts that hereafter no one shall keep more than 2,000, 
 and in order to avoid the ambiguity in the number implied by 
 a hundred, which sometimes means the long hundred of six -score, 
 the sum shall be five-score only, and any breach of the Act shall 
 be followed by a penalty of 3^. id. on every head above the legal 
 number, to be recovered by any informer, who shall receive half 
 the penalty, the other moiety going to the king. The adoption 
 of sheep farming in lieu of ordinary tillage was due to the 
 greater profit gained by sheep raising, especially as the importa- 
 tion of wheat and rye from the Baltic had already attracted the 
 notice of the legislature. 
 
 Twenty years afterwards, in 1536, in order to prevent the decay 
 of agriculture, a new statute orders that the owners of land 
 taken by tenants to farm shall provide proper farm buildings for 
 every holding from fifty to thifty acres which were so let. The 
 Act is made to apply principally to the Midland Counties, twelve 
 of which are specified, to Lincolnshire, and to the Isle of Wight. 
 These counties had been, in the assessments made at different 
 times, among the most prosperous in the country. In the same 
 year, and in divers Acts of Parliament betw^een this year and 
 1545, lists of towns are given which are said to be greatly 
 decayed. There is scarcely a town in England which is not in 
 
Labour and Wages. 
 
 41 
 
 a declining condition, if we can rely on the statements contained 
 in these Acts. Complaints are made that the decay of some of 
 these towns is due to the fact that the country people have set 
 up the business for themselves which had hitherto been the staple 
 of the town, and the practice is forbidden. Thus the town of 
 Bridport is protected in rope making, and the towns of Worcester- 
 shire in cloth weaving. But I do not discover that the rate 
 of wages falls, though the price of wheat keeps continually, 
 though slightly, rising. Complaint is made by the city of London 
 that foreign manufactures are injuriously imported, and that 
 English agricultural produce is extensively exported, and that 
 remedy should be supplied. 
 
 It w^ould have been well for the- English labourer and artizan if 
 no worse fortune had been before them than was apprehended in 
 these several Acts of Parliament, and provided for, on paper at 
 least, by these regulations. Henry had spent his own substance 
 and that of his people. The treasures of the religious houses had 
 been squandered in an incredibly short time, hurled away in 
 the wanton waste of his boundless extravagance. In the short 
 remainder of his life he inflicted two wrongs on his people, the ^ 
 mischief of which was incalculable, the effects of which lasted for ' 
 centuries. They were the debasement of the currency and the 
 confiscation of the guild revenues. It is possible that the king 
 did not understand the mischief which he was doing, for his apo- 
 logist certainly does not. 
 
 It has been stated before that at various periods of English 
 history the English sovereigns lessened the weight of the unit, 
 the silver penny, till, in the year 1464, the penny of Edward IV. 
 was almost exactly half the weight of the penny of Edward I. 
 It is remarkable, that notwithstanding these successive diminu- 
 tions, no effect is traceable in the price of commodities, and no 
 discontent is expressed of the action of the Crown. If anything, 
 after the last change, commodities became cheaper, and yet all 
 those persons who were receiving fee farm or fixed rents, the 
 amount of which had not varied from the thirteenth century, 
 were receiving contentedly, and without the consciousness of 
 change, about half the money in the fifteenth which their ancestor 
 icceived in the thirteenth century. The king, too, whose fif- 
 
42 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 
 teenths and tenths, whose dues and aids, had long been a fixed 
 sum, had deliberately, and for the sake of a temporary gain, from 
 time to time deprived himself of half his income. Now Adam 
 Smith, imperfect as his materials were for the interpretation of 
 prices, saw that when the weight of the coin was diminished no 
 appreciable rise of prices ensued, and he came to the conclusion 
 that silver, measured in commodities, was becoming increasingly 
 dearer in the fifteenth and earlier part of the sixteenth century. 
 But it is difficult to understand why it was that the increase of 
 value and immobility of prices corresponded with chronological 
 precision to the several changes which were made by the inden- 
 tures of the mint, and how the issue of new light money was not 
 followed by the immediate disappearance of all the old heavy 
 money. And if it be alleged that the force of Government is con- 
 stantly able, provided the country is not affected by the foreign 
 exchanges, to give a nominal value to a legal currency, it may be 
 answered that the commercial transactions of England in the 
 fifteenth century were considerable, especially with Antwerp, at 
 that time the principal centre of trade, and that every efibrt was 
 made by Government to regulate the exchanges, as was supposed, 
 in the English interest. 
 
 I cannot explain the facts given above, except on the hypothesis 
 already stated, that payments were ordinarily made by weight. 
 This appears to be confirmed by the price paid for silver plate. 
 In the very year in which the penny is reduced to one-half the 
 amount it stood at in the thirteenth century, plate is bought at 
 35. and 25. Wd, the ounce. In 1493, an Oxford college purchases 
 a quantity of new plate, some of it gilt (and mediaeval gilding 
 was very substantial), at 25. the ounce. But it is difficult to 
 understand how raw silver could be purchased at anything like 
 these prices, and the cost of manufacturing plate, when the gold- 
 smith was on the premises and had his commons, was not less 
 than 8(i. an ounce, and gilding assuredly doubled the cost of work- 
 manship at least, and, on many occasions, more than trebled it. 
 Such low prices are inconsistent with a payment by tale, but are 
 perfectly intelligible if they are estimates by weight. 
 
 In 1543, Henry put out his first debased money. Hitherto the 
 coin had contained eighteen pennyweights of alloy in the twelve 
 
Labour and Wages. 
 
 43 
 
 ounces of metal, and the pound was coined into forty-five shillings. 
 In the issue of 1543, the debasement was two ounces in twelve; 
 in 1545, it was six ounces in twelve ; in 1546, it was eight ounces 
 in twelve. This vile mixture was coined into forty-eight pieces. 
 The process wa.s continued by the guardians of Edward YI. In 
 1549, the alloy was six ounces, and in 1551 nine ounces, the 
 pieces now being seven tv -two in the pound, and the nominal 
 shilling possessing less than ^\d, worth of silver in the one, and 
 less than 2|(i. worth in the other. In the last year of Edward’s 
 reign, 1552, an issue was put out of nearly the standard fineness, 
 and nearly the weight of the latter currency. But there is no 
 doubt that this coinage was made in order to enable Edward to 
 negotiate for the payment of his debts at Antwerp, through the 
 agency of Gresham, ^i^ho was his factor there. 
 
 When Elizabeth reformed the currency in 1560, restoring the 
 old standard, and coining the pound Troy into sixty shillings, the 
 amount of base money by weight received at the Mint was nearly 
 632,000 lbs. Its nominal value is said to have been a little more 
 than £638,000, which gives an additional illustration to my 
 theory that payments were made by weight and not by tale. The 
 actual amount of sterling silver contained in the mixture was 
 244,416 lbs., and the average debasement was therefore 60 per 
 cent., or a little more than seven ounces in twelve. Elizabeth 
 coined £733,248 in the new coinage out of the silver she refined. 
 She was supposed to have made a profit on the transaction. I 
 shall show hereafter that the difference between the actual and 
 the reputed value of the old base currency was almost exactly the 
 ratio between the price of provisions and the general necessaries 
 of life, before the debasement occurred, and after it had taken 
 full effect. 
 
 Now it is clear that prices were rising, though slowly and 
 moderately, during the first forty years of the sixteenth century. 
 In the first decade the money value of the principal necessaries of 
 life, corn and wheat, were at the rates, speaking generally, at 
 which they had stood for two centuries. In the last decade they 
 had risen by twenty to forty per cent. ; and the rise was recog- 
 nised and wondered at, being set down to the changes which had 
 been made, as I have already stated, in agriculture. But the 
 
44 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 knowledge of the fact should have stayed Henry’s hand, when he 
 tcontem plated the great fraud which he practised on his people. 
 (Silver, probably owing to the conquest of Mexico, was getting 
 progressively cheaper ; and had Henry not taken the step he did 
 in 1543, the rise in prices, inevitable after the discovery of the 
 ^ew World, would have been as slow and regular as it was dur- 
 ing the period to which I have referred, as foreign trade gradually 
 distributed the fruits of the Spanish conquests over Europe. 
 
 It is not possible, I believe, to determine the precise extent 
 to which a government may exact a seigniorage on a metallic 
 •currency, or issue an inconvertible paper, which it professes that 
 it will afterwards redeem, without seriously disturbing internal 
 prices. It may easily render its paper vauleless, as the French 
 did with their assignats and mandats at the time of the Hevolu- 
 tion. It may lower the actual value of its metallic currency while 
 it gives it a nominal value, till it stimulates private coining, 
 •either at home or abroad. In the interval, however, it may give 
 an appearance of prosperity to a country where such a policy is 
 adopted, for the price of exports may be raised, while the money 
 value of products in the home market may remain unaltered. It 
 is very likely that the operation of Henry’s issues was disguised 
 for a time at home, and it is remarkable that corn was very cheap 
 in 1547, and not dear, as matters now ruled, in 1546 and 1548, 
 perhaps owing to very plentiful harvests. The monetary history 
 •of all countries is full of instances which illustrate the rapidity 
 with which people fall into the delusion that high prices, due to 
 •over issues of paper, the coinage of an overvalued metal, or to 
 excessive speculation, are evidence of prosperity. Our English 
 Parliament in the present century endorsed the follies of Yansit- 
 tart and repudiated the truths which were announced by the 
 Pullion Committee and Lord King. But the issue of base money 
 is rapidly and irremediably mischievous. It affects all, except 
 those who are quick at measuring the exact extent of the fraud, 
 and, by turning the base coin into an article of traffic, can trade 
 •on the knowledge and skill which they possess. To the poor, and, 
 indeed, to all who live by wages and fixed salaries, it is speedily 
 ruinous. The effect of Henry’s and Edwa-rd’s base money, though 
 it lasted only sixteen years, was potent enough to dominate in the 
 
Labour and Wages, 
 
 45- 
 
 history of labour and wages from the sixteenth century to the 
 present time, so enduring are the causes which influence the 
 economical history of a nation. Whether payments were made 
 by weight or not before the debasement, they were certainly 
 made by tale speedily afterwards, and when Elizabeth reformed 
 the currency, the new system, to her evident disappointment, was 
 permanently adopted. 
 
 The proportionate money value of meat is nearly three times 
 the old rates, that of corn nearly two and a half times, that of 
 dairy produce, two and a half times. But the rise in wages 
 is a little more than one and a half times. In other words, if 
 a labourer’s wages rose from a day to 9c?., he had to pay 
 for meat, 2^. 5c?. for bread, and 2^. 6c?. for butter or cheese, where 
 he paid Is. before. And the same facts are visible in those 
 products whose value depends almost entirely on the labour 
 which renders them fit for the market. The price of fish, of 
 prepared fuel, of building materials, rises but a little above the 
 rate at which labour rises. The producer of animal food, grain, 
 and other agricultural necessaries commanded a better market 
 than the dealer in any other article of value did, while labour, and 
 those products the value of which is principally derived from the 
 outlay of labour, partook in the least degree in the rise of prices, 
 Henry and his son had at last, though unwittingly, given effect 
 to the Statute of Labourers. 
 
 Had the offence of issuing base money not been committed, and 
 had prices risen through the distribution of the precious metals 
 over the civilized world, the condition of the labourer would have 
 still been impaired, for when prices are raised without there being 
 any increased demand for labour, wages very slowly follow the 
 rise. The general inflation of prices which I have pointed out as 
 taking place in the forty years which followed Henry’s base 
 money have their particular explanation. But between the 
 middle of Elizabeth’s reign and the breaking out of the Parlia- 
 mentary War, a period of sixty }^ears, general prices were more 
 than doubled, while a very miserable percentage of increase is 
 effected in the wages of labour, certainly not more than twenty 
 per cent. Wages are raised first by an increased demand for 
 labour ; secondly, by a limitation of those who compete for 
 
46 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 employment, and, thirdly, by the regulative action of labour 
 partnerships, or trade unions as they are commonly called. Wages 
 may rise when profits are stagnant or even declining. 
 
 The second injury which Henry put on his people was the 
 destruction of the guilds and the confiscation of their property. 
 The sums he had received from the monasteries, and the profits 
 which he made by debasing the currency, were still insufficient 
 for his wants, and he resolved on confiscating the rest of the 
 corporate revenues which still survived. In the last year but one 
 of his reign a Bill was actually passed by both Houses for the 
 dissolution of all colleges, chantries, hospitals, free chapels, etc. ; 
 and it is probable that the universities, the colleges, and the 
 public schools would have been swept away into the all-devouring 
 exchequer, had not Henry died before the Act was carried 
 out. 
 
 The corporate existence of the town long preceded that of the 
 guild. It is possible that associations of traders, voluntarily united 
 or recognised by some external authority, were active from very 
 remote times, from the merely gregarious instinct of human 
 beings. They are traced to a period before the Conquest. It is 
 probable, for instance, that the guild of goldsmiths in London 
 was an association at a date earlier than the earliest extant 
 charter of the city, just as it is probable that in the town of 
 Oxford associations of students preceded the foundation of the 
 University. But the chartered town or city was antecedent to 
 the chartered guild. In course of time the associations of 
 traders obtained charters, but were obscure and feeble societies, 
 though rallying places for the burghers against the urban 
 aristocracy. In time they united in a guild-hall ; in time they 
 constrained all the inhabitants of the city to enter in one or the 
 other of the companies, and ultimately obtained the exclusive 
 franchise. But the relics of an older constituency remained in the 
 residential electorate of the wards. In just the same way the 
 Oxford and Cambridge colleges, which were in the first instance 
 tolerated excrescences on the academical system, became finally 
 the monopolists of education and academical authority. 
 
 The guilds gradually acquired property, sometimes entirely for 
 their own ends, more generally as interested in the remainder of 
 
47 
 
 Labour and Wages. 
 
 a trust. A brother of the craft would give house and lands to 
 better the annual feast, which the craft always held ; or he 
 might found a school, an hospital, or an alms-house, and after 
 defining the amount of his benefaction, would leave the surplus, 
 if any, to the discretion of the guild. Or he would make the 
 guild the trustees of the fund from which the mass priest should 
 receive his stipend for spiritual offices, the residue being left to 
 the guild as remuneration for management. Occasionally the 
 corporation bargained for the amount of the spiritual service, and 
 refused to agree to a proposal which might be too costly for the 
 fund to bear. They exacted fees for apprenticeship, for taking 
 up freedom by inheritance or servitude, and more lately for 
 admission into the guild by purchase. Like prudent men, who 
 might be liable to occasional charges, they saved and invested 
 these funds, as also gifts for lending without usury to poorer 
 citizens, for apprenticing poor boys or girls, or for marriage 
 portions, or for widows’ pensions, or for the relief of the destitute 
 members of the craft, the first and the most enduring duty of the 
 guild. The guild estates, the chest of the company, its revenues 
 and rents, were, like the endowments of an academical college, at 
 once the support of the fraternity and the means by which the 
 discipline of the order or craft was maintained. The analogy 
 between the guild and the college was close, and perhaps this was 
 fully understood. Two guilds in the town of Cambridge founded 
 out of their resources one of the older colleges in that University. 
 Sometimes the permanent revenues of the guild or college were 
 scraped together from the savings of the fees which bygone 
 generations of applicants had paid, and the college or guild 
 had hoarded. 
 
 Somerset, Edward the Sixth’s uncle, procured the Act by which 
 these guild lands were confiscated, on the plea of the super- 
 stitious use ” with which they were generally associated. He did 
 not, indeed, venture on appropriating the estates of the London 
 guilds, for London had it in its power to make revolutions, and 
 they were spared, after ransom paid, under the plea that the 
 guild did service to trade. Similarly the chantries annexed to 
 the Oxford and Cambridge colleges were not reft from these 
 institutions, but allowed, discharged of the duty. I conceive 
 
48 
 
 J Vo7'k and J I 'ages. 
 
 that most of the outlying bits of land in the urban boundaries 
 of Oxford and Cambridge which were possessed by the pre- 
 Heformation colleges are mainly chantry lands. These guild 
 lands were in the aggregate considerable, and the confiscation 
 made Somerset and the Keformalion unpopular. After Somerset’s 
 execution, the rapacity of Northumberland made the Keformation 
 still more odious ; and when this schemer attempted to set Jane 
 Grey on the throne, the most Protestant district of England rose 
 against the new order of things, protected Mary, who trusted 
 herself to them, and made her queen, to be repaid by fire and 
 faggot. For anything which Northumberland, the son of Henry 
 the Seventh’s hateful instrument, the father of Elizabeth’s 
 worthless favourite, had touched, was tainted. He had secured, 
 in the last year of Edward’s reign, the surrender of the see of 
 Durham, with the regalian rights of the County Palatine. He 
 intended to appropriate this to himself, and to dismember northern 
 England by making an independent principality, which should 
 include the Northern Counties, and probably York, to ally with 
 the Scots, and to procure the hand of Mary Stuart for his son 
 Pobert. In this case he would be able to defy all attempts to 
 dispossess him. But Edward’s death disconcerted his plans, and 
 the hatred of all parties cowed hin^ 
 
 The issue of the base money was recognised to be the cause of 
 dearth in the realm. Latimer preached before the king and 
 lamented that the silver had become dross. All the good money 
 disappeared, of course, and the king’s credit with it. Pauperism 
 began to show itself, and the people were exhorted to charity and 
 almsgiving by proclamations which issued from a gang of coiners 
 and smashers. In Mary’s days the rich who declined to give 
 were to be denounced to the ordinary as heretics. It may be 
 doubted whether, even if she had reformed the currency in her 
 reign, the old prices would have been restored. Elizabeth effected 
 the reformation, but the facts were too strong for her, the wages 
 of labour possessed less and less purchasing power, and pauperism 
 increased. The great queen’s government strove to stay it by 
 insisting on the creation of peasant holdings, or by supplementing 
 wages wdth land allotments of four acres to each cottage. But 
 the evil W'as too far gone for the remedies of legislation, and a. 
 
49 
 
 Labour and Wa^es. 
 
 poor law, under which the relief of destitution was guaranteed, 
 was the only expedient before her government when it was left 
 face to face with the irremediable poverty of labour. 
 
 The English labourer, then, in the sixteenth century was 
 almost simultaneously assailed on two sides. The money which 
 he received for his wages was debased, and the assistance which 
 his benefit society gave him in times of difliculty, which allowed 
 him loans without interest, apprenticed his son, or pensioned his 
 widow, was confiscated. All the necessaries of life, as I have already 
 stated, rose in value in the proportion generally of 1 to 2|, while 
 the wages of labour rose to little more than from 1 to 1|. His 
 ordinal y means of life were curtailed. The considerable advantage 
 which the London labourer and artizan had over his country 
 fellow in the calling disappeared, and the wages of country and 
 London hands were nearly equalised. This was indeed to be 
 expected, for in the virtual decline of wages, the advantage of 
 the better paid or selected hands would certainly be lost. But 
 the deterioration of his condition was not confined to the loss 
 of money wages. He lost his insurance also, the fund destined 
 to support him and his during the period of youth and age, when 
 work is not open to the imperfect powers of youth, and has 
 become impossible to the enfeebled powers of age. Nor is the 
 extent of the loss which the working classes sufiered by the 
 confiscation of the guild lands to be estimated by the value which 
 was set upon the capital fund, as we may see from the enormous 
 amount to which those funds have increased in London, where 
 they were spared, for it is admitted that most of the guild or 
 corporate estates of the city companies are of pre-Beformation 
 origin. The estates of the guilds in country towns might not have 
 nearly reached the value of the London property belonging to the 
 companies, but they would hardly have been so entirely perverted 
 from their original objects as they have been in the city, and 
 would have remained, in some degree at least, to fulfil the original 
 purposes of the donors. The country guilds, though not formally 
 suppressed after being plundered, were practically superseded by 
 the corporate action of the burgesses, who appropriated such 
 income as was left, from fees and fines, to the common purse of 
 the freemen. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 The purpose which the legislature had before it for two 
 centuries had now become possible. The Statute of Labourers 
 had been passed, re-enacted, invoked, and put into execution in 
 vain. There is hardly a trace in the history of English labour 
 and wages that the passionate desire of the employers of labour 
 that workmen should be constrained to accept reasonable wages 
 had been satisfied. The rise in wages, and what was even more 
 significant, of articles the price of which no law could pretend 
 to control, had changed the form of English husbandry from 
 capitalist cultivation on a large scale to the stock and land lease, 
 and thence to tenancies of the ordinary farm kind on short lease, 
 or to tenancies at will. But though there was a formidable 
 increase in prices after the full effect of the debased currency was 
 reached, there was no rise in rents. The landowner was paying 
 nearly three times as much in the first years of Elizabeth's reign 
 as he paid in the first years of her father’s reign, and receiving no 
 more rent in the latter than he did in the earlier period. This is 
 proved by the evidence given of corporate income at the two 
 periods when the income is the source of the corporation’s 
 existence. For a long time the revenues of King’s College, 
 Cambridge, and Kew College, All Souls, or, Merton, Oxford, 
 show no increase in amount. The Cambridge College, it is true, 
 tries to remedy the loss by demanding its rents in kind, but the 
 Oxford societies either did not attempt the expedient or found 
 that their tenants could resist it. The bishoprics were opulent 
 before the Beformation, but poor after it, not so much because 
 they had generally been shorn of their possessions by the greedy 
 courtiers of the later Tudor princes, though this took place, as 
 because rents had remained stationary while prices had been 
 rising. Kor is the cause far to seek. Bents do not rise because 
 prices rise, for the power of the tenant to pay an enhanced rent 
 which the rise in the price of farm produce will give him may 
 be entirely neutralized by the rise in the price of that which he . 
 must purchase in order to carry on his industry. This is made 
 clear at the present time. The high price of meat and dairy 
 products is more than a compensation for the low price of 
 corn, if one is to interpret the power of a tenant to pay rent 
 by the price of agricultural produce. But all farmers will tell 
 
Labour and Wages 51 
 
 us that, owing to the great price of lean stock, no profit, or little 
 profit beyond manure, attends stock keeping. Nor would the 
 difierence between high and low wages materially diminish or 
 increase the power of paying rent, apart from other causes. 
 Wages may be high, and profits may remain high, because 
 demand is great and supply indefinite. This is the common case 
 when there is great activity in manufactures, and it arises from 
 the fact that business has become more brisk, that the industry is 
 for the time capable of indefinite extension, or that a great and 
 notable economy has been induced on the process of production. 
 Wages may be high and profits low, not because, as some econo- 
 mists have absurdly argued, wages trench on profits, but because 
 an increasing number of persons compete for an inelastic or 
 stationary amount of business, and therefore at once overbuy each 
 other in the wages market and undersell each other in the produce 
 market. 
 
 In mediaeval agriculture the greatest outlay, as I have fre- 
 quently said, was on stock, live and dead. It is not easy, in the 
 old system of capitalist farming, to precisely figure the wages of 
 labour, because the tenants of the manor frequently paid the 
 rents for their small holdings in labour, and an estimate of this 
 would have to be given in any interpretation of the cost of labour 
 in the earlier husbandry. But in the small tenancies which 
 followed, this kind of labour is extinguished, and it is not easy, in 
 the absence of direct evidence, to determine what additional cost 
 the tenant would be at. Still the farmer gave, as in older times, 
 his own labour and that of his household to his holding, and 
 would not be as likely to employ independent labour as the 
 capitalist farmer was, except in harvest time and under urgency. 
 And it will be clear, that unless hired labour formed a con- 
 siderable item in the cost of the tenant farmer, a fall in wages 
 would not of itself render him, under such altered circumstances, 
 able and willing to pay an enhanced rent. There is only one 
 cause for a rise in rent, and this cause has manifested itself at 
 well-defined periods in the history of English agricultural in- 
 dustry. 
 
 This is an economy in the process of production duo to im- 
 provements in the process of agriculture. From the days of 
 
52 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 Henry III. to those of James I., no such economy or improve- 
 ment occurred. It is probable that some processes by which 
 land was tilled were neglected or forgotten. It is not unlikely 
 that the care which had been taken to improve breeds of sheep 
 had been remitted. Only one new kind of agricultural industry 
 had been introduced, — the cultivation of the hop ; and this was 
 suspected and even denounced. But from the time of James I., 
 especially after the middle of his reign, large and important 
 improvements are made in agriculture, great economies discovered, 
 and a rapid rise in rent ensues. These will be subsequently com- 
 mented on. It is to be regretted, though it is not to be wondered 
 at, that these improvements and economies had no beneficial 
 effect on the wages of labour. 
 
 The government of Elizabeth was, however, convinced that the 
 legal restraint of wages was a necessity or a benefit, or both. 
 Hence the Statute 5 Eliz., cap. 4 (which enacts that no person shall, 
 under a penalty of forty shillings a month, use or occupy any art, 
 mystery, or manual occupation without a previous seven years^ 
 apprenticeship), seems to favour traders and artizans at the expense 
 of labourers in husbandry, by limiting the number of the former 
 and making the latter the residuum of all non-apprenticed labour. 
 But the favour is more apparent than real in the case of the 
 artizan ; for what the statute gives with one hand it takes away 
 with another. The justices in Quarter Sessions are empowered 
 to fix the rate of wages in husbandry and in handicrafts, and 
 they do not let their powers lie idle. The great collection of 
 Elizabeth's proclamations now in the Bodleian Library, a volume 
 which probably once belonged to Cecil, gives two of these ex- 
 haustive assessments, — one for the county of Butland, which seems 
 to have been published as a type for the southern counties, and one 
 for that of Lancashire, which is probably a guide for the northern 
 counties. There are others in existence. 
 
 This expedient was at last successful, and was the third in the 
 set of causes from which pauperism was the inevitable effect. 
 The two former, the base money and the confiscation of the 
 benefit societies^ funds, are economical, and can be so interpreted. 
 The third is capable of historical proof. The wages of labour do 
 conform, notwithstanding the continual increase in the price of 
 
53 
 
 Labour and Wages, 
 
 the necessaries of life, to the assessments of the Quarter Sessions, 
 and the system is continued under legal sanction till 1812, and 
 by a sufficient understanding for long after that date. It seems 
 that as long as the practice remained, under which the wages of 
 the peasant were eked out by land allowances and commonable 
 rights, he continued to subsist, though but poorly, under the 
 system ; but that when the enclosures of the eighteenth century 
 began, and the full influence of the corn laws was felt, during 
 the fourth quarter of that century and the first quarter of the 
 nineteenth, it became necessary to supplement his wages by an 
 allowance from the parish fund, and thus to indirectly qualify 
 the assessment which the magistrates had established. 
 
 Had, however, the first two acts to which I have so often re- 
 ferred not been committed, the third would have, I am persuaded, 
 been nugatory. It was notliing more than had been enacted in 
 the reign of Henry lY., and had been wholly inoperative, at 
 any rate in the direction which it was intended to take — the 
 reduction of agricultural wages ; for these, as we have seen, 
 improve after the enactment. But it was a very different thing 
 when the workman had been weakened, and he had been con- 
 strained for half a generation to submit to a base currency and to 
 undergo other losses. 
 
 The altered condition of the labourers is further illustrated by 
 the rise in the price of their maintenance. In the early part of 
 the fifteenth century the average cost of a labourer’s board is 9c?. 
 a week. In the famine year of the fifteenth century, 1348-9, it 
 rose to an average of 1^. 6cZ., a proof that the rates which I have 
 given were contract prices. Hor is there much variation in the 
 rate till after the issue of the base money. In 1542, board and 
 lodging are put at I 5 . a week ; but in ten years from this time it 
 rises to an average of 3^. a week. In 1562, 1563, and 1570, 
 Elizabeth makes quarterly contracts for victualling her workmen 
 in her dockyards at Deptford and Portsmouth. In the first year 
 the contract is at an average of 45. 0|cZ. ; in the second, at 45. 6cZ. ; 
 in the third, at 35. IM. ; the first and third being a cheap, the 
 second a dear year. The Queen also rents lodgings at 2<i. a week, 
 the contract being that the men should have feather beds, that 
 two should lie in a bed, and that the queen should find sheets 
 
54 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 and pay for washing them at \d. the pair. Similar contracts are 
 made at is, in 1573; at 4^. in 1577; at 4^ 3o^. in 1578. 
 These prices represent the highest increases of any, for I find 
 that in 1562 the average price of labour was is, 9^d, the week; 
 in 1563, 45. O^d. ; in 1570, 45. 7d, ; in 1573, 45. ll^c^. ; in 1577 
 45. \9^d , ; and in 1578, 45. %d , ; these average rates of wages, 
 taken from eight different kinds of labour, five artizans and three 
 ordinary or unskilled, being only a very little in excess of the 
 amounts for which Elizabeth contracted in the same years to 
 board her artizans at the docks. 
 
 Elizabeth soon discovered that one of the causes which was 
 impoverishing her people was making her also poor. The rents 
 and dues of the Crown, the subsidies, tenths and fifteenths, all 
 the revenues of the Crown, except, perhaps, customs, were fixed 
 in amount. The purchasing power of the revenue had fallen to 
 about one-third of its ancient capacity, and the Queen strove to 
 meet the difiSculty by declaring that the new currency should run 
 at only two-thirds its nominal value — i, e,, that the shilling should 
 be current at 8d,, and so on. But the proclamation, though 
 drafted, was not issued, probably because the Queen’s advisers 
 feared that the step would be unpopular, and would suggest 
 that the Crown was trying arbitrarily to enhance its right against 
 its debtors. 
 
 The enactment and development of the English poor law, 
 unique among legislative enactments, must be treated in a 
 separate chapter. But I must remind my reader that it by no 
 means follows that population had increased because there was a 
 virtual decline in wages. Low wages may be the concomitant of a 
 scanty population, high wages of an abundant one. Nay, unhap- 
 pily, society may make notable progress in wealth, and wages 
 may remain low, misery may be general, and discontent may be 
 imminent. The mass of English workmen are far better ofif now 
 than they were two generations ago, though population has 
 greatly increased. But relatively speaking, the working man of 
 to-day is not so well oflf as he was in the fifteenth century, when 
 the population was not one-tenth of it what it is now. 
 
CHAPTER HI. 
 
 WAGES OF LABOUR AFTER THE RISE IN PRICES. 
 
 Corn Prices should be Estinlated over a wide Area — Bad Harvests in the 
 Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries — Estimate of a 
 Labourer’s Beal Wages in 1495, 1533, 1563, 1593, 1597, 1610, 1651, 
 1661, 1682, 1684, 1725 — The Consequence of the Assessment of Wages 
 System — the Extension of Conspiracy to Workmen’s Combinations — 
 Principles of a Trade Union— Mr. Mill on Unions — The Artizan from 
 1725 to 1750 — Arthur Young’s Notes on Wages— The Rise from 1750 to 
 1770 — Wages of Manufactures-^he Dear Years from 1780 to 1820 — 
 The Speenhamland Act of Parliajnent — Tooke on Prices, from 1800 to 
 1815 — The Rise in 1853 — Concluding Remarks on Trade Unions. 
 
 O N examination of the rise which was effected in the price 
 of all articles of consumption during the last sixty years 
 of the sixteenth century enables us to see clearly what was now 
 become the condition of those who lived by wages. If we look 
 at the money value of most articles, we shall see that, with very 
 few exceptions, it keeps steadily increasing during each successive 
 decade. This is not, it is true, precisely the fact with regard 
 to wheat and other kinds of grain, for the money value of this 
 produce is affected in each decade by the occasion of years of 
 special scarcity and plenty. Hence in the case of wheat or 
 similar kinds of grain, it becomes necessary, if we would exactly 
 interpret the change which had come over money values, to take 
 a longer period, during which cheap and dear years neutralize each 
 other. But the course of the seasons during the period which 
 intervenes before prices have reached their true level and go on 
 steadily rising, on the whole, for half a century, is striking and 
 exceptional. 
 
 The issues of base money put into circulation by Henry were 
 in the years 1545 and 1546. Those of Edward’s guardians were 
 in 1549 and 1551. In 1560 the currency "was restored. Tt is 
 
56 
 
 Work and Wages 
 
 important to remember these dates in estimating prices, and the 
 immediate effect of the issue on them. There must have been, 
 I conclude, some general impression at first that these moneys 
 would be redeemed, and, under these circumstances, it appears 
 that they did not produce the immediate effect which such a 
 proceeding invariably does sooner or later. Now the harvest of 
 1545 must have been a very bad one, for the price of wheat was 
 higher than it had been in any year since 1316, the great famine 
 of Edward the Second^s reign, though it was soon to be sur- 
 passed. But for the next three years wheat is decidedly cheap ; 
 in 1547 very cheap, the price being lower than it had been since 
 1510. Then follow three dear years and two comparatively cheap 
 ones, Mary Tudor having come to the throne in the last year. 
 Then follow three dear years, the third being dearer than in all 
 previous experience, wheat being nearly five times the average 
 price for the 280 years, 1261-1540, and standing, during the 
 spring, at a price which must have indicated the worst anticipations 
 of famine. In the next two years it is cheap again, a cheap year 
 being now about double the old price. The years 1563 and 1573 
 are also dear. After the latter year, the ordinary price becomes 
 about three times the old rate. The next dear year is 1586, when 
 the price again goes beyond previous experience. But the harvest 
 of 1588, the Armada year, was very abundant. Five years 
 successively, 1594-98, are very dear, the last but one, 1597, being 
 a veritable famine, the price being ten times what it was in the 
 early period and not being paralleled till 1648 and 1649. By 
 this time, however, the average price had reached from five to 
 seven times that at which it had previously stood for more than 
 two centuries and a half. The price of wheat in 1649 was 
 reached again in 1674, in 1661-2, in 1709, and 1710, and not 
 again till 1767, 1774, and 1795. 
 
 Now up to the year 1540, the average wages of an artizan in 
 the country were 3^. a week ; of a labourer in husbandry, work- 
 ing by the day, 2^. a week. Such wages, in some cases rather 
 more, are allowed by 11 Hen. YII., cap. 22 (1495), to which I 
 shall presently refer. The labourer in harvest time, when work- 
 ing by the day, received the same wages as the artizan ; and, in 
 harvest time, the wages of the women labourers were only a little 
 
AJter the Rise of Prices. 
 
 57 
 
 less than those of men. It should be remembered that this Act 
 of Henry VII. is one which was intended to carry out the Statute 
 of Labourers, and that therefore the minimum rate would be pre- 
 scribed and, as far as possible, enforced. The price of wheat in 
 1495 was 45. 0|c^. ; of malt, 25. of oats, I5. and of 
 
 oatmeal, 6s. Ad. a quarter. An artizan, therefore, earned nearly 
 a bushel of wheat by a day’s labour, and an ordinary labourer 
 three-quarters of a bushel. A week’s work would enable an 
 artizan to purchase more than a quarter of malt, and a little more 
 than seven days’ work would supply the farm labourer with a 
 quarter of malt. In so cheap a year as this, the peasant could 
 provision his family for a twelvemonth with three quarters of 
 wheat, three of malt, and two of oatmeal, by fifteen weeks of 
 ordinary work ; an artizan could achieve the same result in ten 
 weeks. Such wages were regularly paid, and even more, par- 
 ticularly in London. 
 
 In 1533, a large proportion of Henry’s artizans got 45. a week 
 even during the winter months, the labourers earning, as before, 
 2s. In 1533, the price of wheat was, relatively speaking, high, 
 7s. 8d. a quarter, while malt was 55. 5|c?., oatmeal 85., and oats 
 25. 9 2 d. the quarter. In this case, then, the farm labourer 
 would have had to give nearly double the labour in wheat and 
 oats, and more than double in the case of malt, though a good 
 deal less than double in that of oatmeal, to make such a provision 
 as his ancestor did in 1459 ; while the artisan at 35., would have 
 had to give between fourteen and fifteen weeks’ work for a 
 similar store. The first-named year is an exceedingly cheap one ; 
 the latter, though less advantageous to the labourer, is one in 
 which he might still be able, as we see, to maintain his family, 
 and lay by a considerable margin from the charges of his house 
 hold, from a fourth to a half of his earnings. 
 
 In June 1564, the Hutlandshire magistrates met in order to 
 carry out the provisions of the Act to which I have several times 
 referred, and which had just been passed. The schedule of wages 
 to which I am about to refer is printed by the royal authority 
 among the proclamations of the Queen, and is preserved in the 
 great collection of Elizabeth’s instruments which was begun by 
 Burleigh and continued by Cecil. It is without doubt a typica 
 
58 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 list, intended by the fact of the publication to be a guide to the 
 other Quarter Sessions throughout the country. The list is 
 drawn up on consideration of the great prices of linen, woollen, 
 leather, corn, and other victuals.^^ The ordinary artizan is to 
 have 9c?. a day in summer, 8c^. in winter ; the heads of the craft, 
 who are to be competent draughtsmen of plans, to have Is. The 
 labourers are to have Id, in summer, except in harvest time, when 
 they have 8o?. to 10c?., and in winter 6c?. The summer is from 
 Easter to Michaelmas, the winter from Michaelmas to Easter. 
 In 1563-4, wheat was'19s. 9|c?. a quarter; oats, 7s., malt, 10s. 8c?. 
 The price of oatmeal has not been found, but it could not have 
 been less than 25s. the quarter. The Rutlandshire schedule is 
 a little lower than the prices actually paid in Cambridge and 
 Oxford, as far as regards artizans’ labour, for the artizan is paid, 
 as a rule, not less than Is. or 10c?. a day. The wages of ordinary 
 labour are those of the magistrates^ schedule. Now the price 
 of food is more than three times the old average, though malt, 
 as we might expect, when wheat was at a scarcity price, is less 
 than the corresponding price, being actually cheaper than barley. 
 Now if we suppose the ordinary labourer to get 3s. 6c?. a week 
 through the year, by adding his harvest allowance to his winter 
 wages, it would have taken him more than forty weeks to earn 
 the provisions which in 1495 he could have got with fifteen, 
 while the artizan would be obliged to have given thirty-two weeks’ 
 work for the same result. 
 
 In 1593, the magistrates of the East Riding of York met on 
 April 26th, and fixed the wages of artizans and labourers in 
 husbandry. The mower is to have 10c?., the reaper 8c?. a day, 
 or by the acre 10c?. for meadow and 8c?. for corn, it being clear 
 that a man was supposed to mow an acre of corn or grass in a 
 day. The winter wages of labourers are to be 4c?., in summer 5c?. 
 Ordinary artizans are to have 8c?. and 7c?. The price of wheat 
 in 1593 is 18^. 4|c?. ; of oatmeal, 29^. 4c?.; of malt, 12s. 3|c?. 
 The work of a whole year would not supply the labourer with the 
 quantity which in 1495 the labourer earned with fifteen weeks’ 
 labour. The artizan could procure it with forty weeks’ labour. 
 
 In the same year, the mayor and others in the city of Chester 
 fixed the wages of artizans and labourers who dwelt within their 
 
After the Rise of Prices, 
 
 59 
 
 jurisdiction. The roll is unfortunately mutilated, and the day 
 payments of artizan and labourer, without meat and drink, are 
 torn off. But it is clear that the workmen here are even worse 
 paid than in the East Biding, — that the wages of artizans were 
 not more than 6<i., those of labourers than 4c?., and that there 
 was actually no rise here from the older prices. 
 
 The year 1597 was one of fearful famine. The price of wheat 
 was 505. 10|c?. ; of oats, 135. 9^c?. (I do not find that of oatmeal, 
 but it appears to have been 645.); malt, 285. 9|c?. It is said by 
 the Mayor of Chester in his assessment to be a time of dearth 
 and scarcity. The schedule is again unluckily mutilated ; but the 
 extra allowance for the dearness of this year, the price being 
 generally almost three times that of the year 1593, is only IO 5 , 
 more for wages by the year without food than in the earlier 
 year. The wages of artizans are from £5 IO 5 . the year to- 
 <£4 IO 5 . ; those of husbandmen, £3 IO 5 . It is not easy to see 
 how they could have lived through the famine. 
 
 In 1610, the Rutland magistrates met at Oakham on April 
 28th, and made their assessment. The day wages of a mower 
 are 10c?. ; of a reaper, 8c?., if a man; if a woman 6c?., of ordinary 
 labour from Easter to Michaelmas, 7c?. ; from Michaelmas to 
 Easter, 6c?. Artizans are to have from 10c?. to 9c?. in the summer, 
 8c?. in the winter. Master artizans, with skill as draughtsmen, 
 are to receive I 5 . a day in summer, 10c?. in winter; and it appears 
 from the register of hirings that these rates were maintained till 
 at least 1634. The price of wheat in this year was 405. 4c?., of malt 
 155. 4^c? ; and it therefore appears that a Rutland artizan with 
 9c?. a day wages, supposing oatmeal were worth, as its natural 
 price should be, about 435. 4c?. a quarter, would have to work 
 forty-three weeks in order to earn that which an artizan in 1495 
 obtained with ten weeks’ labour ; while the wages of the peasant, 
 who got this supply by fifteen weeks’ labour 115 years before, 
 would be insufficient, even if he worked for fifty-two weeks in 
 the year, and every day except Sunday, by 245. 9|c?., to win that 
 quantity of provisions. Even the extra payments in harvest 
 would not make up the deficiency. 
 
 In 1651, the Essex magistrates met at Chelmsford on April 
 8th, and fixed the wages for the county. Wages had now risen. 
 
6o 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 The artizan had from \s. 5d, a day in summer and I 5 . 2d, in 
 winter to Is, 6d, and Is, 4:d,, the latter prices being paid as usual 
 to foremen or heads of gangs. Ordinary labourers had from Is, 2d, 
 to Is, except in harvest time, when mowing was paid at I 5 . 6d., 
 reaping at Is, lOd, the day. Women in the harvest field had 
 1^. 2d, ; in the hay-field lOd, Piece-work is paid at Is, 8d, an 
 acre for mowing, 2s, for making and cocking. The reaping of 
 wheat, rye, beans, and maslyn is 3^. 4d, ; of barley and oats, 
 2s, 6d,, this including binding and shocking. Mowing and binding 
 barley and oats is 2^. 2d, Threshing and winnowing are, for 
 the quarter of wheat and rye. Is. lOc^. ; barley, oats, and other 
 kinds of grain, lOd, Sawing planks is paid at 2^. 6d, the 
 bundred of six-score feet. The advent of the Commonwealth 
 had induced some beneficial change on the workman’s labour, 
 £it least in appearance. In 1651, the price of wheat w^as 51^. 4d, ; 
 of malt, 22^. 7d. ; oats were dearer than malt, being 235. lOc?. ; 
 and oatmeal was from 645. to 485. the quarter. The artizan on 
 an average could earn from 7s, 9d, to 85. 6d, a week ; ordinary 
 workmen an average of 65. 9d,, excepting hay and harvest time, 
 when they could get from 9s, to 11 5 . a week; and the women 
 reapers, 75. Piece-work in the harvest field is calculated at a 
 little less than an acre of grass a day, and a little more than half 
 an acre of grain if the reaper bound and stacked the sheaves. 
 The sawing a hundred of planks, always estimated from early 
 times as a day’s work, is paid at the rate of 155. a week between 
 the two workmen, the upper and under sawyers being estimated 
 at the rate of 85. to 7s, 
 
 The cost of the stock of wheat, malt, and oatmeal is now in 
 the aggregate .£16 135. 9d, If the artizan worked fifty-two 
 w^eeks in the year, he could earn <£20 35. ; and therefore it would 
 still take him about forty-three weeks to earn his stock of pro- 
 visions. The peasant, however, apart from his harvest earnings, 
 oould, with the same unbroken and continuous diligence, earn 
 £17 II 5 . ; and perhaps the sum could be made up to £18 by his 
 •extra wages in the hay and corn field. He is therefore distinctly 
 better off than he was forty years before, at least in Essex. 
 
 The rate paid for mowing grass by the acre is a little in excess 
 of that paid at Oxford in the latter part of the sixteenth century. 
 
After the Rise of Prices, 
 
 6i 
 
 where the price is I 5 . 3^d. for mowing, Is. l\d. for making and 
 cocking. But during this period, the average price of wheat was 
 145. 2|(i. ; of malt, IO 5 . 5(i. ; of oatmeal, 2 O 5 . 10|c^. To such 
 rates of wages the corresponding price of wheat should be I 85 . ; 
 of malt, 135. 2|c?. ; of oatmeal, 265. in order to equalize the 
 real wages of mowing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 and a similar proportionate increase for the labour of tedding and 
 cocking. The price of threshing is relatively high, being about 
 four times the rate which prevailed in the period before the rise 
 in prices began. The same difference characterises the prices 
 given for reaping, binding, and stacking an acre of wheat ; but 
 the rate paid for cutting barley and oats is less. Already much 
 of the two latter kinds of grain is mown. On the whole, then, 
 though the wages of labour in 1651 are infinitely below what 
 they were in the old times, and contrast unfavourably even with 
 the rates paid immediately after the passing of Elizabeth’s Quarter 
 Sessions Act, they represent better rates than those which were 
 prescribed under the same machinery forty years before, and as 
 we see actually paid, as is proved by the register of hirings. 
 
 At the Easter Sessions of 1661, the Essex magistrates again 
 revised the wages of labourers. The summer wages are still 
 I 5 . 2c^., the winter I 5 . a day. The woman gets lOd . ; mowing is 
 I 5 . 6c?., whether it be grass or corn; reaping by men, I 5 . 10c?. ; 
 by women, I 5 . 2c?. Mowing grass is raised to I 5 . 10c?. ; reaping 
 wheat, rye, and maslyn is 45. ; oats, 25. 6c?. ; beans, 35. 6c?. ; 
 mowing barley and oats by the acre is I 5 . 6c?., the price of 
 threshing and winnowing being unchanged. But in 1661 the 
 price of wheat is 705. 6c?. a quarter; of malt, 345. 6c?. The pur- 
 chasing power of wages is, therefore, considerably reduced. 
 
 In Suffolk, 1682, the magistrates at Bury St. Edmund’s fixed 
 the day wages of haymakers — men at 10c?., women at 6c?. ; of 
 male reapers in harvest at I 5 . 8c?., of women at I 5 . ; and the 
 regular wages at I 5 . in summer and 10c?. in winter. The wages 
 of artizans are not given, but from other sources we may learn 
 that they were from I 5 . 6c?. to I 5 . 4c?. In 1682, the price of 
 wheat was 435. 8c?.; of malt, 265. 8c?.; and the natural price of 
 oatmeal, about 485. Either the wages were reduced as corn became 
 cheaper, or the price of labour was ordinarily lower in Suffolk 
 
62 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 than it was in Essex. We shall see reason to arrive at the 
 former conclusion. 
 
 On April 9 th, 1684, the magistrates of Warwick met at the 
 county town and assessed the wages for the year under the Act 
 of Elizabeth. The assessment is said to have special regard and 
 consideration to the prices at this time of victuals and apparel. 
 The price of wheat was 42^. a quarter ; of malt, 24§. \ 
 
 and the analogous price of oatmeal, 4 65 . 
 
 The artizans^ wages are here I 5 . a day, with the exception of 
 the free mason, who has Is, 4:d,, the only man of the class who 
 gets this rate. The plasterer is to have only Sd, ; common 
 labourers, except in harvest time, are to have Sd, ; the mower of 
 grass and corn. Is, ; the reaper. Is, ; while the haymaker, if a 
 man, has only Sd., the women 4:d,, and the woman reaper Sd, 
 These are summer wages ; the winter pay is a penny a day less. 
 The hours of labour are defined between March and September 
 to be from five in the morning till between seven and eight at 
 night, i,e.y fourteen-and-a-half hours, from which two-and-a-half 
 hours are to be allowed for meals. Of these half an hour is 
 given for breakfast, an hour for dinner, an hour for “ drinkings,*^ 
 and between the middle of May and the middle of August, half 
 an hour for sleep. From the middle of September till the middle 
 of March he is to work from daybreak till night, and is to forfeit 
 a penny an hour, that is at the rate of 50 per cent, above his 
 earnings, for absence. Persons who give more wages than the 
 pi escribed assessment are to be imprisoned ten days and be fined 
 <£5 ; persons taking more than the assessment are to be imprisoned 
 twenty-one days ; and any retainer, promise, gift, or payment of 
 wages in contravention is to be void and of no effect. The 
 document is signed by eight magistrates, among whom we find 
 the names of Mordaunt, Clopton, and Fielding, the last at this 
 time knowing, it seems, how to spell his name. 
 
 The wages fixed by these Warwickshire magistrates are decidedly 
 less than those allowed in Essex thirty-three years before. It is 
 fair to them to state that the Lady-clay prices of wheat and malt 
 were lower than those which pievailed for the real hiring time 
 (that from some date after Lady -day to a similar period in the 
 following year), for wheat was 34^. Ad,, barley 22^. 7d, a quarter 
 
After the Rise of Prices, 
 
 63 
 
 on Lady-day 1684, when the justices met. It should also be 
 remembered that these daily payments were for regular, not for 
 occasional service, and that the master was as much bound to pay 
 his man as the man was to stay in the service of his master 
 during the term of his engagement. It is to this practice that 
 we must ascribe, in part at least, the higher wages of harvest 
 time, and, occasionally, of piece work. 
 
 If we take the allowances of wheat, malt, and oatmeal employed 
 for our calculations before, and fix that of oatmeal hypothetically 
 at a low amount, say 4 65. 6(i. a quarter, we shall find that the 
 cost of the stock of provisions in this year amounted to 
 .£14 11 5. 6cZ., that the yearly wages of the artizan are <£15 13s., 
 and those of the farm labourer, exclusive of his earnings in the 
 hay and corn fields, are £10 8s, 8d., i.e., insufficient in their aggre- 
 gate, whatever addition may be made for harvest work, to pur- 
 chase the stock which his ancestor was able to procure on such 
 easy terms. I have always, throughout these investigations into 
 the labourers^ wages, taken his earnings only, without allowing 
 for what his wife or his children might earn for him, and, in the 
 case of an artizan, perhaps his apprentices. But in a contrast 
 I established between money values and payments at different 
 epochs, it is above all things important to take the simplest 
 elements of calculation and comparison. I am not discussing 
 what might have been the aggregate earnings of a family, but 
 what were the resources on which an individual labourer could 
 rely for procuring the means of life for a family, when those 
 means of life were confined to what, according to the fashions 
 of the age, were the simplest materials of customary existence. 
 
 The magistrates of Lancashire met at Manchester on May 
 j22nd, 1725, when certain “ discreet and grave men of the county, 
 having held conference respecting the plenty of the time and 
 other necessary circumstances” (words costing nothing in a pre- 
 amble, and, it is to be hoped, deceiving no one), determined on 
 certain rates of wages for the county, and issued them, under the 
 xiuthority of George and Thomas Cheetham. 
 
 ^ The best husbandry labourer is to receive, from March to 
 1 September, I5. a day; ordinary ones, lOcZ. ; and during the other 
 1 iiix months the payment is to be IQd, and 9cZ. Haymakers are 
 
64 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 to have — men, lOd. a day, women Id. ] mowers. Is. 3d. ; shearers, 
 i.e.j reapers — Is. men, and 10<i. women; taskwork in husbandry 
 being IQd. a day. All artizans are to receive a maximum of Is. a 
 day, and a pair of sawyers, 2s. It may be observed that the 
 maintenance of labourers is generally put at 3s. a week. Piece- 
 work is paid by a double kind of acre, one said to be seven yards 
 to the rood, the other eight yards. For oats, the payments are 
 bs. for the former, 6s. for the latter ; in barley, peas, and beans, 
 the quantities paid are 65. and 7s . ; for wheat and rye (a proof by 
 the way that wheat was cultivated in Lancashire in the eighteenth 
 century), 7s. and 85. Threshing and winnowing oats are paid at 
 Is. Si quarter ; barley, beans, and peas at Is. 6d. ; wheat and rye 
 at 2^. It is interesting to note that colliers were paid Is. a ton 
 for getting coal in a low delf, 1^. 3d. for the same labour in a high 
 one. The master workman in the various handicrafts is to have 
 Is. 2d. a day, except the tailor, who is to be content with 1^. 
 The plenty of the time is not very conspicuous in 1725, as the 
 price of corn is higher than it had been since 1713, being 405. \d. 
 for wheat, 24^. for malt. Oatmeal should be 54^. 
 
 If one can arrive at a judgment from the language of the Lan- 
 cashire magistrates’ proclamation, these authorities appear to bo 
 alarmed at symptoms of combination and disaffection among the 
 workmen. They order that these wages should not be exceeded 
 in the county, though they think that they are a little too liberal 
 for the northern part thereof, but they direct, that they should bo 
 proclaimed in every market town of the county by the authority 
 of the sheriff, and that on market days, when business is at its. 
 height, proclamation should be solemnly made, and a legible copy 
 should be set up and fixed in some open public place in each of tho 
 market towns, and that the rates decided on should be continued 
 till an amended list be proclaimed. The justices then proceed to- 
 publish the penalties which are denounced by divers Acts of Par- 
 liament on offenders under the several statutes which are made^ 
 to regulate the wages of labour. 
 
 They cite a statute of Edward YI., 2 and 3, cap. 15, under 
 which a combination of workmen “ concerning their work or 
 wages ” is to be followed by a penalty on conviction of ten pounds,, 
 or twenty days’ imprisonment on bread and water for the first 
 
After the Rise of Prices. 
 
 65 
 
 offence, a fine of twenty pounds or the pillory for the second, and 
 a fine of forty pounds, the pillory, the loss of one of his ears, and 
 judicial infamy for the third. This statute was confirmed by 
 22-23 Charles II., and was in force till the general repeal of all 
 such prohibitions on the combinations of workmen which took 
 effect under 6 George lY., cap. 129. The rest of the warnings 
 are those derived from the statute of Elizabeth, and recited by 
 the Warwickshire magistrates in 1684. 
 
 The best servants in husbandry, who must have been of a very 
 exceptional character, are to receive \s. a day for six months, and 
 \0d. for the other six months, i.e., taking every working day into 
 the pay-days, Is. a year. The ordinary peasant is to receive 
 =£12 7^. IQd. These persons, however, might increase their wages 
 by harvest work, and probably did, so as to raise the total to £15 
 and £13. Artizans are to be paid at the rate of £15 13s. a year, 
 if they are at work during the whole year. Now taking the test 
 which has been supplied so many times, and putting oatmeal (for 
 which I have not at present a price, but shall probably be not far 
 wrong Jn my estimate) at 54^. a quarter, the aggregate sum is 
 £16 2s. 3d.f and as I repeat for the last time, what a husbandman 
 earned with fifteen weeks' work, and an artizan with ten weeks' 
 work in 1495, a whole year's labour would not supply artizan or 
 labourer with in the year 1725, throughout Lancashire. 
 
 I have protested before against that complacent optimism 
 which concludes, because the health of the upper classes has been 
 greatly improved, because that of the working classes has been 
 bettered, and appliances, unknown before, have become familiar 
 and cheap, that therefore the country in which these improve- 
 ments have been effected must be considered to have made, for all 
 its people, regular and continuous progress. I contend that from 
 1563 to 1824, a conspiracy, concocted by the law and carried out 
 by parties interested in its success, was entered into, to cheat the 
 I English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive 
 ! him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty. In 
 j a subsequent chapter I shall dwell on the palliatives which were 
 I adopted in order to mitigate the Avorst and most intolerable bur- 
 ! dens of his life — palliatives which were rendered necessary by no 
 fault of his, but by the deliberate malignity of Governments and 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 Parliaments. For more than two centuries and a half, the 
 English law, and those who administered the law, were engaged 
 in grinding the English workman down to the lowest pittance, 
 in stamping out every expression or act which indicated any 
 organised discontent, and in multiplying penalties upon him when 
 he thought of his natural rights. I am not deceived by the 
 hypocrisy which the preamble of an Act of Parliament habitually 
 contains, and the assertions which are as habitually contradicted 
 by the details of the measure. The Act of Elizabeth declares that 
 “ the wages of labourers are too small, and not answerable to 
 these times ; and speaks of the grief and burden of the poor 
 labourer and hired man,” and thereupon enacts a law which 
 effectually makes the wages small and multiplies the labourers’ 
 grief and burden, by allowing those who are interested in keeping 
 him poor to fix the wages on which he shall subsist, and to exact 
 a testimonial from his past employers and the overseers or church- 
 wardens when he quitted a service, which he had to show before 
 he entered another. 
 
 By construction of law, the offence of conspiracy (which was 
 originally a combination for the purpose of bringing false evidence 
 against others, or for the purpose of subsequently committing a 
 crime) ; was extended to those associations of workmen, whose 
 purpose it was to raise the rate of wages by such a combination, 
 for the whole basis of the practice on the subject appears to 
 be inferential from the statute of Edward YI., under which 
 penalties are inflicted on those who combine not to do work, 
 except at a certain price and for a certain time, and for implied 
 vi(^ations of the 18th, 19th, and 20th clauses of the Act of 
 Elizabeth, which must be forced in order to bear such a 
 construction. But at the conclusion of the eighteenth century an 
 Act of Parliment was carried, which declares all contracts, except 
 between master and man, for obtaining advances of wages, 
 altering the usual time of working, decreasing the quantity of 
 work, and the like, illegal. Workmen who enter into such illegal 
 combinations are punishable by imprisonment, and a similar 
 punishment is inflicted on those who enter into combinations to 
 procure an advance of wages, or seek to prevent other workmen 
 from hiring themselves, or procuring them to quit their em- 
 
After the Rise in Prices. 
 
 67 
 
 ployment. Meetings and combinations for effecting such purposes 
 are punishable in like manner, and offenders who inform against 
 their associates are to be indemnified. This Act, it may be 
 remembered, was passed when wheat was at famine prices, 
 ranging from IOO 5 . to 150^. a quarter, and the magistrates were 
 beginning to confess the atrocious cruelty of the Quarter Sessions 
 assessment of wages by adopting that system of Poor Law allow- 
 ances which I shall comment on hereafter. 
 
 The imaginary offence which employers and lawyers invented 
 for the purpose of keeping wages low is on a par with the crime 
 of witchcraft. That no end, however excellent in itself, should 
 be, indeed can be, aided by violence, is a commonplace in the law 
 of all civilization. It is equally true that the pretence to a 
 supernatural power of working mischief on others by a mysterious 
 process which its victim cannot foresee, resist, or escape, is an 
 offence against even a more rudimentary civilization. But the 
 ordinary forces of law and police ought to be, and under a proper 
 administration always are, sufficient against ruffians and cheats, 
 though the phenomena of ruffianism and knavery ought to direct 
 the attention of government to their causes, and to guide legisla- 
 tures to preventive remedies. 
 
 A trade union conducted on legal and peaceful principles, by 
 which I mean moral forces only, and with an entire abstention 
 from violence, both in its inception and its administration, does 
 not economically differ from any other joint stock partnership. 
 When a number of persons combine their capitals, their energies, 
 and their experiences in constituting a commercial undertaking, 
 when they carry it on with integrity, and gain all the advantagi©, 
 they can by interpreting demand and regulating supply, so as to 
 secure the greatest possible profit to themselves, the business is 
 welcomed as legitimate, and the managers and agents of it are ap- 
 plauded. If the undertaking is greatly successful, the promoters 
 of it are styled merchant princes, pioneers of industry, creators of 
 public wealth, benefactors of their country, and guarantors of its 
 progress. They are presumed to be peculiarly fit for offices and 
 titles of honour, to merit places in Parliament, occasionally to be 
 even qualified to transmit hereditary fortune, rank, and authority. 
 Examine into the process by which individual or joint stock wealth 
 
68 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 is created, and you will always find that it has been developed 
 from the practice of buying or producing judiciously, and by 
 selling at as high a price as the market will consent to give. 
 There is, indeed, no other process by which wealth can be 
 accumulated or capital increased. The phrase may be varied as 
 one wills, but it always means the same thing, that profits can be 
 obtained only by selling at a better price than one has bought or 
 made, whatever one may have obtained and is bringing into the 
 market. 
 
 Now this is precisely what a trade union, or labour partner- 
 ship as I prefer to call it, does for that which workmen possess, — 
 their labour. They have something to sell in their strength and 
 their skill. Like the capitalist, they wish to sell their property 
 to the best advantage, that is, at a charge which will leave them 
 something above, as much as possible above, the cost at which 
 they are put in keeping themselves in an effective condition for 
 their labour, and which exactly corresponds to the cost of 
 production in the case of the manufacturer, and to the cost 
 of acquisition in the case of the merchant or trader. They also 
 know perfectly well that if they are constrained to sell their 
 labour to the first comer or at a moment’s notice, they sell at a 
 disadvantage, and they are as much in their right in withholding 
 their goods from the market till they can get their price, or, in 
 other words, in refusing to work till they get satisfactory wages, 
 as a shop-keeper is who will not sell his goods except at his price, 
 or a manufacturer who will not bring his produce to market 
 unless he gets his profit. In one particular, indeed, they are 
 worse off than merchant and manufacturer. The goods in which 
 they deal are very costly to keep, and therefore they have to be 
 very circumspect in refusing to sell, because to withhold from the 
 market is in their case a serious loss. In order to make this loss as 
 light as possible, though at the best it is exceedingly heavy, they 
 require to adopt the joint stock principle of mutual insurance 
 against the loss of keeping their goods from the market, and on 
 the widest possible scale. They seek to enlist the largest pos- 
 sible number of workmen in their association, to include all in 
 the same trade if they can, to include all in a corporation of 
 trades in the end, so that they may be able to strengthen, as far 
 
After the Rise in Prices, 
 
 69 
 
 as possible, the exceptional weakness of their position. Kow to 
 do this successfully they should develop the most important of 
 the social virtues. They should have consideration for the 
 rights of others, in their own fellowship necessarily ; in that of 
 others, that they may not destroy the common agency by the 
 harmony of which they can procure the greatest advantage : 
 patience, and forbearance : shrewd foresight as to the condition, 
 present and future, of the craft by which they live ; and 
 intelligence in proving that the machinery which they employ 
 is for the common benefit of all, workmen, producers, and con- 
 sumers alike. If they take their measures rightly, they can 
 demonstrate all this. I confess that T look forward to the 
 international union of labour partnerships as the best prospect the 
 world has of coercing those hateful instincts of governments, all 
 alike irresponsible and indifferent, by which nations are per- 
 petually armed against each other, to the infinite detriment, loss, 
 and demoralization of all. 
 
 Mr. Mill, misled by two positions which he takes to be 
 fundamental, but both of which are equally baseless; the first 
 that the amount payable in wages is a fixed and inelastic 
 quantity ; the second, that an increase of wages must necessarily 
 be effected at the cost of the employer or consumer, or both ; has 
 entirely ignored trade unions in his estimate of the popular 
 remedies for low wages, and speaks doubtfully or slightingly 
 about the machinery of trade unions in bettering labour generally, 
 though he does, as might be expected, condemn in becoming 
 terms the spirit which dictated the Statute of Labourers. But 
 in point of fact, if trade unions do or can raise wages, they may 
 do so to the ultimate benefit of producers and consumers. It is 
 very possible, late experience proves it to be a fact, that 
 aggregate profits may be abnormally high and individual profits 
 small, owing to the competition of capitalists in the same 
 employment, and a tacit or avowed understanding that com- 
 petition shall be directed not to selling cheaply, but to getting 
 custom. How if the operation of a trade union takes the 
 form of reducing the number of competing capitalists or traders, 
 the workmen may be better off, the survivors of the reduction 
 better off, and the consumers better off, too. There is an 
 
70 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 unproductive consumption of a marked character in the presence 
 of a number of persons engaged in the same calling who cannot 
 all live well by the calling, but who do contrive in the scramble 
 to load the charge of the goods produced by their presence and 
 their profits. Men are beginning to find out that persons who 
 were once conceived to be a beneficial class, the intermediaries of 
 trade and production, are engaged in destroying profits to an 
 infinitely greater extent than higher wages do ; that they have 
 become customary in many callings, do mischief instead of service, 
 are parasites, and not, in any sense, producers. There is, of 
 course, a fixed quantity of merchantable wealth produced in any 
 given time. It may be distributed among an excessive number 
 of persons, many of whom are useless, many of whom, though in 
 their degree serviceable, could be spared, and by the excision of 
 both, profits and wages might be greatly enhanced for those who 
 are essential to the operation, and the public be, after all, 
 considerably benefited. 
 
 I do not defend the tactics which trade unions have some- 
 times adopted. They have, indeed, the poor excuse that they 
 are imitative of practices which are sanctioned by custom or 
 success in others. A strike, seldom, I believe, successful, though 
 the contingency of it may be, is, to an economist, no way 
 different from a speculative purchase by which the projector 
 hopes to control the market by shortening supply. The violence 
 which has characterized the action of workmen against those who 
 abstain from their policy, compete against them for employment 
 in a crisis, and, as they believe, selfishly profit by a process which 
 they are too mean to assist, but from which they suck no small 
 advantage, is indefensible and suicidal. But it has its parallel in 
 the attitude taken by joint stock companies of trade to interlopers, 
 and in the devices by which traders have over and over again 
 striven to ruin riv.ils who will not abide by trade customs, or 
 even seek to be independent competitors against powerful 
 agencies. I see no difference, beyond the fact that law allows 
 them, between the lattening of a Sheffield saw grinder and the 
 expedients by which, in the Committee-rooms of the House of 
 Commons, railway directors seek to extinguish competitive 
 schemes. Men who have not had the refinements of education 
 
After the Rise in Prices. 
 
 71 
 
 and who are not practised in the arts of polite malignity, may be 
 coarse and rude in the expedients which they adopt, but when 
 the process is essentially the same, when the motive is practically 
 identical, and the result is precisely equal, the manner is of no 
 importance to the analyst of motives and conduct. 
 
 There is but little alteration in the material condition of the 
 artizan and labourer in husbandry up to the end of the second 
 quarter of the eighteenth century. The wages of the former 
 were generally Is. 6d. to 2^. a day, those of the latter Is. to Is. 6d., 
 though they are sometimes more, for the employer seems to 
 have not infrequently disregarded the assessments of quarter 
 sessions. In 1767 and onwards Arthur Young began and con- 
 tinued his tours through rural England, and constantly gives 
 an account of the wages paid in different parts of the country. 
 Thus, in Hertfordshire he reckons that the amount of a labourer’s 
 annual earnings is .£18, of which his board, washing, and lodging 
 amount to .£12. This amounts to a little less than 7s. a 
 week. In Northamptonshire it is .£17 a year, and Young 
 notes that day labour in that part of the country used to be only 
 As. a week in winter, or even 3^., and that this was the rule ten 
 years before. At Kettering, he tells us that labour has risen by 
 one-third during the twenty years preceding his visit. In 
 Derbyshire, he tells us that the price of labour (the annual 
 earnings are set at XI 7) has increased 50 per cent, during the 
 last twenty years ; in Yorkshire, a fourth within the same period. 
 
 In the fourth volume of his Eastern Tour ” he sets down the 
 average wages of husbandmen at 7s. 10(i. a week, this quantity 
 being made up by the extra allowances of the hay and corn 
 harvest ; and he notes that in many places the wages had risen 
 50 per cent, within the last twenty years, and taking all places 
 together, 25. This gives X20 3s. Ad. a year on an average. 
 The house rent of the labourer is at an average of X2, his fuel at 
 XI 65. Bread, which he supposes to be wheaten, is \\d. the lb. ; 
 butter, 6|cZ. ; cheese, 3^d . ; meat of all kinds, mutton, beef, pork, ^ 
 and veal, 3^d. Young comments on the equality of the price of 
 bread throughout England as a singular and instructive fact. 
 He also holds that such a rate of wages ought to nearly exclude 
 parish assistance, adding that “ sound and spirited husbandry 
 
72 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 while products bear a fair price, will very well pay a high price of 
 labour, and that thorough good farmers who are alive to their 
 business do not complain of the rates of labour, provided men 
 can be got.” Wages, too, had again become higher in the 
 neighbourhood of London. 
 
 Such a result is to be expected. Unless the rate of wages be 
 artificially lowered, the cheaper products are, the higher wages 
 are, provided, of course, that the cheapness is due to progressive 
 industry. Now this is precisely what occurred about the middle 
 of the eighteenth century. Agriculture made a prodigious start, 
 and though population was evidently increasing with great 
 rapidity, prices fell. Inclosures were general, and still prices 
 fell; a bounty was granted on the exportation of grain, and 
 prices were still declining. Now if prices fall with an increasing 
 population, with a greater breadth of land enclosed and under 
 cultivation, and even under the stimulus of a payment made by 
 the State to such persons as would export grain, the natural 
 inference would be that rents would fall. But, on the contrary, 
 rents rose as prices fell. The value of land, according to Arthur 
 Young, and on this point he was not likely to be deceived, was 
 on an average thirty-three-and-a-half years’ purchase ; and the 
 owner had, at least ordinarily, to do repairs to the homestead and 
 buildings, to run the risk of vacant farms and bankrupt tenants. 
 Now it is impossible that so high a price should be paid for land, 
 unless the purchaser contemplated a prospective advantage in his 
 acquisition, was convinced, in short, that what he expected to get 
 3 per cent, from as an investment to-day he could get a constantly 
 increasing percentage from shortly after he had acquired it. The 
 country was constantly producing more vendible commodities 
 at less cost, and the advantage was shared by the labourer, the 
 farmer, the landowner, and the consumer. And though much that 
 Arthur Young says is crude, and not a little even foolish, as when 
 he ascribes the progress of agriculture to the Corn Laws and the 
 Bounty, much that he says about the necessary, the inevitable, 
 progress of opulence is true. The workman, it is true, got less of 
 the profit than others did — less than the farmer, the landlord, and 
 the general consumer, because his previous margin had been so 
 low, but he did share in the advantage — the advantage of lower 
 
After the Rise m Prices, 
 
 73 
 
 prices and higher wages. In 1768, when Young began his tour, 
 prices to be sure were high, and the cheapness of the preceding 
 forty years was beginning to give way to a series of harvests 
 which were almost famine years ; but it well might have been 
 that these exalted prices were considered exceptional and likely to 
 be reversed, and that at the most they would have afforded an 
 additional impetus to the rise in the value of land. 
 
 In addition to the information which Young gives so copiously 
 about the price of agricultural labour, his tours supply us with 
 the wages paid at various manufactories in different parts of 
 England. The highest are those earned by colliers, which at 
 Newcastle were 15^. a week, and at Wakefield 11 5. The next are 
 those in the iron and cutlery works, which are IO5. at Eotherham, 
 and 13^. ^d. at Sheffield. The next highest paid are the work- 
 men in porcelain at Liverpool, Burslem, and Worcester, who get 
 respectively 8s. \\d., 9^. 6c^., and 05. The average payment for 
 spinning and weaving is 85. Id., the lowest wages out of seven 
 localities being paid at Manchester, for fustians, Is. Id.] the 
 highest at Wakefield, for cloth, IO5. The average wages of women 
 in textile manufactures is 4oS. 2^d. ; of boys, 2s. ll|cZ. ; of girls 
 2s. Id. The earnings, therefore, of the manufacturing population 
 were already, as far as the men are concerned, greater than those 
 of the hind ; and, besides, the former calling gave a more regular 
 and highly paid wage to women and children. The effect of the 
 attraction to manufacturing districts may have been, indeed must 
 have been, injurious to the health and vigour of the people who 
 were drawn into these employments, but the fact of the attraction 
 is plain. Again, the drugget weavers of Braintree earn about 05. ; 
 the woolcombers, \2s. ; the Wilton carpet weavers from IO5. to 
 125. ; the Gloucester pinmakers from IO5. to 15^. ; the woollen 
 manufacturers of Henningham 75. ; the combers from 125. to 
 145.; the steel polishers of Woodstock, from 155. to 425.; the 
 blanket weavers of Witney, from IO5. to 125. The manufacturers 
 of Woodstock, now extinct, were the best paid of any. 
 
 The best paid workmen in textile fabrics were the wool-combers, 
 who earned on an average, wherever they were, about 135. a 
 week ; the lowest the say and calimanco weavers of Lavenham at 
 bs. 2d. The best paid agricultural labourers were thove in Kent 
 
/4 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 and Middlesex, with a weekly payment of 11^. id. The worst are 
 those of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, at 5^. 2|(i. The wages of 
 the manufacturing labourer, says Young, are, on an average, Sd. 
 a week beyond those of agricultural labourers, some of whom, in 
 the West of England, get no more than 6s. and 6s. all the year 
 round. Young, who is an ardent advocate of high rents and high 
 prices, informs us that the rioting which had latterly disturbed 
 England had been invariably got up by those labourers who 
 earned the best wages. He evidently does not see that discontent 
 and disaffection are frequently the outcome of tolerable well-doing, 
 rarely of penury and despair. 
 
 The old days of cheapness and abundance were now over, and 
 dear times succeeded. In 1744 and 1745, when the upward 
 movement of wages commenced, wheat was between 21^. and 22^. 
 the quarter; after 1780, it was rarely below 50,9. ; and towards 
 the end of the century it rose to double that price. It is possible 
 that the deficiency in the English harvests, prices being also ele- 
 vated by the rapid growth of population, and this being due to 
 the growing demand for hands in the factories, and especially for 
 the labour of the young, could not have been supplemented by 
 foreign importation in the generally disturbed state of Europe at 
 the outbreak of the continental war. But even if the supply had 
 been possible, the corn laws were a sufficient discouragement to 
 foreign trade in food. If the foreign producer had known that 
 the English people would buy corn in emergencies, he could not 
 tell when the emergency would arise, and at what time he should 
 make preparation for it. Trade rests upon the anticipation of a 
 market, and the legislation, which makes a market uncertain, 
 adopts the most effectual means for destroying the market 
 altogether. The scarcity which now became chronic for a quarter 
 of a century in England, developed besides that detestable interest 
 in the mind of the farmer and landowner, and keeps it still alive 
 in that of the former, that the best profit which they can hope 
 lies in the calamities, the miseries, the misfortunes, the losses, the 
 impoverishment of their fellow-countrymen. Thanks to the 
 efforts of those who established free trade in food, the farmer and 
 the landlord are now deprived of the pleasure which they once 
 felt when unpropitious seasons raised the price of food in so rapid 
 
After the Rise in Prices, 
 
 75 
 
 and increasing a proportion, that a scanty harvest was bringing 
 enormously increased gain to the agriculturist and the receiver of 
 rents, and their satisfaction is limited to the prospect of interrup- 
 tion between the trade of this country and those regions from 
 which food supplies are derived. 
 
 On May 6th, 1795, a meeting of the Berkshire magistrates was 
 held at Speenhamland, after a public advertisement had been 
 made of the intended meeting, when it was unanimously affirmed 
 that the state of the poor required larger assistance than had been 
 given them generally. The meeting also decided that it was not 
 expedient for the magistrates to grant that assistance by regulat- 
 ing wages according to the Statute of Elizabeth, but that the 
 magistrates should earnestly recommend the farmers and others 
 to increase the pay of their labourers according to the price of 
 provisions. They thereupon put out a scale, in which they calcu 
 lated what should be the wages of workmen, according to the rise 
 or fall in the price of bread, the scale being based on the same 
 principle as the assize of bread. Thus when the gallon loaf should 
 cost I 5 ., they reckoned that the labourer should receive, either by 
 his own earnings or by an allowance from the poor rates, Zs, 
 weekly for himself and Is, 6c?. for each of his family and that wdth 
 the rise of every penny in the loaf, he should receive an additional 
 3d, for himself and Id, for each of his family. An unsuc- 
 cessful attempt was made twice over in the House of Commons to 
 enforce what was called the Speenhamland Act of Parliament by 
 law, and Bills to this effect were introduced in 1795 and 1800 by 
 Mr. Whitbread. 
 
 There had been some rise in the rate of wages at the 
 conclusion of the century. The poor could not have subsisted 
 had not such a rise been effected ; but it bore no proportion to 
 the rise in the necessaries of life. In 1801, Arthur Young 
 calculated that a Suffolk labourer could (at some date which he 
 does not give, but it must have been nearly sixty years before) 
 have bought with 5^. what, in 1801, would have cost him 205. 5c?., 
 and that, therefore, as his wages and parish allowance would at 
 the best have given him only 15^., he was virtually put on little 
 more than half the scale of his earnings in the earlier period. 
 The workmen of the time put out statements as to their condi- 
 
76 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 tion, in which they admitted a slight increase, but showed how 
 inadequate it was when contrasted with their present outgoings. 
 Thus, the journeyman tailors stated that their wages from 1777 to 
 1795 had been 215. 9d. a week, with which they could purchase 
 thirty-six loaves at the average prices, that they had risen to 255. 
 in 1795, and to 275. in 1801, but that they were only able to 
 purchase eighteen-and-a-half loaves with the larger nominal sum. 
 Compositors had secured an advance from 245. to 275. in 1795 j 
 n.nd to 305. in 1801, but were really worse off than they had 
 been. A similar rise had been effected, and with the same 
 •consequences, in the labour of carpenters, bricklayers, and masons. 
 The rise was from 35. a week to I 5 . Qd, and I 5 . But it was 
 proved that the cost of maintaining a household at the beginning 
 of the last quarter of the eighteenth century was, by a comparison 
 of prices, more than trebled at the close of the period. It should 
 be noted also that while prices were so high in England, they were 
 remarkably depressed abroad, but that owing to the outrageous 
 ffscal system in England, the famine in England was contempo- 
 raneous with a foreign glut. Now a free intercourse with other 
 countries would have obviated much mischief and misery on both 
 sides of the Channel. The report as to the state of the home 
 trade is what might be expected. The trade of Birmingham was 
 in a very distressed condition. A large number of workmen were 
 out of employment, and those who got work had the utmost 
 difficulty in subsisting, owing to the exorbitant price of food. The 
 ribbon trade of Coventry was in a most deplorable state, the 
 woollen trade of Yorkshire, if possible, still worse. The seasons 
 had been unpropitious, and the law designedly intensified the 
 scarcity. 
 
 Between 1800 and 1812 the nominal wages of agricultural 
 labourers and artizans were considerably increased, either by 
 actual payments or by parish allowances. Still the rise was not 
 proportionate to the increased cost of living, for dearth had 
 become an institution in the country. But the wages of persons 
 employed in factories were not increased, or very partially, and 
 many people were out of work altogether. In 1785, the poor 
 rate was £2,004,238. In 1802, it was £4,267,965 ; in 1813, it 
 amounted to £8,640.842. At the conclusion of the eisfhteenth 
 
After the Rise in Prices. 
 
 77 
 
 century the rate of agricultural wages was Is. 4cZ. a day. In the 
 year 1810 it was Is. Sd., and it is noteworthy that the carpenter’s 
 wages, generally about 50 per cent, above those of the agri- 
 culturist, did not go above the level of the latter at the time. 
 For as Mr. Tooke (^‘History of Prices,” ii. 71) said in 1837, 
 According to all experience, whether within modern observation 
 or recorded in history, it may be laid down as an established 
 maxim that labour is the last of the objects of exchange to rise in ^ 
 consequence of dearth or depreciation, and that commonly the 
 price of labour is the last to fall in consequence of increased 
 abundance of commodities or of increased value of money.” The 
 condition of labour was considerably bettered after the peace, was 
 greatly benefited by the comparatively low prices which prevailed 
 in the period intervening between the commencement of fiscal 
 reforms and the repeal of the corn laws, and has, speaking 
 generally, made further progress since that time. 
 
 The repeal of the ancient laws against the association of work- 
 men for the purpose of raising their wages, led to the creation of 
 trade unions. In course of time these associations took active 
 steps, and especially in 1853 were successful in several directions. 
 The lightermen on the river, the labourers in the docks, a number 
 of artizans on the south of the river Thames, where there are great 
 and important manufactures, the men employed in the building 
 trades, masons, bricklayers, and carpenters, demanded and obtained 
 an increase of 10 per cent, in their wages, and a considerable 
 shortening in the hours of their labour. This movement has 
 progressed, and at the present time the hours of labour are 
 probably less in England than they are in any country, certainly 
 considerably less than they are in the United States. Uor was 
 this movement confined to artizans. The agricultural labourers, 
 partly owing to their own action, partly to the greater mobiliza- 
 tion of labour, brought about by the construction of the railways, 
 which attracted numerous hands from the rural districts, partly to 
 the easier means of communication, and the intercourse with other 
 markets for labour which the railways opened up, made their 
 demand also for a better remuneration, and generally achieved it. 
 
 It is true that the wages of the farm hand are still low, and, as a 
 consequence, country districts have suffered a great depletion of 
 
78 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 population, and it may be feared have lost their best hands, and, 
 it is possible, the best stock. Emigration also became exceedingly 
 active. Thousands went to the United States and the Colonies, 
 although population, especially in the towns, continually increased, 
 partly because, under better sanitary conditions, the number of 
 births became greater and life was greatly prolonged, partly 
 because there has been a steady inflow to the towns from rural 
 districts, and even from foreign countries. 
 
 Working men have been far more effective in the combinations 
 they have adopted than in the instrument which they have used 
 for enforcing their demands. Strikes have so seldom been suc- 
 cessful that a doubt has been expressed, as to whether the rise 
 in wages, fortunately an accomplished fact, has not been due 
 entirely to demand, and in no case to the combination. But it 
 cannot, I think, be doubted that however little the battle between 
 capital and labour has resulted in the victory of the latter, the 
 contingency of a battle must have frequently averted its occur- 
 rence. The tendency towards the struggle, too, is always when 
 trade is bad and a reduction threatened, ^.e., at a time when the 
 minimum of loss is put on the employer and the maximum 
 on the workmen. But the fullest proof of the real efficacy of 
 trade unions as a means for improving the condition of the 
 labourer and increasing his material benefit lies in the stimulus 
 which they have given to the construction of boards, which should 
 conciliate both parties and arbitrate between them. Many of us 
 can well remember the time when the master repudiated the 
 interference of arbitrators with great warmth, and men looked on 
 the proposal with cold incredulity. But this to a great degree is 
 changed, and though the mechanism of conciliation works still 
 with not a little friction, all persons testify to the infinitely 
 improved tone with which trade disputes are avowed, carried on, 
 and settled. It was not to be expected that persons unused to 
 argument, and inexperienced in the analysis of facts, much more 
 of motives, should not at first be violent when they were angry. 
 The tendency, however, has greatly changed, and, in the opinion 
 of most fair judges, with great rapidity. 
 
 Working men in England have now their future very much 
 in their own hands. They see, I suspect, much more clearly than 
 
After the Rise tn Prices. 
 
 79 
 
 their critics do, what are the limits of their power over capital and 
 prices, — on the former because the profits of capital depend on the 
 sufficiency of the latter; on the latter because they know that 
 they may check or even destroy the market of what is voluntarily 
 purchased, and may rise against themselves and their own order 
 what must necessarily be used or consumed. But the joint action 
 of working men is only in its infancy yet. As association becomes 
 wider and more coalescent, many steps which have not yet been 
 taken will become easy and natural; as, for instance, the main- 
 tenance of a standard of honour and efficiency in work, and the 
 protection of the public against the roguery of producers, of 
 which at present workmen are the silent witnesses, but should not 
 be the willing accomplices. I know nothing which would exalt 
 the reputation and justify the action of trade combinations more 
 than the establishment of a rule, that members of such unions 
 would denounce and expose dishonest and scambling work, and 
 protect those of their order who may suffer ill-usage or wrong- 
 doing for having reported and checked such nefarious practices. - 
 As yet the rules of trade unions are principally confined to the 
 process of bettering the whole class. Hereafter they will, or 
 should, extend towards purifying the class, and making it a 
 potent instrument for the moral and material advancement of 
 all. Other professions exclude, either formally or informally, 
 misbehaving, disreputable, or incompetent persons from their 
 ranks. It cannot be doubted that in time to come artizans and 
 labourers will elaborate those necessary police regulations, by 
 \vhich they will increase the usefulness, elevate the reputation, 
 and cultivate the moral tone of those who ply the craft whose 
 interests they seek to serve, and whose character they ought 
 scrupulously to maintain. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ENGLISH POOR LAW. 
 
 The Intimate Acquaintance of each Man with his Neighbour in the Middle 
 Ages — The Belief of Destitution in Early Times — The Beligious Orders 
 and the Secular Clergy — The Guilds — The Legal Relief of Destitution 
 under Henry YIIL, Edward VI., Mary — The Act 43 Elizabeth — Its 
 Effects on Labour — The Necessary Result of the Act on Rent and 
 Labour — The Defence of Relief — The Land Laws and Pauperism — The 
 History of the Degradation of Labour — Wages and Prices — The Effect 
 of a Rise in Prices on Labour under Various Circumstances — The 
 Struggle against Despotism in the First Half of the Seventeenth 
 Century — The Position of Labour — Rise in Wages during the Civil 
 War — The Enactment of the Law of Parochial Settlement — The 
 Labourer at the Revolution of 1688 — Effects of Parochial Settlement — 
 Political Economy and Pauperism — The Cost of Parochial Settlement — 
 The Allowance System — The Rise of Manufactures — The Abolition of 
 the Combination and Assessment of Wages Law — The New Poor Law — 
 Trade Unions — Co-operation — Benefit Societies. 
 
 T here has always been poverty in human societies when men 
 are settled on the soil, though not, perhaps, more poverty 
 than exists among peoples who are still wanderers, or hunters, 
 or herdsmen. I make no doubt that the ordinary hardships 
 human life in England were greater, and I am sure they were 
 more general, six centuries ago than they are now. Life was 
 briefer, old age came earlier, disease ’was more deadly, the risks 
 of existence were more numerous. The race was smaller, weaker, 
 more stunted. But the extremes of wealth and poverty were, 
 by the fact of these common conditions, less widely separated. 
 Above all things, what is now characteristic of human life, that 
 one-half of the world does not know how the other half lives, a 
 very moderate statement of the fact, was not true of the early 
 ages of English progress. Society was small, and not packed 
 densely. Not only did each man know all about his neighbours^ 
 
The English Poor Law, 
 
 8i 
 
 affidrs, but the whole machinery of gwernment pre-supposed that 
 he did. The ancient jury was not a body of men brought together 
 to interpret the f-elevance of a set of facts which they hear for the 
 first time when they get into the jury-box, but a dozen men who 
 were supposed to know all the facts of the case beforehand, who 
 were held responsible for not knowing them, and still more 
 responsible for not giving a satisfactory verdict on the facts 
 which they knew. 
 
 As the English householder in the middle ages was supposed to 
 know the acts and the character of every man in the neighbour- 
 hood, he was equally well-informed as to each person’s circum- 
 stances. No doubt people hoarded, the more because taxation 
 was on the visible means of the tax-payer ; but it is certain that 
 the periodical visits of the assessor must have brought out the 
 fact of narrow circumstances, poverty, and want very plainly, 
 perhaps over plainly, as destitution was, under certain circum- 
 stances, held to be a virtue, or, at least, the preparation for virtue. 
 I cannot ^ ay that people did not perish from want in very bad times. 
 I am tolerably sure that they did, and in considerable numbers, 
 during the great famines of 1315 and 1316, when all but the 
 very opulent must have been stinted. But fortunately for the 
 English people, as I have frequently stated, their habit, even 
 under the adverse circumstances of their existence and the un- 
 cleanly ways of their life, was always to subsist on abundant 
 provisions of naturally high quality. They ate wheateii bread, 
 di^ank barley beer, and had plenty of cheap, though perhaps coarse, 
 meat. Mutton and beef at a farthing a pound, take what 
 multiple you please, and twelve is a liberal one, were within the 
 reach of far more people than they now are. The grinding, 
 hopeless poverty under which existence may be just continued, 
 but when nothing is won beyond bare existence, did not, I am 
 convinced, characterise or even belong to mediaeval life. That 
 men died from want I can believe, but I do not think that they 
 lived and died by inches, so to speak. There were many means 
 by which occasional distress was relieved. I am not sure that I 
 have been able to collect all the means. 
 
 In the first place, the relief of destitution was the fundamental 
 rehgious duty of mediaeval Christianity, I might have said of 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 Christianity itself. In ancient polities it might be the duty of 
 the state to relieve distress; it was always its prudence, if it 
 cared for security. To get abundant supplies of food for the 
 poorer citizens in one way or the other was the constant anxiety 
 of democratic Athens and of imperial Rome. But from the very 
 first Christianity transferred this duty from the state to the 
 individual, and to the voluntary corporation. The early Church 
 undoubtedly preached patience, but it much more emphatically 
 incalculated the duty of almsgiving. The contribution of the tithe 
 was enforced in order that a third part at least of the proceeds 
 should go to the relief of the deserving poor. In the fifteenth 
 century nothing moves the righteous wrath of Gascoigne more than 
 the teaching of Pecok to the effect that ecclesiastical revenues 
 enjoyed by churchmen can be disposed of according to the discre- 
 tion of the recipient as freely as the proceeds of private property. 
 After heresy, simony, and sorcery, the heaviest charge which 
 could be levelled against a churchman was that of avarice, ancj a 
 covetous priest who hoarded his revenues was lucky if the chatge 
 of avarice was not coupled with those graver vices to which I 
 have referred. We may be certain, too, that the duty which was 
 so generally imposed on them by public opinion — the force bf 
 which is not yet extinct — was inculcated by them on others, in 
 times of plenty, too, food was often given with wages. A wealthy 
 monastery or college would find a place at the servants^ table for 
 the artizans whom they employed without much grudging, aud 
 still more would the poor at the gate not be sent away empty- 
 handed. Where mendicancy was no disgrace, almsgiving was lO^e 
 to be considered the most necessary and the most ordinary of the 
 virtues. 
 
 It has been often said and often denied that the monasteries 
 supplied the want which the poor law, two generations after the 
 dissolution of these bodies, enforced. That the monasteries were 
 renowned for their almsgiving is certain. The duty of aiding the 
 needy was universal. Themselves the creatures, of charity, they 
 could not deny to others that on which they subsisted. But some 
 orders were under special duties. The Hospitallers were bound to 
 relieve casual destitution. Hence, when Waynflete procured the 
 surrender of the house of the Oxford Hospitallers, he bound his 
 
The English Poor Lazo. 
 
 83 
 
 college to the duties which the surrendered house had performed, 
 duties which, it is almost superfluous to say, were speedily evaded. 
 So again the preaching and begging friars were the nurses of the 
 sick, especially of those who laboured under infectious diseases. 
 There were houses where doles of bread and beer were given to all 
 wayfarers, houses where the sick were tended, clothed, and fed, 
 particularly the lepers. There were nunneries, where the nuns 
 were nurses and midwives ; and even now the ruins of these 
 houses contain living record of the ancient practices of their 
 inmates in the rare medicinal herbs which are still found within 
 their precincts. In the universal destruction of these establish- 
 ments, the hardest instruments of Henry’s purposes interceded for 
 the retention of some amongst the most meritorious, useful, and 
 unblemished of them. It is possible that these institutions created 
 the mendicancy which they relieved, but it cannot be doubted 
 that they assisted much which needed their help. 
 
 The guilds which existed in the towns were also found in the 
 countiy villages. They are traceable to the period before the 
 Conquest, and Hickes long ago printed some of the rules under 
 which they were constructed and governed, though these are in 
 the towns of Cambridge and Exeter. Blomefield finds some in 
 the Norfolk villages. Vestiges of their halls remained long in 
 small villages, these halls being devoted to the business and 
 occasional feasts of the society. They were convenient instruments 
 for charity before the establishment of a poor law, and they 
 employed no inconsiderable part of their revenues, collected from 
 subscriptions and from lands and tenements, in relieving the 
 indigent and treating poor strangers hospitably. Blomefield, 
 speaking of their feasts, says: ^^But as the poor of the parish 
 always were partakers with them, I much question whether their 
 revenues were not better spent then than they have been since 
 they were rapaciously seized from the parishes to which they of 
 right belonged.” (Norfolk, hi., 185). The guilds frequently 
 survived the Beformation, though, of course, they had lost their 
 property, and are probably represented in later times by the 
 palish feast. Their property, as I have already said, was finally 
 confiscated by 1 Edward VI., cap. 14, after having been comprised 
 in the last of Henry’s acts of rapine (37 Henry VIII., cap. 4). 
 
84 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 Before the dissolution of the monasteries, but when this issue 
 was fairly in view, in 1536, an attempt was made to secure some 
 legal provision for destitution. The Act of this year provides 
 that the authorities in the cities and boroughs should collect alms 
 on Sundays and holy days, that the ministers should on all 
 occasions, public and private, stir up the people to contribute to a 
 common fund, that the custom of giving doles by private persons 
 should be forbidden under penalty, and that the churchwardens 
 should distribute the alms when collected. The Act, however, is 
 strictly limited to free gifts, and the obligations of monasteries, 
 almshouses, hospitals, and brotherhoods are expressly maintained. 
 
 The Supplication of Beggars puts the contributions given to 
 the begging friars by the people at <£45,333 65 . Sd. annually, 
 supplied by 520,000 households. There was a considerable party 
 in England which was willing enough to see the monasteries 
 destroyed, root and branch, and one of the most obvious means by 
 which -this result could be attained would be to allege that all 
 which could be needed for the relief of destitution would be 
 derived from the voluntary offerings of those who contributed so 
 handsomely to the maintenance of indolent and dissolute friars. 
 The public was reconciled to the Dissolution by the promise made 
 that the monastic estates should not be converted to the king’s 
 private use, but be devoted towards the maintenance of a 
 military force, and that therefore no more demands should be 
 made on the nation for subsidies and aids. Similarly when the 
 guild lands and chantry lands were confiscated at the beginning 
 of Edward’s reign, a promise was made that the estates of these 
 foundations should be devoted to good and proper uses, for erect- 
 ing grammar schools, for the further augmentation of the 
 universities, and the better provision for the poor and needy. 
 They were swept into the hands of Seymour and Somerset, of the 
 Dudleys and Cecils, and the rest of the crew who surrounded the 
 throne of Edward. It cannot therefore, I think, be doubted that 
 this violent change of ownership, apart from any considerations 
 of previous practice in these several institutions, must have 
 aggravated whatever evils already existed. It was idle to expect 
 that they who saw ancient institutions, on which the duty of 
 almsgiving was imposed, not only swept away, but devoted to en- 
 
The English Poor Law. 
 
 85 
 
 tirely different purposes, in which these obligations were utterly 
 neglected, would contribute of their free will to the relief of 
 destitution, even if their resources were as considerable as before. 
 But as I have already stated, there came upon this violent change 
 another and far more formidable calamity, the issue of base money 
 and the total derangement of currency and prices. Foolish people 
 talk of the influx of the new silver. It had not reached England, 
 and did not reach England till a generation after, and then 
 superficially. What England wanted was silver, and the Govern- 
 ment put it out of her power to get it. 
 
 The guardians of Edward attempted, in a savage statute passed 
 in the first year of his reign, to restrain pauperism and vagabond- 
 age by reducing the landless and destitute poor to slavery, by 
 branding them, and making them work in chains. The Act, 
 however, only endured for two years. In the last year of Edward’s 
 reigTL two collectors were to be appointed in every parish, who 
 were to wait on every person of substance and inquire what sums 
 he will give weekly to the relief of the poor. The promises are to 
 be entered in a book, and the collectors were authorized to employ 
 the poor in such work as they could perform, paying them from 
 the fund. Those who refused to aid were to be first exhorted by 
 the ministers and churchwardens, and if they continued obstinate 
 were to be denounced to the bishop, who is to remonstrate with 
 such uncharitable folk. In Mary’s reign, when the Act is 
 renewed with a penalty on such collectors as decline the office, 
 the reference to the bishop is accompanied with the hint that 
 refusal to give might be construed as suggestive of heresy. This 
 Act put the canvass for weekly subscriptions at Christmas in 
 place of Whitsuntide. In the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign 
 (5, cap. 3) the unwilling giver, after being exhorted by the bishop, 
 is to be bound to appear before the justices, in quai-ter sessions, 
 where, if he be still obdurate to exhortation, the justices are 
 empowered to tax him in a weekly sum, and commit him to prison 
 till he pays. This Act precedes that enforcing apprenticeship 
 and empowering the magistrates to fix wages, on which latter I 
 have often and fully commented, and should probably be taken 
 with it. The law has now proceeded from exhortation to 
 compulsion. 
 
86 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 It seems highly probable that destitution and vagabondage were 
 still further developed by the decline of that manorial jurisdiction 
 which had been so effective in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries, and the transference of the machinery of police from 
 the parish to the justice's office or to the quarter sessions. The 
 old system, concentrating as it did the functions of local discipline 
 in the steward and inhabitants of a parish, exercised a control and 
 enforced a responsibility which was indifferently compensated by 
 the authority of an individual or a bench of magistrates. And 
 this impression is confirmed by the almost insensible change from 
 a jury who are witnesses to a fact to a jury who are merely 
 judges of a fact, — a change so gradual that we get the first hint 
 of it in the celebrated case of Throgmorton, who was acquitted in 
 Mary’s reign ; though the legal irresponsibility of a jury which 
 acquits in face of a judge’s ruling, or what he conceives to be the 
 law, was only affirmed by Chief Justice Yaughan as late as the 
 reign of Charles II. in the Quakers’ case. 
 
 There was only a step from the process under which a reluctant 
 subscriber to the poor law was assessed by the justices and 
 imprisoned on refusal, to the assessment of all property under the 
 celebrated Act of 43 Elizabeth, cap. 3. The law had provided for 
 the regular appointment of assessors for the levy of rates, for 
 supplying work to the able-bodied, for giving relief to the infirm 
 and old, and for binding apprentices. It now consolidates the 
 experience of the whole reign, defines the kind of property on 
 which the rate is to be levied, prescribes the manner in which the 
 assessors shall be appointed, and inflicts penalties on parties who 
 infringe its provisions. It is singular that the Act was only 
 temporary. It was, by the last clause, only to continue to the 
 end of the next session of parliament. It was, however, renewed, 
 and finally made perpetual by 16 Car. I., cap. 4. 
 
 The economical history of labour in England is henceforward 
 intimately associated with this remarkable Act. It was the result 
 of a series of causes, each of which has been already commented 
 on, the most dominant unquestionably being the rapid and serious 
 rise in the money value of food and other necessaries, and the 
 halting manner in which the rate of wages followed the rise. In 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the labourer secured 
 
The English Poor Law. 
 
 87 
 
 increased wages in tlie midst of decreasing prices. In the six- 
 teenth, the reverse which he suffered was far more considerable 
 than the advantage which his forefathers had gained. I do not, 
 indeed, find that they who regulated his wages by Act of Parlia- 
 ment were aware how seriously his condition had been deteriorated, 
 or that even those who busied themselves with the phenomena of 
 social life, as Latimer did in the worst times of the bad currency, 
 and Stafford and Harrison did in the days of Elizabeth, took any 
 thought whatever of the labourer’s condition under these deplor- 
 ably altered circumstances. Even Eden, whose careful investiga- 
 tions into the condition of the poor, and whose comments on the 
 various statutes which regulated their wages, their condition, and 
 their movements, are fairly exhaustive, does not seem to have 
 realized, though the facts were to a considerable extent before him, 
 how great a change had come over the life of the labourer and the 
 artizan. I cannot but think that a growing disaffection, which 
 Elizabeth and her counsellors were not slow to discern, the remedy 
 for which seemed to be the continuance of expedients adopted in 
 the three previous reigns, was the cause which induced them and 
 parliament to acquiesce in the Act of 1601. The Act was to be 
 tentative, indeed, but in its general principles it lasted till 1835. 
 
 It is plain that had the Act of Elizabeth been carried out in all 
 its details, the whole revenue of land would have ultimately been 
 swallowed up in the relief of the poor. To some extent the 
 framers of the Act saw that this was already locally possible, for 
 the third clause of the Act contemplates the possibility of the 
 resources of a parish being inadequate to the charge of maintain- 
 ing the local poor, and directs that the deficiency, if any arises, 
 shall be supplemented from the rest of the hundred. ISTow it 
 was plain that if the magistrates in quarter sessions were to fix 
 the rate at which labour should be paid, as they regularly did in 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they would have every 
 motive to put the rate at the lowest sum which would sustain life, 
 knowing well that if the labourer became destitute, all occupiers 
 would have to assist in his maintenance, while the benefit of cheap 
 labour would remain to those only who employed him, as, indeed, 
 actually happened. In country places this would not at first be a 
 very important matter, as there would have been few persons rated 
 
88 
 
 Work and Wag^s, 
 
 to the poor who, being occupiers, were not immediate employers 
 of labour. But in the towns, the incidence of the poor rate was 
 a very serious addition to the burdens of such occupiers as did not 
 employ labour, and at the latter end of the eighteenth century it 
 became a very heavy charge generally. 
 
 The effect of poor law relief on the wages of labour was to keep 
 them hopelessly low, to hinder a rise even under the most urgent 
 circumstances. This will be seen most clearly in the history of 
 wages during the seventeenth century, when prices of corn were 
 very high, and the labourer’s standard of subsistence undoubtedly 
 fell. For even if he were still able to maintain himself on wheaten 
 bread, his power of purchasing other kinds of food was greatly 
 curtailed. We must not be led into believing that because meat 
 was comparatively cheap— it rapidly rose to three times the old 
 rate, while wages did not increase more than fifty per cent, over 
 the rate in Elizabeth’s reign after the first exaltation of prices was 
 established — it was therefore within the range of his expenditure. 
 On the contrary, the comparative cheapness of meat, beside that 
 of corn, is proof that the power of consuming it was narrowed by 
 the deteriorated condition of the mass of the people. The fact is, 
 the relief of mere destitution was the removal of every prudential 
 restraint. If the labourer got scanty wages, he w'as at least 
 guaranteed against famine in sickness, in infancy, and in old age, 
 and he was, therefore, discouraged from exercising any foresight 
 whatever. I am persuaded that the singular indifference with 
 which, on the whole, the condition of the working classes was 
 viewed in relation to profits and rent was due to the impression, 
 that as the propertied classes had bound themselves by law to 
 ensure the labourer against the contingencies of life, the facts of 
 the case needed no further anxiety on the part of any person 
 whatever, except in so far as the maintenance of the destitute 
 seriously trenched on the value of land. 
 
 It has been said, and with great apparent justice, that the 
 legal relief of destitution, though perhaps incapable of an 
 economical defence, is justified on the highest political and social 
 grounds. If the relief of misery is left to private charity, the 
 assistance given is capricious and imperfect. Besides, the destitute 
 and unrelieved are always dangerous ; and though the forces at 
 
The English Poor Law. 
 
 89 
 
 the command of modern society are powerful enough to check any 
 outbreak, they cannot be, except at an enormous expense, so 
 efficient as to protect property against desperate distress. Again, 
 serious as the strife has been between labour and capital, when 
 the former is at least guaranteed against the worst contingencies ; 
 it would be infinitely sharper were the guarantee repudiated. 
 Nor must one forget how harsh and bitter life becomes when it 
 is familiarized with the signs of unrelieved distress. I cannot, 
 indeed, doubt that in the magnitude of modern societies the relief 
 of the poor is a necessity which cannot be, however much labour 
 makes progress and betters itself, repudiated or neglected. 
 Society may not be responsible for nine-tenths of the misery and 
 poverty within it, but it will never restrain poverty and misery 
 unless it takes them in hand, and to do so is to relieve them. 
 
 But the English poor law, after all, was the outcome of great 
 crimes committed by government, and is aggravated even now 
 by customs permitted by government. It could not be free from 
 the vices of its origin, and it is still in many particulars made 
 mischievous and harsh by those provisions and those contingencies 
 wffiich arise from the customs to which it is partly due. I have 
 referred to the crimes of the Tudor government. The customs to 
 which I take exception have an earlier origin, and are even more 
 enduring, for they have given occasion to two of the greatest 
 problems of our own day, — the housing of our poor in cities and 
 the settlement of agricultural labour in the country. 
 
 How far beggary, wretchednesss, and crime, with their most 
 fruitful concomitants, drunkenness and hopelessness, reciprocally 
 act on each other we cannot and never shall be able to tell. We 
 know that they are the miserable circle in which thousands of our 
 people, especially in London, revolve. We know that they have 
 destroyed all interest, except in the means of the present day, in 
 thousands. There is a large population which would, if it could, 
 make war on society, which measures its own misery by the 
 opulence of others, and is profoundly convinced that every power 
 which society has and uses is employed against it. These people 
 live in squalid dens, where there can be no health and no hope, 
 but dogged discontent at their own lot and futile discontent at 
 the wealth which they see possessed by others. 
 
90 
 
 IVork and Wages, 
 
 But it cannot, I think, be doubted that when prudence and 
 thrift are deliberately discouraged, and recklessness is inculcated 
 by law or practice, the misery which must, it seems, accompany 
 human life in society may become general and chronic. The 
 legislature strove to tie the peasant to the soil, not, indeed, as a 
 mere serf, for the Act of 1592 prescribed that every labourer’s 
 cottage in future should have four acres of land attached to it, 
 — a law which roused the wrath of Arthur Young in 1770, and 
 was no doubt habitually broken. But it also gave him, as a 
 compensation for the policy which permitted entails and the 
 accumulation of land in few hands, the right to be a pensioner 
 on the soil, from all real and permanent share in which he was 
 practically excluded. He had been robbed by the landowner, and 
 he was to be hereafter quartered on the occupier. He had been 
 impoverished by misgovernment, and was to be degraded by a 
 charity which was to compensate him for the losses which he had 
 sustained and for the hard measure which was being dealt out to 
 him, but which would ultimately degrade him and make him 
 helpless and hopeless. I can conceive nothing more cruel, I had 
 almost said more insolent, than to condemn a labourer to the 
 lowest possible wages on which life may be sustained, by an Act 
 of Parliament, interpreted and enforced by an ubiquitous body of 
 magistrates, whose interest it was to screw the pittance down to 
 the lowest conceivable margin, and to inform the stinted recipient 
 that when he had starved on that during the days of his strength, 
 others must work to maintain him in sickness or old age. How 
 this was what the Statute of Apprenticeship, supplemented by 
 the Poor Law, did in the days of Elizabeth. And if you go into 
 the streets and alleys of our large towns, and, indeed, of many 
 English villages, you may meet the fruit of the wickedness of 
 Henry and the policy of Elizabeth’s counsellors in the degradation 
 and helplessness of your countrymen. 
 
 Still their evils have been aggravated by other agencies. The 
 cost of living in large towns has been reduced by the excellent 
 and regular services of supply. In the Middle Ages most articles 
 of food and analogous necessaries were fully fifteen per cent, 
 dearer in London than els where. It is probable that at present 
 they are as much cheaper. But to these economies there is one 
 
91 
 
 The English Poor Law 
 
 notable exception. The cost of house rent is enormous. Some 
 of this cost is doubtlessly due to the density with which the people 
 are packed, and the advantage contained in proximity to one’s 
 calling. But the cost is greatly increased by the power which 
 the law confers on corporations and private proprietors to with- 
 hold land from the market at a minimum of cost. It will be clear 
 that if the law encourages an artificial scarcity, it creates an 
 unnatural dearness. By permitting corporations to hold land in 
 towns, and by allowing private owners to settle land in towns, 
 it gives such persons a power of exacting the highest terms 
 possible for the use of their property, by keeping it out of the 
 market till they can enforce their price. To use an American 
 phrase, taken from the slang of speculators, the Bussells, and the 
 Bentincks, the Cecils, the Portmans, the Grosvenors, and the 
 rest, with the corporations, have had for a long period a ring or 
 corner in the land market, and can force buyers to give famine 
 prices. Now what is an injury to the moderately wealthy, is 
 oppression on the poor. It is well known that vile and loathsome 
 buildings, probably the property of some opulent landowner, yield 
 from the misery of their inmates a far larger rent than the plots 
 on which the most luxurious and convenient mansions are built. 
 Dives is clothed in purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously 
 every day from the crumbs which he sweeps out of the wallet of 
 Lazarus; and if Lazarus has to be fed occasionally, and at last 
 taken care of permanently, the fund which helps him comes, not 
 from the pockets of those who grow wealthy from his want, but 
 from those of others who are made liable in their degree to the 
 same extortion. The law which levies rates on occupancy instead 
 of on property makes the evil worse, for it puts the minimum 
 inconvenience on the person who holds the strongest position. 
 But they say, rates are paid by property in the end. If so, there 
 can be no hardship in making the possessor of property pay them 
 in the beginning. The facts and their effects may be dwelt on at 
 greater length below. 
 
 In the ten years ending with 1590, the average price of wheat 
 was 2 O 5 . 6cZ. ; in the next decade, 3D. W^d , ; the average being 
 heightened by two years of famine, 1596 and 1597 ; in the next, 
 295. 5|cZ. ; in the next, 345. 9|cZ. ; in the next, 375. 5|(i. ; in the 
 
92 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 next, 435. 0|<^. ; in the next, 465. \\cL ; in the next, from 1651 
 to 1660, 445. 6(i. ; the price being lowered in the last decade by 
 the three abundant years 1653-5 inclusive. Now my readers will 
 notice that the price of food is, on the whole, steadily rising, and 
 he will readily discern that the two years of famine, 1596-97, 
 when wheat was 465. ?>d. and 56s. precipitated the pass- 
 
 ing of the Poor Law. At the commencement of the period, the 
 artizan’s wages were I5. a day; the ordinary labourer's, 8d. At 
 the conclusion of it, the former were I5. 6c?., the latter, I5. ; and 
 at these prices they remained under the Act of 5 Elizabeth and the 
 quarter sessions' assessment for a century and a quarter, since 
 this is the rate at which they ordinarily stood in Arthur Young's 
 time. In the time preceding the issue of base money, when the 
 average price of wheat was below 65. a quarter, they were 6c?. and 
 4c?. In the earlier period, then, an artizan could buy of a 
 quarter of wheat, the ordinary labourer of a quarter, by a 
 day's work. But in the eight decades since 1581 they could get 
 only and ^ ^ parts, and parts, and parts, and 
 
 2^8 parte, 7^5 and ^ P^rts, and parts, and parts ; 
 
 while, in the last decade, when 50 per cent, was added to wages, 
 owing, perhaps, to the charges of war and the circulation of 
 money, they rose to and g^g parts, omitting minute fractions 
 throughout. Such figures show plainly how lessened the wages 
 of the workman had become since the prosperous age to which 
 I have so often referred. 
 
 Estimated by his power of purchasing wheat, the artizan and 
 labourer in the last twenty years of the sixteenth and the 
 first fifty years of the seventeenth century got progressively less, 
 so that in the ten years from 1641 to 1650, their wages were 
 little more than the fourth of that which had been earned by 
 their grandfathers and great grandfathers. In the Fercy Ballads, 
 one of the speakers, called Ignorance, sings : — 
 
 ‘‘ I’ll tell thee what, good fellow 
 Before the friars went hence, 
 
 A bushel of the best wheat 
 Was sold for fourteen pence ; 
 
 And forty eggs a penny, 
 
 That were both good and new ** 
 
The English Poor Law. 
 
 93 
 
 The price of the wheat in the song is a good deal above the 
 average, though it does happen to be the price which prevailed 
 just about the time of the Dissolution. The peasants naturally 
 connected the change with the great event which had occurred 
 before their eyes, and from which, chronologically, the decline in 
 their condition commenced. It may have had its effect in the 
 general cataclysm. It is certain that the majority of persons, 
 most of all those who are quite unused to analyse the causes 
 which lead to a result, ascribe to one or two events, occurring 
 concurrently with an effect which makes them anxious or 
 distresses them, the whole effect of which they complain. The 
 event may have no relation to the phenomenon on which they 
 rely, it may have a slight relation to it, it may have a partial 
 ^ relation to it, but be only one in a considerable congeries of 
 causes, of which the principal remain undetected. How the 
 principal factor in the progressive decline of the labourer’s 
 condition was, as I have more than once stated, the issue of 
 base money by Henry and Edward. 
 
 When the prices of the necessaries of life rise, the wages of 
 labour do not rise with them. Even under the best conditions 
 of labour this will be found to be the case, or, what is the same 
 thing to the economist, given a fixed order of things, under 
 which the labourer is restrained from seeking employment in 
 the best market, has his wages defined for him by a hostile 
 authority, is made —as in the case of the agriculturist — the 
 residuum of all labour, and is compensated by supplementary 
 allowances raised by the taxation of occupiers, as, under the 
 Poor Law, the exaltation in the price of food is never com- 
 pensated by a corresponding increase in the rate of wages, or, 
 indeed, of the supplementary allowances. By contrast with the 
 facts which prevailed before 1640, the labourer’s service sank to 
 the worst scale of remuneration during the first half of the 
 seventeentn century, for the price of food increased, while 
 wages remained stationary. By contrast with what prevailed 
 during the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, the 
 wages of the labourer were again depressed during the last 
 quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth 
 centuries, when the old rates coninued, and wheat kept trising ; 
 
94 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 for the average price between 1801 and 1810 was 905. id., or 
 more than double that which existed in the worst decade in the 
 first half of the seventeenth century. At this time it is true 
 that something slightly analogous to Henry’s base money 
 occurred — the issue of inconvertible paper; but the poverty of 
 the poor was practically unalleviated, their wages only nominally 
 improved, the assessment of their earnings unchanged, and no 
 thought whatever was taken of their condition by the Legislature, 
 unless it be that the attempt to repress the violence with their 
 unparalleled sufferings drove them occasionally to commit by i 
 atrocious penal laws may be called thought. 
 
 As, therefore, wages do not rise with prices, no crime against 
 labour is more injurious than any expedients adopted on the part 
 of government which tend to raise prices. Unluckily for them,v 
 many working people have been misled by interested sophistry ] 
 into believing that high prices for employers mean good wages A . 
 for workmen. I do not deny that if an artificial stimulus is 
 given to some particular industry, the demand for the produce 
 of which is limited but continual, and the craftsmen in which 
 are also limited, such a calling may get enhanced wages for a 
 short time. But others soon crowd into the calling, and very 
 speedily the thing is made dearer, and the producer remains 
 no better off, having lost in the interval the knowledge which 
 oompetition gives as to the best conditions under which industry 
 oan be exercised. But it is idle to argue that such an artificial 
 stimulus can be given to every kind of industry. Were it 
 universal, the country would be debarred from all intercourse 
 with foreign commerce, and the legislature would raise a 
 blockade round the ports far more effective than anything which 
 the most successful belligerent could enforce. If it be partial, it 
 will either affect all consumers or some. If all, it induces a 
 universal scarcity without benefiting any one, for internal 
 competition is sure to do its work on profits and wages ; if some, 
 it simply narrows the area of consumption, and with even more 
 rapid results on profits and wages. These elementary principles, 
 which one is almost ashamed to allege, could be illustrated by 
 a thousand facts. 
 
 The case is rather more difficult when, in a country where 
 
The English Poor Law, 
 
 95 
 
 labour is free and mobile, a marked addition is made to the 
 currency, in the only form in which the addition can be made, a 
 debased coinage, or a large increase of circulating credit. Here 
 we find temporarily all the appearances of great industrial 
 activity, — wages rise, profits are large, at least when the labourer 
 is free to choose his locality and his employer, though wages 
 never rise to the level of profits. But the benefit is only for a 
 time, and generally for a very short time. The labourer is the 
 first to lose his advantage. Then profits shrink, and ultimately 
 the collapse ensues, with its disappointments, its bitterness, and 
 I its degradation. The English labourer, indeed, has had little 
 experience of such advantages as come from inflation, though 
 something analogous to it occurred in 1873, when the capitalists 
 made much money, and circulated a great many calumnies about 
 the hands. But in the sixteenth century, whatever advantage 
 ensued was entirely on the side of the employers, on those who 
 could interpret a base currency, could make the labourer pay 
 for their commission on the exchange, and could succeed in 
 permanently degrading him. 
 
 The first half of the seventeenth century is a magnificent 
 political drama, in which the stage of public life in England is 
 crowded with those historical characters on whom the better off 
 and more educated of the English people dwell with a peculiar 
 and lasting interest. We seem to see before us the Scottish 
 king who had dropped into the English throne, who looked and 
 spoke like a fool, but was not such a fool as he looked and spoke, 
 with his strange brogue, his strange manners, his named and 
 unnamed vices ; and his son, who seemed grave and wise, but was 
 hotbrained and foolish, proud and false, the type of those unlucky 
 liars who are alw^ays found out. Then there is the first leader 
 of the constitutional opposition, Phelips, and the wily but 
 dangerous counsellor of the court, Cecil. There is Carr, with his 
 wife, one of the harlots of the House of Howard, who had so 
 bad an eminence in the century ; and the grim Coke, loyal to the 
 law and himself ; and Bacon, whose splendid reputation has 
 obscured the baseness of his life; the shrewd Cranfield, who 
 almost made James absolute ; and Buckingham, who ruined 
 the Treasurer, and bringing his schemes to nought, assisted 
 
96 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 in pulling down that which Cranfield had laboriously striven 
 to build up ; and behind, below, but infinitely above these, are 
 those men of genius whose writings are the choicest treasures 
 of the human race and the special pride of the English tongue, 
 for the same generation witnessed the maturity of Shakespeare 
 and the precocious intellectual wealth of Milton. As time passes 
 on, the whole energy of the nation is concentrated on the struggle 
 between absolutism and free institutions, free, alas ! only for the 
 few, but these, as yet, the best types of our race. The rare learn- 
 ing of Selden, the grave, inflexible patriotism of Eliot, the 
 dexterous tact of Pym, the resolute gentleness of Hampden, the 
 stern prescience of Sfc. John, the wise moderation of Bedford, and, 
 ultimately, the military genius and clear foresight of Cromwell, 
 were to be arrayed against the perfidy of Charles, the passionate 
 bigotry of Laud, the fierce energies of Strafford, against the herd 
 of Finches and Noys, against bullies from the Thirty Years’ War 
 and pettifoggers on the Bench. The age was so dramatic, the 
 men were so typical, that Hyde was able in his first exile to 
 sketch their portraits as no one has sketched individuals since, 
 because men were so individual ; for the imaginative drama had 
 died out, since living men were more characteristic than the 
 subtlest pictures of the poet. There has been and tK%re will be 
 no period in English history which commands and deserves such 
 attention as the first fifty years of the seventeenth century, for 
 memory sees gods ascending out of the earth. 
 
 By the middle of the century there were probably four millions 
 of people in England and Wales, for hardships and poverty do not 
 always check the growth of population. The half at least of these 
 lived by weekly wages. There are no annals of these people, of 
 their work and their sufferings, except in the record of their wages 
 and the cost of their living. We see the characters on the stage, 
 and a little more, but nothing of those who enabled these great 
 actors to play their parts, or of the work which was being done be- 
 hind the scenes. History, which crowds its canvas with these great 
 names, tells us nothing of the people. But they who take note of 
 the pittance which the peasant or artizan earned, and of the cost 
 at wLich he spent his wages on his needful food, can interpret the 
 hardships of his lot, the poverty of his life, the barrenness of his 
 
The English Poor Law. 
 
 97 
 
 labour, the growing hopelessness of his condition. The eager 
 spirits who crowded into the House of Commons, the mounted 
 yeomen who rode with Hampden, the men who fought and won 
 at Marston Moor and JSTaseby, thought no more of the peasant 
 and the workman, had no more care for bettering him, than the 
 Irish patriots of 1782 cared for the kernes and cottiers on whose 
 labours they lived. For in the midst of this battle of giants, 
 when the king was made subject first, and his foe, the parliament, 
 folloAved him in submission to the great army which Cromwell 
 wielded as dexterously as a swordsman does his weapon, the 
 English people who lived by wages were sinking lower and lower, 
 and fast taking their place in the contrast with the opulence 
 which trade and commerce began, and manufacturing activity 
 multiplied, as the beggarly hewers and drawers of prosperous 
 and progressive England. In 1651, the magistrates of Essex in 
 quarter sessions at Chelmsford fixed the wages of artizans and 
 labourers at H. 6d. and Is. a day respectively ; and this was the 
 price which they generally secured. The price of wheat in this 
 year was nearly 50^. a quarter. 
 
 I have little doubt that during the civil wars and the Protector- 
 ate there was some little stirring among the labourers. Their 
 wages were raised, as I have said, fifty per cent, above what they 
 stood at in the times which preceded these civil convulsions. It 
 is probable, too, that trade and manufactures made progress ; it is 
 certain that agriculture did. It was natural that labour should 
 seek after a better market, and should acquire some mobility. 
 The government of the Protector was not likely to stop this 
 movement, and it is plain that labour began to stir. But the 
 Eestoration came, the landed interest became dominant; the 
 principle that the crown and the parliament should be employed 
 in the interest of the landlord and the trader was stereotyped, and 
 the law of parochial settlement w^as forthwith enacted. This law 
 consummated the degradation of the labourer. It made him, as 
 it has left him, a serf without land, the most portentous 
 phenomenon in agriculture. It applied equally to the artizan, 
 but he w^as able to extricate himself at an earlier period from the 
 toils of this hateful law\ 
 
 The Act 13, 14 Car. II., cap. 12 (1662), begins with a hypo- 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 critical preamble, that it was enacted for the good of the poor, 
 for the correction of rogues and vagabonds, and for the proper 
 employment of such as were legally chargeable to the parish 
 of their settlement, and so empowers the churchwardens and 
 overseers of any parish into which a person comes and occupies a 
 tenement of less than ten pounds annual value, within forty days 
 of such a personas coming, to apply to a justice of the peace for 
 the removal of such a person to his place of legal settlement, 
 under the hands of two justices. The person in question may, 
 however, give security that he will not become chargeable, and 
 may in any case appeal from the justice’s decision to quarter 
 sessions, i.e., from Herod to Pilate. The Act, however, permits, 
 with tender care for the farmer’s interest, that strangers may, 
 under proper precautions, be employed in harvest work. 
 
 The great Pevolution, which established the authority of 
 Parliament, put an end to arbitrary power, and relieved the 
 consciences of those who could not accord themselves to the 
 worship of the English Church, brought no liberty to the peasant 
 and artizan. It stereotyped their servitude by constraining (3 
 William and Mary, cap. 11) that notice of new comers should be 
 published after service in Church. Labourers had ceased to be 
 factors in political action, and are simply ignored for a century 
 or more. But an Act of William III., 8 and 9 cap. 30 (1697), 
 recognises the effect of the law of settlement passed thirty-five 
 years before. It allows that persons are imprisoned in their 
 place of settlement, where they cannot get work, though work 
 may be wanted elsewhere, where the increase of manufactures 
 would employ more hands, and that the provision of the Act of 
 1662, requiring the new comer to give security that he would not 
 be chargeable to the parish of his new residence, confines them to 
 live in their own parishes. It therefore permits churchwardens 
 or overseers, who acknowledge their contingent liability, to give 
 licenses to those who might wish to migrate, the effect of the 
 license being that, if the incomer became chargeable, he could 
 be forthwith removed with his children, even though they had 
 been born in the new settlement. It is superfluous to say that 
 such licenses would be looked on wdth suspicion, as expedients to 
 relieve a parish of its quota of poor. Hence it became customary 
 
The English Poor Law. 
 
 99 
 
 for those who employed foreign labour to give certificates of 
 indemnity to the parish (often to a considerable amount, <£100 or 
 more) that they would bear the risk of the new comer^s 
 chargeability, the recognisance being stored in the parish chest. 
 The efiect of the law of parochial settlement was not only to 
 annex the labourer to the parish of his residence, but to make 
 him a serf. Those persons who possessed the whole of a parish 
 took care, whenever they could, to pull down cottages on their 
 estate, and rely on labour from a distance. By this system they 
 hired labour at quarter sessions^ rates, ^.e., at factitiously low 
 wages, while the parish of the man’s residence had to supplement 
 his wages and to bear all those contingencies which were 
 enhanced by the labourer being constrained to travel a consider- 
 able distance to his work in all weathers. The law of settlement, 
 therefore, not only fixed the tenant to the soil, but enabled the 
 opulent landowner to rob his neighbour, and to prematurely 
 wear out the labourer s health and strength. All this, too, was 
 done when the patriots and placemen chattered about liberty and 
 arbitrary administration, and fine ladies and gentlemen talked 
 about the rights of man, and Bousseau, and the French 
 Bevolution, and Burke and Sheridan were denouncing the 
 despotism of Hastings. Why at his own doors at Beaconsfield, 
 Burke must have daily seen serfs who had less liberty than 
 those Bohillas, whose wrongs he described so pathetically and 
 dramatically. 
 
 Most writers of the eighteenth century take the law of parochial 
 settlement as a matter of course. There were persons who, such 
 as Alcock and Burn, took a different view from the complacent 
 landowners and farmers, but above all Adam Smith. The 
 former dwell upon the effects which the law of parochial settle- 
 ment and chargeabihty had on the condition of the poor ; but 
 the great philosopher of social science detects the inherent 
 injustice of the system. To remove a man,” says Smith, 
 who has committed no misdemeanour from the parish where he 
 chooses to reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and 
 justice, and an oppression, to which the people of England, though 
 jealous of their liberty, but like the people of most other countries, 
 never rightly considering in what it consists, have for more than 
 
lOO 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 a century together suffered themselves to be exposed without a 
 remedy.” The people of England have a very just view of what 
 constitutes their own liberties when they are in a position to 
 \ indicate them, and can bring sufficient force to bear upon the 
 machinery by which those liberties have been outraged and may 
 be restored, but which has had no very great consideration for 
 unrepresented and powerless interests. It is generally vain to 
 expect political justice on behalf of those who can by their own 
 action bring no pressure to bear on Parliament. And this is as 
 much matter of modern as it has been of past experience. 
 
 It is one of the commonplaces of an ignorant optimism to 
 allege that the remedy is supplied by taking away the cause of 
 the disease; but the maxim that the effect ceases when the 
 cause ceases, is true in inorganic nature only, and not always 
 true there. The present condition of English society, its violent 
 contrasts of opulence and penury, of profligacy protected by law 
 and misery neglected by law, is the outcome of causes which 
 have a longer pedigree than the recorded generations of any 
 family. The people of this country have become what they are 
 by reason of events and acts which it is the duty of the genuine 
 economist to discover, as contrasted with the economist who 
 constructs a system out of a few axioms and a multitude of 
 postulates. The reproach of political economy is that it is a hard 
 and dry system, which has no sympathies, and only proposes to 
 suffering humanity a bundle of unwelcome truths which it affirms 
 to be natural laws. In many cases these are neither truths nor 
 laws, but parodoxes, which have not even the merit of ex- 
 perimental inductions, but at the best are doubtful tendencies 
 elevated to the rank of principles. I cannot take up any ordinary 
 work on political economy without finding in every page a 
 dogma which is controverted by facts, and, with the great 
 exception of Adam Smith, I know no writer in England who 
 has been at the pains to verify what he confidently affirms by the 
 evidence of what has actually taken place. Mr. Mill is an ardent 
 advocate of human liberty, and deserves all honour for his 
 labours on behalf of it, but I do not remember that throughout 
 his work on political economy he has been at the pains to point 
 out how powerful a factor the law of parochial settlement has 
 
The English Poor Law. 
 
 lor 
 
 been in bringing about the unthrift and recklessness of the 
 working classes, or how it has stereotyped improvidence and 
 justified incontinence. 
 
 No trifiing percentage of the funds collected for the maintenance 
 of the poor was expended in litigation on the cases which sprang 
 out of the Act of Charles II. It was an evil inheritance to the 
 English people, perhaps the worst Act of the worst Parliament 
 which ever sat, but it was a Potosi, an Eldorado to the lawyers. 
 Many a barrister owes his place in Parliament and on the Bench 
 to his skill in arguing settlement cases, to the ingenuity with 
 which he was able to tighten the bonds on the peasant. The 
 wealthy landowners clung to it with desperate tenacity, for it 
 increased their rents at the expense of the occupiers and the 
 poor. What mattered it to them that the English peasant’s life 
 was aged soon after his prime, if they could get cheap labour and 
 increasing rents? The whole force of law was for nearly two 
 eenturies directed towards the solution of this problem. How 
 much oppression can the English people endure, how much 
 privation, misery, starvation, wfithout absolutely destroying the 
 labour on which growing rents depended ? We, in our generation, 
 though a portion of this evil has been prevented for the 
 future, inherit the outcome of these two centuries, and with it 
 problems of the gravest kind daily pressing for solution, and to 
 which it is idle to ofier the nostrums of over-population, 
 emigration, competition, and the other formularies of an ideal 
 society. 
 
 Towards the conclusion of the eighteenth century, the 
 Berkshire magistrates, struck with the appalling discrepancy 
 between wages and the price of food — for the labour of the 
 peasant could only procure him for several years one-eighth of 
 the amount of wheat which the same person could have earned 
 before 1540, — met and proposed, not that the mischievous law 
 of Elizabeth which established quarter sessions’ wages should be 
 repealed, or that the infamous law of parochial settlement should 
 be done away, but that able-bodied labourers should have their 
 wages supplemented by allowances from the overseer, propor- 
 tionate to the number of their children or the general charges 
 of their family. By this means they would be able to prevent a 
 
102 
 
 JFork and Wages 
 
 general increase of wages, to fix the wages of the single and the 
 childless at a low amount, and compel all occupiers to contribute 
 towards the cost of agricultural operations. This expedient, 
 sanctioned by the courts, and, indeed, implied by 9 Geo. I., cap. 7, 
 and 22 Geo. III., cap. 83, was known as the allowance system, 
 and has been criticised adversely, not for its manifest harshness 
 and injustice in giving that as charity which was due for work, 
 but because it removed a check on population, at that time not 
 much more than one-third of the number which now subsists in 
 infinitely greater comfort in England than the lesser number did 
 at the beginning of the century. 
 
 The English Poor Law would have ultimately devoured the 
 rent of all open parishes, that is, those in which there were many 
 owners, and consequently the possibility of housing the poor, and 
 have enormously exalted the rent of all close parishes, i.e., those 
 in which there was one owner only, who cleared off every cottage 
 on his domain, had it not been for the almost simultaneous 
 discovery of steam power and the substitution of machine for 
 hand-loom weaving. The capitalist inventors of these processes 
 found that they wanted labour (though at first it appeared that 
 the discoveries would dispense with labour), and were therefore 
 indifferent to the contingencies of an unlicensed settlement. But 
 it may be doubted whether their discoveries were an immediate 
 boon to labour. The parochial system of relief must have been 
 condemned long before it was imperfectly abandoned, when the 
 system of close and open parishes had been thoroughly developed 
 and the outrageous injustice of the practice had been exhibited in 
 its fulness. The wages of the mill-hand were settled by the justices, 
 like those of the artizan and peasant. Children and women were 
 worked for long hours in the mill, and the Arkwrights and Peels 
 and a multitude more built up colossal fortunes on the misery of 
 labour. Any attempt on the part of workmen to combine for 
 the purpose of selling their labour at better rates was met with 
 stern repression, any overt act with sharp punishment. The 
 English workmen earned all the wealth and bore nearly all the 
 cost during that long war on which the fortunes of manu- 
 facturers and landowners, the glory of statesmen and generals, 
 were founded. High profits were extracted from the labour of 
 
The English Poor Law, 
 
 103 
 
 little children, and the race was starved and stunted while mill- 
 owners, landowners, and stock-jobbers collected their millions 
 from the toils of those whose wages they regulated and whose 
 strength they exhausted. The student of economical forces can 
 tell whence that wealth came by which England stood almost 
 singlehanded against Europe, and subsidized the wretched govern- 
 ments whom Napoleon humiliated, — governments which were 
 saved by their subjects, but who repaid these subjects with the 
 Holy Alliance, a name, after that of the League of the Public 
 Good, which was the most hypocritical lie ever forged in the 
 devil’s chancery. The story of the workmen’s sufferings is told 
 by Mr. Porter in his “ Progress of the Nation.” 
 
 At last, and not at its deepest midnight, a change began. 
 The laws directed against the right of workmen to combine 
 together in order to sell their wages in the best market, which 
 had lasted for nearly five centuries, were repealed in 1824. So 
 vras the Quarter Sessions’ assessment of wages. The workman 
 was not indeed free to find his market, for the law of parochial 
 settlement remained, as the shadow of it remains to this day. 
 But a trade union ceased to be a crime. It was no longer for- 
 bidden by law. It was not, indeed, under the protection of law ; 
 and I conceive that much of the savagery which for a long time 
 characterized the conduct of trade unions was due to the out- 
 lawry under which those wholesome institutions were placed. 
 
 For nearly five centuries the legislature had declared that 
 labour partnerships, that is, associations of working men formed 
 for the purpose of selling their labour collectively to the best 
 advantage, were under the ban of the law. The motive for this 
 repression was never concealed. It was designed in order to 
 increase and secure rents and profits at the cost of wages. For 
 two centuries it failed, for nearly three it succeeded. The expe- 
 rience of the English workman had beeux of its success. It was 
 therefore in human nature that he siiould believe in the efficacy 
 of that which the legislature had so long striven to repress. It 
 is commonly noted that those men who have been persecuted are 
 more apt to be intolerant, when the persecution has passed away, 
 than those who ha.ve never been oppressed. It is much more 
 reasonable, then, that those who have been denied a right should 
 
104 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 conceive that the right is of inestimable value and should overrate 
 its efficacy. Stolen waters are sweet, says the Hebrew apothegm, 
 and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But such joys are as 
 nothing to the early delight of obtaining a liberty which has 
 hitherto been forbidden. One has a right also to ask a reason for 
 any restraint put on us. A workman might have laid out his 
 money better at his master’s tally shop than at the village store. 
 But he objected to being forced to buy there, and rightly. The 
 public-house may be a convenient place even for a total abstainer 
 to receive his wages in, but a master should not be allowed, and 
 latterly has not been allowed, to elect such a place, and constrain 
 his workmen to take their money there, for all the Liberty and 
 Property Defence League may say. 
 
 Eleven years after the repeal of the Acts against combination 
 the new Poor Law ^vas enacted. The change was needed, but it 
 should have followed, not preceded, the repeal of the Oorn Laws. 
 The Corn Laws were defended on the ground that if they raised 
 the price of food the Poor Law assured the peasant his subsistence 
 from the land. The Act of 1835 took away this right, except 
 under hard conditions, but it left the artificial scarcity.^ The 
 result was that for once in English history a genuine communistic 
 movement took root in the minds of the English workmen, for 
 Chartism had only a political mask, the principal object of the 
 organization being the repeal of the new Poor Law. When the 
 Corn Laws were repealed, the movement collapsed. If it be 
 ever revived, the motive force will be the laws and customs which 
 direct the devolution and permit the settlement of land j laws 
 and which are barbarisms, and would be infinitely grotesque, 
 
 if they wej> not infinitely mischievous and infinitely dangerous. 
 Already there -s; an ominous sympathy with the theory for 
 making that a naianal estate which Englishmen have been 
 studiously excluded fromsharing by ordinary purchase as private 
 owners. A political intere^Ai^^® ^ political party, may seem to 
 be strong when it is, after all, the edge of a precipice. If it 
 topples over, strength and weakness are all one. 
 
 Three processes have been adopted by kh© working classes, each 
 of which has had a vast, and should have an'ijdcreasing influence 
 in bettering the condition of labour and makir^^li® problem of 
 
The English Poor Law. 
 
 los 
 
 dealing with individual distress, however caused, easier and 
 readier. They should be viewed by statesmen with unqualified 
 favour, and be treated by working men as the instruments by 
 which they can regain and consolidate the best interests of labour. 
 They are trade unionism, or, as I prefer to call it, labour partner- 
 ship j co-operation, or the combination in the same individuals of 
 the function of labour and capital ; and benefit associations, or the 
 machinery of a mutual insurance society. So important do I 
 conceive these aids to the material, intellectual, and moral 
 elevation of the v^orking classes to be, that I would, even at the 
 risk of being thought reactionary, limit the privileges of citizen- 
 ship, the franchise, parliamentary and local, to those, and those 
 only, who entered into these three guilds — the guild of labour, the 
 guild of production and trade, and the guild of mutual help. Nor 
 do I think it extravagant to believe that were those associations 
 rendered general, and finally universal, the social problems which 
 distress all and alarm many would ultimately arrive at a happy 
 solution. The first and third are only revivals of ancestral practice, 
 the second is not very unlike the habit which prevailed in ages which 
 1 hope I have made in some degree familiar. I must, however, 
 advert to them in another chapter, for this is already unduly long. 
 Only let me assure my readers, that though it is a foolish dream 
 to think that everything was better in the past, it is arrogant 
 presumption to conclude that all progress is a modern acquisition, 
 and that we can complacently despise the wisdom of our ancestors. 
 Would that we could unite the opulence of the fifteenth century 
 to the civilization of the nineteenth, and difiiise or distribute both. 
 
 / 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL WAGES IN THE EIGHTEENl’H 
 CENTURY. 
 
 The Slow though Real Progress of Agricultural Improvements — The Passion 
 for Agricultural Pursuits at the Beginning of the Century, and its 
 Continuance for some Time in the Next — Failures due to too much 
 Land with too little Capital, and Slovenly Book-keeping — Motives for 
 this Fashion of Agricultural Pursuits — The Gains of Commerce in the 
 Eighteenth Century — The Pride of the English Nobility — The Immedi- 
 ate Benefit of Improved Agriculture — Arthur Young’s Testimony — 
 Increased Stocks of Animals — Manures, Marling — The Increase of 
 Production estimated — Rental of England — Farmers’ Profits— Leases 
 Necessary and Universal — The Estimated Value of Stock in 1770, and 
 of Wages in Agriculture — Rise in Rents — The Earnings of Labour — 
 Young’s Estimate of Earnings — Comparison of Wages in the Eighteenth 
 and the Fifteenth Centuries — The Particulars of Agricultural Progress 
 in 1770 — Abundance and Scarcity, their Effects on the Landed Interest 
 — Corn Laws — The Seven Barren Years of the Seventeenth Century — 
 Enclosures in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries — The Period of 
 Scarcity in the Eighteenth Century — The Corn Law of 1773 and 1791 
 — The Rise in Rent at the Close of the Century — Eden’s Information in 
 1795 — Weekly Earnings and Annual Deficits — Porter on the Cost of 
 Poor Relief in Wheat — Summary of the Action of Government on 
 Labourers, and their Consequent Condition — Its Effects on their Minds 
 now — The English Workman no Socialist — The Function of Employers 
 and Labourers — The Attitude of Farmers — The Result. 
 
 I HAVE stated already that while the agricultural progress of the 
 . seventeenth century was chiefly in the direction of utilizing the 
 fallow for roots, that of the eighteenth was especially characterized 
 by the r::tension of artificial pasture, and the increased use of 
 cl over, saintfoin, and rye grass. By this I mean that the develop- 
 iniBnt of each was the principal feature of agriculture in three 
 successive centuries. The winter roots were known in gardens in 
 the sixteenth, century, at least towards its close, for Tusser speaks 
 
Agricultural Wages tn the Eighteenth Century, 107 
 
 of them as garden plants. Saintfoin was known to be useful to 
 the agriculturist as early as 1637, for in this year a small work 
 was published in which its cultivation is strongly recommended. 
 Clover seed is to be found in prices current some time before the 
 end of the seventeenth century, and that not in the London 
 market only. But these seeds are regularly bought from the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century by any farmer who had any 
 idea of improved agriculture. On the other hand, the extension 
 of the cultivation and the improvement of the article were of very 
 slow development. The roots were small, and the crop at first 
 was scanty. In course of time the farmer procured good seed, 
 and increased his produce by judicious treatment ; and similarly 
 he studied the best means by which to supply himself with clover 
 and saintfoin hay, and to utilize the aftermath. No record, how- 
 ever, of the progress is left us. It is the characteristic of 
 agriculture that its improvements are so gradual as to be almost 
 imperceptible, and it is only by contrasting rents and produce at 
 different times, and perhaps prices, that we are able to arrive at 
 any exact conceptions as to the progress which was effected. 
 Writing in 1772, Arthur Young says that ‘^saintfoin, cabbages, 
 potatoes, carrots, are not common crops in England. I do not 
 imagine above half, or at most two-thirds of the nation cultivate 
 clover. It is a surprising number of years that are necessary 
 firmly to introduce the culture of a new plant.” If gentlemen of 
 the present age,” says Young, ^‘had not assumed a spirit in 
 agriculture vastly superior to former times, I much question 
 whether that excellent vegetable would make its way fairly 
 through the island in a thousand years.” 
 
 The Englishman of the eighteenth century was greatly addicted 
 to agriculture as a business or a pleasure, or both. It was the 
 reigning taste ” of the age. There was scarcely a nobleman or 
 country gentleman who did not betake himself to the cultivation 
 of land, not merely in the sense of keeping a home farm in his 
 hands, which he managed by his steward, but as an overseer of his 
 land, and as an experimenter in husbandry. Writers of the time 
 note that country gentlemen talked about land and its properties, 
 the benefit of certain courses, the advantage of turnip fallows, and 
 the economies of agricultural machinery, about breeds of cattle. 
 
io8 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 .sheep, and pigs, with the same interest which their fathers and 
 grandfathers used to exhibit on the subjects of the stable and the 
 kennel only. The fashion had been set in Norfolk by Lord 
 Townshend, after his quarrel with Walpole and his retirement, 
 when he devoted himself to agricultural pursuits, especially to 
 turnip growing. There have been, ” says Young, more experi- 
 ments, more discoveries, and more general good sense displayed 
 within these ten years in agricultural pursuits than in a hundred 
 preceding ones.” And the same writer adds, that if this noble 
 spirit continues, we shall soon see husbandry in perfection, and 
 built upon as just and philosophic principles as the art of 
 medicine.” 
 
 The pursuit was universal. Citizens who were engaged in 
 London business five days in the week were farmers for the other 
 two ; men who had been brought up to other pursuits deserted 
 them for a trade which appeared easy and independent. It was 
 .a bye industry with those who had other callings. Physicians, 
 lawyers, clergymen, soldiers, sailors, and merchants were farmers 
 as well. The farming tribe,” says Young, is now made up of 
 all ranks, from a duke to an apprentice.” This habit continued 
 till the beginning of the second quarter of the present century, 
 -especially in places remote from towns, out of the way of main 
 roads, and before the first railways were constructed. Parson 
 Trulliber, though perhaps an exaggeration, was not an imaginary 
 character. Fielding must have seen such clergymen by hundreds. 
 I am old enough to remember the type, very little changed, in my 
 own youth ; as I can also remember the doctor and country lawyer 
 to have been as keen after the cultivation of their fields as they 
 were after patients and clients, and a number of country gentle- 
 men, with pedigrees of undoubted antiquity, as proud as the 
 haughtiest noble and as coarse-mannered as the most illiterate 
 rustic. ■ 
 
 Of course, experimental farming such as this often was 
 frequently ended in failure. The principal cause of ruin a 
 hundred years ago was precisely the same as it has been and is 
 to-day, — too much land in occupation, and too little capital to 
 cultivate it with. Young considers an average of <£6 an acre the 
 minimum necessary for successful agriculture ; and it is certain 
 
Agnciilliiral Usages in the Eighteenth Century, 109 
 
 that stock, live and dead, and labour, some few items excepted, 
 cost the husbandman less than half the sum which they do now, 
 the produce, as a whole, being sold for much less than half the 
 price it reaches in our days. If he were criticising English 
 agriculture at present, he would certainly set down <£12 an acre 
 as the average minimum. Every one knows that much less than 
 half this was, unluckily, the capital of the agriculturist when the 
 course of bad seasons came five years or so ago ( 1878 ). English 
 agriculture has, as I have good reason to know, been in the 
 course of the six centuries of its recorded history subject to severe 
 strains. But there was no period* in which the ordinary farmer 
 was less able to stand the shock than he was when the present crisis 
 came. Five years ago I was told by a land agent who managed a 
 large amount of property in two of the most fertile among the 
 arable counties in England, that the average capital of the farmer 
 cn land let at about 305 . an acre was considerably under £6 an acre. 
 
 Another frequent cause of discomfiture in the agriculture of 
 this highly progressive period was the neglect of keeping proper 
 accounts. Exact and careful book-keeping. Young urges, is the 
 only way in which one can not only demonstrate the success of an 
 experiment, but the prudence of imitating the experiments of 
 others. In the case of a gentleman who farms with the aid of a 
 bailifif, accurate book-keeping is the only satisfactory check which 
 the landowner can emp]oy in order to test his servant’s integrity. 
 The ordinary farmer, he tells us, guesses, and often with remark- 
 able accuracy, at the items and the totals, though he is unable to 
 reduce his profits to figures. But such a rule of thumb process is 
 always unsafe, and is fatal to the inexperienced. I can imagine 
 the delight with which Young would have studied the particulars 
 and the accurate balancings of a bailiffs roll in the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries, and how his preconceptions as to the rude- 
 ness of the age four or five hundred years before his time would 
 have been modified by an examination of the facts. Though the 
 farmer of the eighteenth century was far better provided with 
 agricultural appliances and far more competent for the work of 
 agriculture than his ancestor of the thirteenth, — the rent he paid 
 would be a sufficient proof if other proof were wanting, — he was, 
 I suspect, more illiterate. 
 
no 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 The fashion so prevalent of making agriculture a pursuit among 
 the wealthy landowners was stimulated in many cases by the 
 desire they felt of maintaining themselves against the new 
 aristocracy of trade. There were some mercantile callings which 
 were not beneath the reputation of cadets whose lineage was 
 ancient. It is known that in the West of England this was 
 pai-ticularly the case with the cloth trade, and that half the 
 country gentlemen in the counties where this calling was general 
 had son or cousin in the business. A brewer’s occupation was 
 also considered compatible with social rank. The advantage of 
 direct dealings with the consumers of wool and barley was 
 considerable and conciliatory. ‘‘ Wheat,” says Young, from the 
 sowing to the selling, goes through the hands of a set of pilferers, 
 whose principal business it is to steal it, as every farmer in the 
 three kingdoms knows.” But it is perfectly clear that much of 
 the rapid improvement made in agriculture from about 1720 to 
 1760 was due to the eagerness with which landowners strove to 
 improve their estates. Such a fashion could not have been mere 
 caprice. 
 
 The truth is, the gains of commerce in the first half of the 
 eighteenth century were very large. Owing to the fact that most 
 of this gain came into the hands of joint-stock companies, who 
 possessed monopolies, paid for by large advances to government, 
 enormous fortunes were made by a comparatively small number 
 of persons. The very low rate of interest which prevailed 
 throughout the same period is a proof that profits must have been 
 large, and saving, among the moneyed classes at least, general. 
 Even in those trades, however, which were not protected by the 
 monopoly of a joint-stock company under charter, the same result 
 was attained by large capitals ; and my reader will remember how 
 Walpole’s famous excise scheme, under which bonded warehouses 
 would have been established, the revenue improved, and the 
 consumer benefited, was defeated by the combination of capitalist 
 merchants. But comparatively few as the merchant princes were 
 in the beginning of the eighteenth century, they were a new body, 
 and becoming more numerous than the nobles and great landed 
 gentry. That they were new is proved by Gregory King’s estimate 
 of their income, which he sets at half that of a baronet, little more 
 
Agricultural Wages in the Eighteenth Century, ill 
 
 than an eighth that of a nobleman, and little more than a third of 
 that of a bishop at the end of the seventeenth century. In 1750, 
 it is probable that the city of London had a larger commercial 
 income than the rents of the whole House of Lords and the 
 episcopal bench. Their savings supplied the elder Pitt with his 
 enormous loans, the <£75,000,000 which he borrowed during his 
 administration, while the whole rental of England twelve years 
 after the Peace of Paris was not more than £16,000,000, and the 
 interest on the whole debt was almost one-third of the rental. 
 
 There is no period in English history in which the pride of 
 the English noble was more absorbing and more obtrusive than 
 during the time on which I am immediately commenting. It 
 betrayed itself in a thousand affectations and a thousand insolences. 
 Noble youth found a satisfaction in street outrages and indecencies, 
 noble age in vapouring about the privileges of the peers, and 
 in attempts to constitute themselves a limited order. Sometimes 
 they dreamt of passing an Act and procuring a grant for the 
 separate education of their own order in a special academy. 
 Three-fourths of them would have restored the Stuarts, from 
 sheer hatred to the moneyed men. They joined the patriots in 
 denouncing the place-men, and swallowed public money with 
 avidity ; for it is generally seen that as religion is imitated and 
 mocked by hypocrisy, so public duty is parodied by patriotism. 
 To countervail the growing interest of the city and its eagerness 
 in buying land and honours, they supported Chamberlain's Land 
 Bank, rushed into and denounced the South Sea Bubble, 
 succeeded in exacting a property qualification in land for all 
 members of the House of Commons, except the eldest sons of 
 peers, and supported what they hated against Walpole, in the 
 hopes of weakening it. But all their efforts were in vain. When 
 Walpole met his rival Pulteney on the floor of the House of 
 Lords, he described both as the two most insignificant fellows in 
 the kingdom. Pulteney got a large pension for himself and his 
 heirs, which the British public still pays, — to whom. Heaven 
 and the Paymaster- General alone know. He had been a 
 patriot. 
 
 The efibrt to improve their estates, to increase their profits, 
 and to raise their rents, was the only wholesome outcome from 
 
1 12 
 
 JVork and IVages. 
 
 this struggle. I am persuaded (on the rule that it is wise to 
 assign action to the rational and intelligible motive of self-interest 
 in matters innocent and in their effects laudable, instead of 
 postulating mere whim) that the English landowners set the 
 fashion of making the best of agriculture, because they desired 
 to make one wealth-producing agency become a rival in personal 
 interest and in popular sympathy with another. The inference 
 is obvious, that a person who makes wealth is more useful than 
 one who gets wealth. It is not clear that the man who gets 
 wealth does not destroy at least as much as he gets, and some- 
 times more, — a thief does so plainly, as society concludes. A 
 speculator often does, as those who have to purchase the materials 
 of industry discover. A hundred men live in opulence on time 
 bargains. Somebody pays for their enjoyments. There is a 
 superstition among old-fashioned economists that all parties are 
 the better for the middle man. Expeidence is gradually proving j 
 that the abstract theory is incorrect. Hence under competition ( 
 producers are getting rid of the middle man, and the modern 
 economist, who studies facts instead of spinning theories and 
 dilating on tendencies, is beginning to prove that he is generally 
 a nuisance. How that a man who wins more food from the • 
 earth is more useful than one who wins more food from some- 
 body else’s labour without offering anything solidly desirable in 
 return for his function, needs no proof. If you can entirely ^ 
 get rid of the middle man, all the better; if you cannot, it is 
 an economy which even he can hardly dispute, to narrow his ; 
 functions and to curtail his profits. ' 
 
 It is curious to see how alive Arthur Young is to this senti- '• 
 ment. He is no economist at all in the most shadowy sense of 
 the word, for he has no real conception of the harmony of 
 interests, the exposition of which is the true function of the i 
 economist. His entire sympathy is with agricultural production. I 
 Everything must lend itself to this result. The labour must be 
 cheap, whatever it cost in penury to the workman. The produce 
 must be increased by every effort of ingenuity and skill. The 
 energies of the farmer must be stimulated, and his ignorance 
 and sloth cured by a rack-rent ease. The continuity of these 
 beneficent processes must be secured by prodigal bounties on the 
 
Agricullural Wages in the Eighteenth Centmy, 1 1 3 
 
 exportation of agricultural produce and judicious restraints on its 
 importation. The great landowners have been the pioneers of 
 agricultural progress. Young is not at all a lackey. He speaks 
 plainly about the shortcomings of those landowners who do not 
 come up to his ideal. But he is so grateful to those who do that he 
 describes their houses, measures the largeness of their reception 
 rooms, and comments on their pictures as learnedly as Goldsmith’s 
 critic does in the story of his charming vicar. 
 
 The principal result which agricultural improvement exhibited 
 on such estates as were cultivated with assiduity and skill was 
 the increased stock of animals. The general adoption of root 
 crops in place of bare fallows, and the extended cultivation of 
 clover and other such plants by the use of the plough, supplied 
 the farmer with a great increase of winter feed, besides 
 materially improving its quality and sustaining powers. In 
 consequence, on abundance of fodder, abundance of stock followed. 
 But abundance of stock implied the great increase of barn -yard 
 manure, the principal fertilizer of the time, indeed of all times, on 
 the spot. So great is the increase that the farmer is in difficulty 
 as to the means by which he can adequately compost or dilute it 
 before he distributes it over his fields, and it is expedient to 
 convey the whole of the straw or stubble produced on the farm 
 to the yards. The grazing of meadows in winter time he 
 considers injurious to cattle and destructive to the pasture. But 
 the littering of cattle with straw will increase the litter in its 
 conversion into manure five-fold in quantity, and the littering 
 of pigs will increase it ten-fold. Better, he concludes, purchase 
 straw, fern, or stubble than sell a single truss. The manure was 
 mixed with earth, better still with chalk, best of all with marl. 
 A dressing of twenty loads an acre of barn -yard manure thus 
 composted will give a four years’ fertility to the land which is so 
 treated. The greatly increased produce of the eighteenth century 
 was entirely due to the increased use of natural manures. The 
 lessened price of agricultural implements had the efiect of diminish- 
 ing generally the cost of production. 
 
 Marling had now been revived, and was, relatively speaking, 
 far less costly than when it was practised in early English agri- 
 culture, as compared with the value of land; for in earlier 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 times, the expense attending it was from half the value to 
 nearly the whole value of the fee simple. In Young’s time it 
 cost from 50^. to £4: the acre. This is about twelve times 
 the average price at which the improvement was made five 
 centuries before. In Young’s day the operation cost, at the 
 value which he assigns to arable land, from one-fourth to one- 
 eighth of the fee simple. The benefit of the operation, we are 
 informed, lasts for twenty years; but, he adds, it yields no 
 advantage for the first year, and but little in the second. In the 
 third it is distinctly useful ; but most of all from the fourth to 
 the fifteenth, when its effect is nearly worn out. Soils were also 
 treated with clay, with chalk, and with lime. But the principal 
 agent in successful husbandry is stable and shed manure ; and 
 my author estimates that land properly dressed with this fertilizer, 
 and continually dressed, will yield, if the land be capable of such 
 treatment, from 40 to 48 bushels of the different kinds of corn. 
 The average produce of the fourteenth century in prosperous 
 years, and when low prices prevailed, was under 11 bushels of all 
 kinds of grain. Manure was carted from towns, but the price 
 was high and the carriage costly. The dressing of land with 
 soot, ashes, bones, malt-dust, woollen rags, and even oil-cako was 
 known ; but the price was so high, and the evidence of the 
 advantage so scanty, that the use of these articles had not yet 
 transcended the stage of experiment. 
 
 The productiveness of agriculture in the eighteenth century 
 was, it is plain, when land was properly cultivated, four times 
 that of the thirteenth, both as regards corn and stock. The 
 weight of the fatted ox was raised at least three-fold; for the 
 maximum weight in the earlier period, and even up to the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century, was 400 lbs., while in 
 Arthur Young’s time he constantly reached 1,200 lbs. A similar 
 but not so extensive an increase had taken place in sheep, while 
 the weight of the fieece had become fully four times above the 
 average of the earlier period. Now if the produce of England in 
 the middle of the fourteenth century was sufficient to feed two 
 millions and a half, that of the middle of the eighteenth was 
 sufficient for ten millions. But it is almost certain that when 
 Young wrote, the population was only seven and a half millions, 
 
Agricultural Wages in the Eighteenth Century. 1 1 5 
 
 or possibly eight. England was, therefore, a considerable corn- 
 exporting country, and would have been, even without the bounty, 
 which was, of course, a virtual addition to rent. The bounty 
 being, as was believed, a settled maxim in English policy, accounts 
 in part for the fact that land, the value of which was constantly 
 rising, sold in the beginning of the latter half of the century at 
 33| years’ purchase. 
 
 Young tells us that in his northern tour he traversed and 
 inspected more than 70,000 acres of land under cultivation, and 
 that he registered the rent of the whole. He concludes, and 
 with very good reason, that the parts which he visited are a fair 
 sample of the whole of England. He sets the acreage of the 
 whole country at thirty-two millions, a skilful calculation arrived 
 at seventy years before by Halley the astronomer, by means of a 
 most ingenious process, and only in error by about half-a-million 
 acres. The rent of the land which he visited is, good and poor 
 ( included, 10s. an acre ; and he therefore concludes that the total 
 agricultural rental of the country is £16,000,000. He continually 
 urges that this rental, especially for good land, is too low, and 
 that good husbandry and an enlightened self-interest suggest and 
 even demand a considerable exaltation of rents. There is, he says, 
 a proverb current among farmers that a man cannot pay too 
 much for good land and too little for bad ; and he illustrates his 
 proverb by showing what is the rate of production and the cost of 
 . land rented at 5^. an acre and that which is rented at 20s. He 
 makes out the profit of the former to be Ss. Sd. an acre, under the 
 best known husbandry, and that of the latter 29s. It may be 
 observed that, according to Young’s calculations, the profit of 
 the farmer, all charges deducted, is considerably in excess of the 
 rent he pays. But it is considerably less than that procured 
 under the ancient system of capitalist agriculture, or that which 
 succeeded, the land and stock lease, and even than that of the 
 short lease which followed. 
 
 Young considers it impossible that agriculture should thrive 
 except under the security of a lease. Leases in his day were 
 well-nigh universal, often with the obligation of repairs being 
 imposed on the tenant. There was no motive as yet for keeping 
 the tenant in a state of political independence. Ho tenant on 
 
ii6 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 term of years had a vote, not even a copyholder had one. The only 
 county voter was the freeholder ; and even the freeholder for life 
 would not guarantee subservience. I suspect that the Chandos 
 clause in the first Reform Bill is to a great extent answerable for 
 precarious tenancies, though the constantly rising rent of land in 
 the fifty years preceding that famous clause is more responsible 
 for the result. When the country gentlemen became passionately 
 protectionist, it was an aid to their policy that the tenant farmers ^ 
 should be not only enlisted in the same interest with themselves, 
 but should be plainly informed that their livelihood depended on 
 the interpretation which the country party chose to give of that 
 interest. 
 
 In the estimate which Young makes of the capital value of 
 agricultural wealth in England, land is put at 33| years’ purchase 
 of the rent and valued at 536 millions, farmers’ stock at nearly 
 110 millions, while house property is estimated at 100 millions. 
 
 He reckons the wheat and rye crop at over 9 millions of quarters 
 annually, that of barley at 11| millions, that of oats at 10| 
 millions. It will be seen that this estimate, which he bases on 
 the amount of those kinds of grain which he found to be 
 actually produced in the district over which he travelled, corre- 
 sponds closely with the inference which I have arrived at as to 
 the possible population which could be maintained on English 
 produce *at two periods which are separated from each other by 
 an interval of five centuries. The tithe payable from the produce 
 he estimates at 5 J millions ; and he is clearly alive to the injury 
 which a tithe in kind inflicts on progressive agriculture. The 
 whole earnings of agricultural labour are set at 14| millions, 
 shared among 836,235 persons ; or, in other words, the cost of 
 agriculture, as far as labour is concerned, is supplied at nearly 
 <£17 9s. per head of persons. The estimate includes harvest 
 labour, but not that of the tenant himself, which Young says was 
 general, and, for farmer’s profits, necessary. 
 
 The average rent of land is, he tells us, actually 9s. Wd. an 
 acre, but for the sake of convenience he puts it at 10^. In the 
 middle ages, and down to the rise in prices, it was let at not 
 more than M. an acre. The payment, therefore, made for the 
 occupation of land has risen twenty times. The average rise 
 
Agricultural Wages in the Eighteenth Century, 117 
 
 in the price of wheat is about six-and-a-half times, and the 
 average rise in the price of labour is almost exactly three- 
 and-a-half times, for the price of wheat is set at about 40^. a 
 quarter, while that of the labourer is 7 ^. Id, per week, the 
 corresponding prices in the earlier period being 6s. and 2s, ; and 
 it should be remembered that while the labourer in Young’s 
 time had his earnings of hay and harvest time included in the 
 aggregate average, the labourer of the earlier period had his 
 harvest earnings over and above. The agriculturist of the 
 eighteenth century called the forty-one weeks which remained 
 before and after the harvest period winter, when the regular 
 w^ages were about two-thirds of the better paid eleven weeks. As, 
 however, I have often said, the agricultural labourer in the first 
 half of the eighteenth century was better off than he had been 
 at any period since the fifteenth and the first half of the 
 sixteenth. 
 
 The rise in rent is the result of diffused agricultural skill. 
 The cost of production had so far diminished, that the farmer 
 could afford to pay out of the enhanced general profits twenty 
 times as much for the use of land as his ancestors did some two 
 centuries before. If the peasant’s wages had risen with the 
 general progress of that skill, in which he shared to the full with 
 the farmer, the rise in rent would have been checked. The 
 labour bill on a 500 acre farm in Young’s days, on his estimate, 
 was ^335 8s. 4d. ; the rent, .£250 ; the profit, about <£400. But 
 assuming the profit to remain the same, and the labourer to 
 have received a rise of wages at all proportionate to the rise in 
 the price of wheat, rent would have again sunk to zero. The 
 farmer’s profit is estimated at from 14 to 18 or even 20 per 
 cent, on his capital, a return, on the smallest of the figures, 
 which is sufficient to account for the popularity of agriculture 
 and for the generally prosperous condition of the farming 
 class. 
 
 Two facts exceedingly puzzle this careful statistician. He finds 
 that the local price of labour does not correspond with the 
 local dearness and cheapness of provisions, and that relatively 
 high and low wages are not connected with relatively low and 
 high poor rate^ It never seems to have struck him that the 
 
ii8 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 Law of Parochial Settlement, and the consequent temptation put 
 before the owner of a whole parish to check the local growth of 
 population, would, directly there arose a demand for labour in 
 particular localities, tend to decrease the liabilities of one district 
 and increase those of another, but that the demand for labour 
 and the consequent rise in local wages might very well go on 
 with pauperism and overcrowding. Similarly he does not in the 
 least discern the effect of the quarter sessions assessment in 
 stereotyping apathy and helplessness. What he complains of is 
 the occasional prodigality of the justices in their valuations of 
 labour and the rate at which they fix the price of the peasant's 
 contribution to the general growth of opulence. 
 
 In estimating the earnings of labour. Young gives many and 
 elaborate tables based upon a preposterous postulate, the unreality 
 of which he admits. The labourer is supposed to be in constant 
 work, and to earn the average of the three seasons, hay-time, 
 harvest-time, and winter, the latter being forty-one out of the 
 fifty-two weeks. His wife is to work in hay and harvest-time, 
 and to get six weeks' work in winter. His eldest son is to be a 
 first hand, his second an ordinary hind, his third a farmer's boy, 
 each at the average wages which such a calling supplied. One 
 of his daughters is to be a dairy-maid, and the other a common 
 maid. This family of seven are all capable of work, all at work, 
 and are all collecting their wages into a common fund. He finds 
 the average of such a family's wages to be close to .£51 Ss. a year. 
 Now it is plain that not one family in a thousand corresponded 
 at that time or afterwards to Young's hypothesis, and that, 
 therefore, the calculations based on the statement are, as regards 
 the remuneration of labour, entirely fictitious. What they do 
 represent, and as I believe accurately, is the average cost at 
 which a farmer in the Eastern Counties could procure the 
 services of seven persons in the distribution of occupations in 
 husbandry. Each of these services was necessary, and was, 
 indeed, traditional in English husbandry on the large scale from 
 the very earliest times, and they would be and could be proved 
 to be equally necessary in the economy of modern English 
 agriculture. How far the figures which Young has collected fell 
 short of the facts in the case of an agricultural labourer's 
 
Agricultural Wages in the Eighteenth Century, 119 
 
 aggregate earnings will be shown in the evidence supplied by 
 Sir Frederic Eden, on which I shall hereafter comment. 
 
 Now if any of my readers will take the pains to calculate what 
 a family of seven, engaged as Young contemplates, would have 
 received in the aggregate under the Act of 11 Hen. YII., cap. 
 22, in the year 1495, he will find that it amounts to £24 IO5., or 
 nearly one-half of that which the same persons employed in 
 identical industry received in the tenth year of George III. In 
 1495, the four-pound loaf of bread cost in 1770, 5(i. ; and 
 to take and contrast Young’s other prices with those of the 
 earlier year, butter, \d, and Id . ; cheese, ^d, and ^d , ; meat, \d, 
 and 4c?. Of these prices the first is very low, for the year 
 1495 is a very cheap year. The others are the average price for 
 the whole period of 283 years. Now if we apply the same rule to 
 bread, we should raise the price of the four-pound loaf to |c?. 
 
 If, therefore, it were the case, as it certainly was not, that 
 the same amount of labour was required to secure the produce 
 which was obtained in the eighteenth century as was needed in 
 the fifteenth, it is clear that had wages in the later period been 
 made to possess the same purchasing power which they had in 
 the earlier, the family of seven would have received, in nominal 
 or money wages, seven and a half times more than they received 
 in 1495, in order that they might obtain the same amount of the 
 necessaries of life, ^.e., £183 155. instead of £51 85. It will be 
 plain that such a rate of wages would have reduced rent first, 
 and profits afterwards, and have left no opportunity for the 
 growth of the former, except in so far as labour might be 
 economised by the increased productiveness of land at less cost, 
 by substituting mechanical for manual labour, by cheapening the 
 carriage of goods, by increasing the fertility of the soil, and by 
 improving seed and stock. All these were, except perhaps the 
 second, affected. But I do not think that any one who examines 
 the facts will doubt that much of the increase of rent which was 
 efiected in the first half of the eighteenth century, and nearly all 
 which was obtained in the seventeenth, was obtained at the 
 expense of the agricultural labourer, whose real wages were, as 
 I have shown here and elsewhere, reduced by all the difference 
 between their earlier and their later purchasing power. 
 
120 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 The advance which agriculture had made by the year 1770 was 
 great and remarkable. Tools and implements were far cheaper 
 and far better. The breeds of cattle and sheep were greatly 
 improved, threefold in many cases within living memory, and the 
 comparative cheapness of agricultural produce, a cheapness which 
 is general and fairly uniform, is proof that, apart from the con- 
 tinuous abundance of the seasons and the success of agricultural 
 operations, for a time at least production had gone ahead of 
 population. Of the character of the seasons. Young asserts that 
 a proper distribution of cultivation over the area of the farm, and 
 especially the adoption of that husbandry which recognises the 
 place of root and hay or grass crops in connection with crops of 
 corn, will practically make the farmer independent of the weather, 
 since he will get his compensation, in the vast majority of cases, 
 for what he loses in one kind of produce by what he gains in another. 
 Now I am ready to admit that much of this improvement was 
 due to the public spirit and enterprise of some who had turned 
 their attention to the good of their own estates, and (as the 
 farmer must work in the open, and has neither the inclination nor 
 the power to make a secret of a profitable process) who had benefited 
 their neighbours by the proof of their success. It is possible, if 
 wages had advanced on the same lines as rents and profits did, 
 that the margin of advantage would have been so narrowed that 
 there would have been little impulse given towards either experi- 
 ment or improvement. An industry may be discouraged by the 
 excessive cost of labour, especially when the product is of optional 
 use. But the production of food is not so much afiected by these 
 considerations, at any rate in the same degree, as long as rent 
 exists and profits are large. 
 
 When there were seasons of great abundance and, consequently, 
 of low prices, there was general complaint on the part of the 
 landed interest, who considered, because nature was propitious and 
 prices were low, that the country had become poor. We are told 
 that in the few cheap years in the first half of the seventeenth 
 century the tenants could not pay their rents, and that land was 
 reduced in value from twenty to sixteen or seventeen years* 
 purchase. The abundance of the seasons between 1666 and 1671 
 led to the prohibitive Act of 22 Chas. II., cap. 13, under which a 
 
Agricultural Usages m the Eighteenth Century, 12 1 
 
 duty of 16s. id. was imposed on wheat as long as it was below 
 53s. 4d. a quarter, and one of 8s. when it was below 80^. The 
 Act which was intended to keep up prices, failed of its effects, for 
 the prices again became low. In order further to secure high 
 prices and full rents, a bounty of 5^. a quarter, when the price did 
 not exceed 485., was granted immediately after the Kevolution. To 
 the operation of these two enactments the scientific agriculturists, 
 who affected to discuss the economic bearings of husbandry on the 
 growth of opulence, ascribed the development of agriculture in the 
 eighteenth century and the plenty of its produce. It is probable that 
 the belief in the efficacy of these legislative remedies led to the very 
 numerous enclosures which begin under the authority of Parlia- 
 ment in the reign of Anne, under which, in the eighteenth century, 
 nearly 3,000,000 acres were enclosed, and in the nineteenth, up to 
 1854, nearly 6,000,000 more. The amount so enclosed is more than 
 one-third of the whole cultivable surface of England and Wales. 
 
 The seven barren years at the conclusion of the seventeenth 
 century were long noted for the distress of the people and for the 
 exalted profits of the farmer, as they probably gave occasion to the 
 celebrated law of Gregory King, that when there ensues a scarcity 
 in^anAfeplute necessary of life, and the quantity falls off in an 
 arithmetical ratio, the price is exalted in a geometrical one. But 
 when prices fell, as they did in the period between 1715 and 1765, 
 there was a general outcry of agricultural distress, which, when it 
 comes to be analysed, is always resolved into the shrinkage of the 
 landlord's rent. Koblemen and country gentlemen demanded the 
 aid of the legislature in order to enable the farmers to pay their 
 rents. In eleven years nearly .£2,000,000 were paid in bounties. 
 But much new land was brought under tillage, and the price of 
 labour, as I have said, rose twenty per cent. Mr. Malthus 
 accounted for the rise characteristically, by alleging that there 
 was no proportionate increase of the population, for that the 
 English people, having now achieved a notable increase in the real 
 wages which they received, decidedly elevated the standard of 
 their comforts and conveniences. It is doubtful whether moral or 
 prudential reasons had much to do with the matter. Wages are 
 alvrays, both in nominal amount and in real power, greater when 
 food and the other conveniences of life are cheap ; and the demand 
 
J22 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 for labour was receiving an additional stimulus from improvements 
 in agriculture and the increasing area of land which was taken 
 into cultivation. But whatever may have been the cause, a 
 reverse was near at hand. 
 
 Up to 1765, England has been an exporting country in divers 
 agricultural products. Subsequently it became an importing 
 country. It was supposed to have suffered this change from the 
 fact that the population increased rapidly. The view is untenable 
 on two grounds. In the first place, an increase of population 
 cannot take place at a bound ; in the next, it has always been 
 found that a time of distress, when food is dear, checks population. 
 Undoubtedly after the Peace of Paris an extraordinary development 
 of English trade occurred. The colonial empire of England was 
 doubled, and the monopoly of the trade, according to the accredited 
 policy of the age, was conferred on English shippers and merchants. 
 Undoubtedly, too, the manufacture of textile fabrics took a great 
 start, the production of them being cheapened and the market for 
 them widened by the successful application of machinery to the 
 process. But the displacement of industries must have produced 
 much local suffering, and the check to population which this loss 
 of revenue induced must have more than counterbalanced the 
 miserable stimulus given to it by the increased demand for the 
 labour of the young. In the long run, labour has gained by the 
 inventions of Arkwright, of Watt, and of Cartwright, but the 
 process which preceded the gain was accompanied by profound 
 suffering, part of which, to the benefit of all parties, was remedied 
 by the prohibitive regulations of a later time. 
 
 The seasons from 1765 were as generally unpropitious as those 
 up to that period were abundant; and in 1773, the opponents 
 of the existing corn law secured the alteration of the Act of 1671. 
 By this law importation was permitted at a quarter, when 
 wheat was at or above 48^., and the bounty was to cease when 
 it was at or above 44^. Bat whenever the seasons happened 
 to be abundant, the old cry was raised that landlords were 
 distressed and farmers ruined. As a consequence, in 1791, a new 
 corn law was enacted, under which a very heavy duty was imposed 
 while wheat was below 50^., though it was slight when the price 
 rose above this amount. But the general scarcity of these later 
 
Agricultural Wages in the Eighteenth Century, 123 
 
 years produced its effect on rent. Arthur Young, writing more 
 than forty years after the date of his celebrated tours, comments 
 on the singular and rapid rise in rent which took place after 1782, 
 and the development of competition for occupancy. The landlords 
 were alarmed at their own good fortune, and for a time hesitated 
 to take advantage of it ; but tenants rushed into the occupation 
 of husbandry, which was thenceforward highly profitable when 
 scarcity ruled, as was the case generally till 1820, and was corre- 
 spondingly depressed when occasional abundance intervened. 
 
 After the deficient harvest of 1795, wheat rose to 104^. a 
 quarter, and remained at that amount, or near it, for a whole year. 
 It was during this time that Sir Frederick Eden collected his 
 evidence as to the wages of labour and the cost of maintenance. 
 The facts are in remarkable contrast to the hypothetical earnings 
 which are drawn up with such fulness by Arthur Young. It 
 must be admitted that the Government of the day adopted very 
 active measures against the dearth. They seized all neutral ships 
 laden with corn and bound for France, and compelled them to 
 discharge their cargoes at English ports, and at a handsome profit 
 to their owners. They ofiered a bounty of from I 65 . to <£1 on 
 imported corn. But the scarcity was universal, extending even 
 to the United States, though the barren lands of the eastern and 
 central states could never have been relied on for any great 
 amount. The two Houses of Parliament signed an engagement 
 to reduce their domestic consumption by at least one- third, and 
 the distillation of corn spirits was prohibited. Many of the poor 
 perished by want, and nearly all persons were stinted. But it 
 was a time of great prosperity to the landed interest, — to the 
 landlords, whose rents were rapidly rising, and to the farmers, who 
 were realising enormous gains during the currency of their leases. 
 The deficiency was variously calculated at from one-fifth to one- 
 third short of an average crop. 
 
 During the first two months of the year 1796, Eden collected 
 the amount of wages actually earned by families engaged in 
 agricultural labour in difierent parts of England, many of them 
 being records of 1795 wages. Five are taken from Clopshill, in 
 Beds ; four from a village near Carlisle ; four from Buckden, in 
 Hunts ; six from Hinksworth, in Herts ; four from Kegworth, 
 
124 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 in Leicester ; four from Lincolnshire parishes ; four from Diss, in 
 orfolk ; five from Northampton ; six from near Oxford ; six 
 from Sufiblk ; four from Stogursey, in Somerset ; and one from 
 Yorkshire, — fifty-three in all. The collective earnings of these 
 families average 11s, 9d, a week in Beds, ranging from 9s. to 
 14^. 6d. ; and these wages fall short of their expenditure, poor 
 enough, by an average of £3 155. 9d.y though a part of this 
 deficiency is made up by harvest earnings. 
 
 At Carlisle the average earnings are IO 5 . for the whole family 
 and the average deficiency in the whole is £3 25. 4c?. In Hunts 
 the average wages are 05. 3c?., and the average deficiency £2 155. 4c?. 
 The six families in Herts earn an average of 125. 6|c?., but their 
 necessary expenditure exceeds their receipts by an average of 
 £22 35. 6|c?. The average earnings of two families in Leicester 
 are 135. 9c?., and the average deficiency is d618 O 5 . 3|c?. In one 
 family in Lindsey the earnings are II 5 . 6c?., the expenditure in 
 excess of wages being £21 I 85 . 4c?. ; another family is only Is. 4c?. 
 short, but the wages of man, wife, and child are only II 5 . 3c?., and 
 the family live on bread alone. In the case of three Norfolk 
 families, the total earnings are II 5 . 3c?., and the average deficiency 
 £1Z II 5 . 4c?. In Northants, four families earn an average of 
 IO 5 . 7|c?., but are on an average £3 155. short in the year. The 
 six Oxfordshire families earn an average of 125. 10c?., the total 
 being heightened by one household, in which three boys earn 
 nearly as much as their father does. Here the average deficiency 
 is £3 5s, 9c?. In Sufiblk, four families, in each of which the 
 children conti ibute largely to the earnings, the average wages are 
 155.. Ic?., and the average deficiency £12 135. 6c?., which in these 
 cases is slightly lessened by harvest wages. In Somerset, four 
 families earn an average of 85 . 9|c?., and their annual expenses 
 exceed their annual income by an average of £11 35. 10c?. The 
 Yorkshire labourer is worst ofi. His own earnings are under 65 . 
 a week, his wife’s a little over I 5 ., and his child’s an infinitesimal 
 sum. His expenses exceed his income by £12 135. a year, though 
 his fare is the humblest conceivable. I have taken those rates of 
 wages only which were paid in 1795 and 1796. Between 1792 
 and 1795 such provisions as these labourers could procure had risen 
 by about 125 per cent. The poor rate rose to £4,000,000, and yet 
 
Agricultural Wages in the Eighteenth Century, 125 
 
 the people were starving. Mr. Porter has acutely observed, that 
 in years of dearth, in which the largest sums have been expended 
 on the poor, the amount estimated in wheat is the lightest borne 
 by the community. He has inferred, indeed, that this is right, 
 that the poor in seasons of dearth should suffer with those by 
 whom they are supported, and feel the inconvenience which the 
 niggardliness of nature has put upon the whole community. The 
 inference is just, if it be also true that the position which they 
 occupy is one which they have chosen for themselves, and for 
 which they are therefore responsible. 
 
 The examination of the facts shows that this was not the case. 
 We have been able to trace the process by which the condition of 
 English labour had been continuously deteriorated by the acts of 
 government. It was first impoverished by the issue of base money. 
 Next it was robbed of its guild capital by the land thieves of 
 Edward’s regency. It was next brought in contact with a new 
 and more needy set of employers — the sheep-masters who succeeded 
 the monks. It was then, with a pretence, and perhaps with the* 
 intention, of kindness, subjected to the quarter sessions assessment, 
 mercilessly used in the first half of the seventeenth century, the 
 agricultural labourer being still further impoverished by being 
 made the residuum of all labour. The agricultural labourer was 
 then further mulcted by enclosures, and the extinction of those 
 immemorial rights of pasture and fuel which he had enjoyed so 
 long. The poor law professed to find him work, but was so- 
 administered that the reduction of his wages to a bare subsistence 
 became an easy process and an economical expedient. When the 
 monarchy was restored, his employers, who fixed his wages by 
 their own authority, relieved their own estates from their ancient 
 dues at the expense of his poor luxuries by the excise, tied him ta 
 the soil by the Law of Settlement, and starved him by a pro- 
 hibitive corn law. The freedom of the few was bought by the- 
 servitude of the many. Eletcher of Saltoun, an ardent republican 
 for a narrow class, suggested hopeless slavery as the proper doom 
 of the labourers, argued that the people existed only to work, and 
 that philosophical politicians should have the power to limit their 
 existence by labour. Throughout the eighteenth century the 
 most enlightened men gave the poor their pity, occasionally their 
 
126 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 patronage, sometimes would assist them at the cost of other 
 workers ; but beyond a bare existence, never imagined that they 
 had rights or remembered that they had suffered wrongs. The 
 weight of taxation fell on them in every direction, and with 
 searching severity. It was necessary to find funds at all risks and 
 from every source, and it is obvious that the most fruitful source 
 of taxation is that of necessary consumption and cheap luxuries. 
 It was, of course, impossible to tax the absolute necessaries of the 
 individual workman, else he would starve and perish. But the 
 process left him nothing but a bare subsistence. The interpreta- 
 tion of his wages is always incomplete unless one takes into 
 ;account the virtual reduction which taxation made of them ; and 
 to know this would require an exact and searching analysis of the 
 .customs and excise, and of their incidence. Even this would be 
 insufficient, because to adequately interpret the situation we 
 should have to estimate the privation of enforced abstinence, as 
 well as the contribution of universal taxation, and measure the 
 labourer's losses not only by what he consumed but by what he 
 was forced to abstain from consuming. And withal the existing 
 condition of things bred and strengthened that mean and 
 malignant passion for profiting by the miseries of others which 
 became the policy of the landed interest, and to some extent even 
 now remains a dominant hope in the minds of landlords and 
 farmers. To crown the whole, the penalties of felony and 
 conspiracy were denounced against all labourers who associated 
 together to better their lot by endeavouring to sell their labour in 
 concert, while the desperation which poverty and misery induce, 
 and the crime they suggest, were met by a code more sanguinary 
 and brutal than any which a civilized nation had ever heretofore 
 devised or a high-spirited one submitted to. 
 
 Such was the education which the English workman received 
 from those evil days, when the government employed and developed 
 the means for oppressing and degrading him. It is no marvel 
 that he identifies the policy of the landowner, the farmer, and 
 the capitalist employer with the machinery by which his lot has 
 been shaped, and his fortunes, in the distribution of national 
 wealth, have been controlled. He may have no knowledge, or a 
 very vague knowledge, as to the process by which so strange, so 
 
Agricultural Wages in the Eighteenth Century, 127 
 
 woeful an alteration has been made in his condition. But there 
 exists, and always has existed, a tradition, obscure and uncertain, 
 but deeply seated, that there was a time when his lot was 
 happier, his means more ample, his prospects more cheerful, 
 than they have been in more modern experience. From one 
 point of view, the analyst of the good old times may be able 
 to show that life was shorter, disease more rife, the market of 
 food more unsteady, the conveniences and comforts of life fewer 
 and more precarious than they now are. From another point of 
 view, and that by far the most accurate and exact, the relative 
 position of the workman was one of far more hope and far more 
 plenty in the days of the Plantagenets than it has been in those 
 of the House of Hanover ; that wages were, relative to their 
 purchasing power, far higher, and the margin of enjoyable income 
 over necessary expenditure was in consequence far wider. 
 
 The remarkable fact in the history and sentiments of the 
 English workman is that he is neither socialist nor anarchist. 
 He believes, and rightly believes, that in the distribution of the 
 reward of labour his share is less than it might be, than it ought 
 to be, and that some means should be discovered by which the 
 unequal balance should be rectified. He does not indeed detect 
 the process by which this advantage can be secured to him, and 
 relies, though doubtfully, upon certain expedients by which he 
 thinks he can extort better terms. He has good reason for 
 believing that he can gain his ends, in some degree at least, by 
 association with his fellows ; for he cannot have forgotten how 
 angrily any action of his in this direction has for centuries been 
 resented and punished, and how even now it is assailed by 
 sophistical and interested criticism. But he has never dreamed 
 of making war on capital or capitalist. In his most combative 
 temper he has simply desired to come to terms with capital, and 
 to gain a benefit by the harmonious working of a binding treaty 
 between himself and his employer. He is wise in his contention, 
 though not always wise in his strategy. 
 
 Food and the materials of industry constitute the capital of a 
 community, of which money is the symbol. Labour is engaged, 
 whether of head or hand, in replacing the former as it is consumed, 
 and of imparting utility to the latter. The produce of the 
 
128 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 former is that upon which all subsist, those by whom it is 
 procured and those who, by one plea or another, are able to make 
 good their claim to a portion in the common stock. All who are 
 engaged in industry strive to complete their work in the briefest 
 and easiest manner. The employer of labour works as truly as 
 the peasant and artizan, with head and hand, though in a 
 different manner. His principal function, as far as the common 
 interest is concerned, is to interpret the means by which labour 
 may be continuously employed. When the product is secured 
 and exchanged, always ultimately for food and other necessa- 
 ries and conveniences, this question is always arising. What is 
 the share, all expenses being deducted, which the employers 
 shall have on the one hand, and labourers on the other, of the 
 residue ? The quarrel between capital and labour, as it is called, 
 but, as it would be more accurately styled, between employer and 
 employes, is. What is the amount of the share each should have 
 in profits and wages ? For centuries the law and the government 
 nterposed on the side of the employer in order to lessen the 
 a tourer’s share. For a very long period, two centuries, the efforts 
 of aw and government were unsuccessful. At last they gained 
 their object, and gradually reduced the labourers’ share to a bare 
 subsistence, so bare that in order to get their necessary work from 
 him they supplemented his wages by a tax on the general public, 
 as they do in a less degree to this day. The worst time, however, 
 in the whole history of English labour was beginning when 
 Eden collected the facts which he gives us as to the labourer’s earn- 
 ings. This condition of things was continued for twenty-five years. 
 
 The farmers competed against each other for occupancies, 
 and constantly offered higher rents, which the enforced cheapness 
 of their labourers’ wages enabled them to pay, and the necessities 
 of the public artificially created by the corn laws enabled them to 
 increase. They made common cause with the landlord, and 
 worked against the interests of the labourer and the general 
 public, the body of consumers. They saw that if they pledged 
 themselves to higher rents, they must needs procure the means by 
 lowering the cost of what they produced and by heightening ifcs 
 price. They achieved the former by driving wages down to a 
 bare subsistence, and the latter by maintaining an artificial dearth 
 
Agricultural Wages in the Eighteenth Century. 129 
 
 Now it is plain that contracts founded on such unnatural 
 conditions were certain, sooner or later, to bring mischief on 
 those who agieed to them. It was certain that at an early 
 period the nation would resent the existence of laws which were 
 designed to stint them. It was certain that manufacturers and 
 traders, now secure of a foreign market, if trade were open to 
 them, would demand that they should be able to sell their goods 
 for that which the people would always readily consume, and 
 would, therefore, be the best and safest object of exchange. It 
 was probable that workmen would not be for ever content to 
 accept nothing but a bare subsistence, and that they would seek 
 to extricate themselves from so ungrateful a position. But the 
 vitality of the old system was singular. It took the active 
 agitation of a quarter of a century before free trade in food was 
 granted. The labourer, unused to the action which springs from 
 the consciousness of a common purpose, even when the liberty of 
 union was given him, was too ignorant and too apathetic to use 
 that force of combination which his ancestors five centuries 
 before had employed with such efiect. He fied from his calling. 
 Other and better paid industries hired him from the farmyard 
 and the harvest field, sometimes, indeed, to his ultimate injury. 
 The most enterprising sought in the United States and the 
 colonies a future which was denied them here. 
 
 But though there was a shrinkage on both sides in the quality 
 and quantity of labour, in the price of certain farm products, 
 and in the profits of agriculture, rents went on steadily increasing. 
 It was an open secret that even when these enhanced rents were 
 being paid, the farming class had so narrow, a margin of profits 
 that even slight reverses would become serious. It was known 
 that agricultural capital had greatly diminished, and that the 
 cultivation of the soil was gradually becoming slovenly and 
 imperfect. At last the crisis came, and the foolish payment 
 of excessive rent, and the equally foolish receipt of excessive rent, 
 have led to disasters in English agriculture to which there is no 
 parallel in the annals of that industry. The case is made worse 
 by the fact that there appears to be no prospect of an early and 
 vigorous recovery, even though much rent is sacrificed. 
 
 9 
 
CHAPTEK VL 
 
 VfAGES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The Rate of Wages and the Price of Food — Pressure on the Operatives in 
 Factories anu the Weavers —Machine Breaking — The Manufacturing 
 Districts worst off — Causes raising Wages — These not Operative till 
 Late — Difficulties in the formation of Labour Partnerships and their 
 Management — The Competition of Capitalists, and its Effects on 
 Labour — Recent Events— Effects of a Relaxation of Foreign Tariffs — 
 The Depreciated Currency of the War — Abrogation of the Quarter 
 Sessions Assessment — The Allowance System — Illustrations of its 
 Working — The Abolition of Compulsory Apprenticeship — The Defence 
 of Apprenticeship — The Objection to it — The Cost of the War — Hostility 
 of Capitalists to the Workmen’s Advance — Their Sinister Predictions — 
 Animosity felt by the Workman towards the Combination Laws — 
 Hume’s Committee — The Union — The Agricultural Labourer— History 
 of his Wages and the Poor Law — The Factory Acts not extended to 
 the Children of Peasants — Agricultural Gangs — Mr. Girdlestone — 
 Joseph Arch — The Difficulties of an Agricultural Labourers’ Union — 
 The Work of the Primitive Methodists — The Attitude of the Farmers 
 Erroneous — The Moral Education of Labour Partnerships — The Present 
 Position of Agriculture. 
 
 D UEING the first twenty years of the nineteenth century, the 
 price of wheat was on an average 985 . 6d, a quarter, i,e., 16*4 
 times the rate which prevailed on an average for the 280 years in 
 which there was practically no variation in money values, beyond 
 those which arose from exceptional scarcity. In the year 1800, 
 when the working man was within the range of this extraordinary 
 exaltation in the price of his food, the average wages of artizans 
 were I 85 . a week in London. They gradually rose by about 75 
 per cent, during the years of dearth, being generally highest in 
 the years which were characteristically dear. When greater 
 plenty prevailed, they fell. In the country they were about 
 one- third less than they were in London. It does not appear 
 that artizans had their wages supplemented by the allowance 
 
Wages in the Nineteenth Century, 
 
 13 ^ 
 
 system, for when, in 1824, Lord John Russell moved for a 
 committee to inquii-e into the consequences of a practice which 
 had now become general, and drew his motion in such general 
 terms as to include all kinds of labour, Mr. Peel objected that the 
 reference to the committee would include superfluous subjects, 
 and, in consequence, the inquiry was limited to agricultural 
 wages. 
 
 These wages, which I shall refer to more particularly, in so far 
 as evidence is forthcoming, further on in this chapter, were 
 largely supplemented by parish allowances. The maximum sum 
 expended in the relief of the poor under the old law was in 1818, 
 when it was nearly eight millions, or lo5. ^d. per head of the 
 population. The factory hand was even worse off than the 
 labourer, and, as machinery was gradually being introduced into 
 the manufacture of textile fabrics, the hand-loom weaver was 
 worst off of all. Great as was the demand for labour under the 
 new system, it was, unfortunately, not countervailed by an 
 increase of real wages, hardly of nominal wages, for the demand 
 was for both sexes and nearly all ages. But the severest penury 
 fell on those who had been, in the older days of manufacture, the 
 specially skilled artizans in textile fabrics, for the effect of 
 machinery is to reduce labour as much as possible to the functions 
 of attention and guidance. The weavers, therefore, who either 
 could not or would not accommodate themselves to the new order 
 of things, suffered the direst reverses. It was no wonder that 
 they looked on machinery with the profoundest hostility, that 
 riots and machine-breaking- were frequent, and that the bitterest 
 animosities were engendered. Thus in 1811-12, stocking and 
 lace frames had been applied to the staple manufactures of 
 Nottingham, and the discontented labourers, foreseeing or 
 fancying that their livelihood would be imperilled, broke into 
 houses and destroyed frames. The legislature thereupon passed 
 an Act inflicting, as usual, the punishment of death on the 
 frame-breakers. The Act only lasted two years; but on the 
 occasion of its second reading. Lord Byron warmly attacked it, 
 and recommended that if the Act were carried, it should be so 
 amended as to provide that the jury should always consist of 
 twelve butchers, and that a judge of 'he temper of Jefferys 
 
132 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 should be always engaged to preside in the court. Such a judge 
 would not have been hard to find at that time. 
 
 It is easy to prove that the great movement of modern days^ 
 the employment of mechanical in the place of human forces, 
 operates ultimately in cheapening produce and in bettering the 
 wages of labour. But until that is brought about, the producers 
 on the old lines may be subjected to severe privations. Nay, 
 unless precautions are taken against the abuse of labour on the 
 part of employers, it is very possible that the mass of those who 
 w^ork under the new system may sink into a lower position than 
 that which they previously occupied when they were engaged 
 with the old. The efficiency of labour may, by the use of 
 mechanical expedients, be greatly enhanced, but unless the 
 demand for labour is simultaneously enlarged, the profits of the 
 employer may be increased enormously, while the wages of the 
 workmen may even be lessened. Such a result may be further 
 assisted by the temporary monopoly of patents. That the 
 patents of Arkwright and Peel secured enormous fortunes for 
 these inventors or purchasers of inventions we all know, that 
 they ultimately cheapened production is equally clear ; that they 
 gave England well-nigh a monopoly in the supply of textile 
 fabrics, is as manifest ; but it does not strictly follow that the 
 English workman was better paid. The handloom weaver was 
 undoubtedly impoverished, but I do not find that the machine 
 weaver bettered his position. His wages remained low, his 
 means were even more straitened, and the misery of the manu- 
 facturing districts was even greater than that of the agricultural. 
 
 There are three processes by which the wages of artizans may 
 be increased concurrently with the adoption and development of 
 mechanical appliances. Any of these has its effect on the 
 fortunes of labour, and as they have worked together, though at 
 a comparatively recent period, they have had a marked influence 
 on their wages, in results which can be clearly traced. They are 
 restraints imposed by law on the employment of labour ; restraints 
 imposed by the joint action of labourers ; and the competition of 
 capitalists as producers. Further, since the existence of such 
 restraints and such a competition sharpen those inventive 
 faculties which are ever on the look out for the means by which 
 
Wages in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 133 
 
 the process of production is cheapened, and when, in addition to 
 these causes, there is the further stimulant of a market restricted 
 by the policy of other countries, and therefore only open under 
 the conditions of such a further cheapening as will enable the 
 product to get over the barrier of foreign protection, the most 
 powerful stimulants are applied to mechanical intelligence and 
 productive invention. 
 
 Now for the early part of the nineteenth century, for nearly 
 the first half of it, these conditions did not exist concurrently 
 with the development of mechanical appliances. There was no 
 control put on the employment of the young in any calling, 
 and the manufacturer who had cheapened his production by 
 the introduction of machinery could add to his profits by the 
 employment of children in that kind of work which, under an 
 earlier system, was carried on by adults. He could further, the 
 poverty of workmen assisting the silence of law, make a saving 
 by paying his wages, in part at least, by tallies on a shop which 
 belonged to himself, and could add the profits of retail trade to 
 the profits of cheap labour. The Factory Acts, which prohibited 
 the employment of some persons altogether, and regulated the 
 hours during which some other persons could be employed, 
 increased the wages of labour absolutely and relatively, and, as 
 has been shown, without diminishing, as also did the prohibition 
 of the truck or tally system, the legitimate profits of the 
 employer. The restraints which could be imposed by the joint 
 action of labourers, though legally possible at an earlier date, 
 were very slow in their operation. The illegal combination, 
 branded as a conspiracy and sometimes treated as a felony, was 
 certain to resort to violent action when its aims were thwarted, 
 and in the earlier days of its imperfect legality constantly out- 
 raged the liberty which it purposed to secure. The trade unions 
 of the earlier period had very much to unlearn, in that they 
 were to substitute confidence for distrust, prudence and judgment 
 for haste and rash action, conciliation for force, foresight for 
 passion, and a careful interpretation of their powers in place of 
 headlong vengeance for the wrongs which they conceived that 
 they were still suffering. They who try to combine individual 
 forces and purposes, and to substitute joint-stock action, mth its 
 
134 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 methodical subservience to a central authority, for independent 
 action, find that they may make serious errors before they 
 discover the proper use of the new powers which they are 
 wielding. The founders of the Bank of England collected sub- 
 scriptions from their shareholders, and applied them with all the 
 judgment they possessed in a novel way to trade and finance. 
 During the first twenty years of its existence the managers of 
 the Bank committed errors which, had it not been for the great 
 commercial and political value of the institution, would have been 
 fatal to its existence. The errors and failures of joint-stock 
 enterprise have been incessant and disastrous. The railway 
 passenger in England would be providing ample dividends to the 
 shareholders in those companies if he paid a halfpenny a mile on 
 the most convenient conveyance, had not these undertakings been 
 permanently burdened, and their nominal capital increased three- 
 fold by the blunders of those who projected them, by the rapine 
 of those who gave them a legal status, and by the follies and 
 recklessness of those who have managed them. 
 
 But no undertaking requires more care, more prudence, more 
 tact, more patience, more watchfulness, than the application of 
 the joint-stock principle to labour. In the first place, persons 
 whose means are exceedingly slender have to make a sacrifice for 
 an object highly advantageous if it can be secured, but the 
 success of which is always problematical and generally doubtful. 
 In the next, they have to surrender their judgment to the deter- 
 mination of those who have to interpret the most difficult 
 of problems, — the question whether the market for labour will 
 bear the cessation of labour. My readers are aware that the 
 leaders and managers of labour partnerships have very rarely 
 formed a correct estimate of the powers at their disposal, and the 
 powers which they strive to resist and overcome, for the immediate 
 object of a strike has only occasionally been obtained. In the 
 next, they who combine for these ends have the mortification of 
 knowing and seeing that their sacrifices and labours in the 
 machinery of their organization are made by a small portion of 
 the order to which they belong, while the benefit of their action, 
 if it be successful, is shared by those who decline to participate in 
 the movement, and even take advantage of the occasion to baffle 
 
IVages m the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 135 
 
 those who assert, and with perfect sincerity, that they are 
 labouring for the common good of all their fellows. I do not 
 wonder that passion and violence have in past times accompanied 
 the action of trade unions, when the promoters and members of 
 them have felt that they were thwarted, not by the resistance 
 of employers, but by the selfishness, as they hold it, of those who 
 profit by their policy and take advantage of them in the crisis of 
 their struggles. 
 
 The third cause which has affected favourably the position of 
 labour and wages is the competition of capitalists, aggravated, 
 though not perhaps adversely afiected, by tfee restrictions put on 
 foreign markets. This competition is rendered intense by the 
 occurrence from time to time of exceptional demand and of real or 
 imaginary scarcities. Thus the waste of wealth and the demand 
 for foreign products consequent upon the civil war in America 
 added largely to the permanent industries of this country, and 
 induced the investment of great masses of capital in undertakings 
 from which the capital could not be extricated or the capitalist 
 disengage himself. Within ten years of this event, a war, brief in 
 its duration but exceedingly destructive and dislocating, occurred in 
 Europe. By a financial blunder of the gravest kind, the vanquished 
 nation was called upon to pay a vast ransom to the victor. This, 
 a new capital, was at once thrown on the market, and beyond 
 doubt Germany paid, in enhanced prices and inflated but unsafe 
 activity, far more than she exacted. Now the waste of wealth, 
 which had to be restored by foreign imports in the one country, 
 and the vast exaltation of prices, which for a time levelled the 
 dam of protection in the other, called other masses of English 
 capital into active and permanent investments for such industries 
 as were stimulated at the time. Hence, with increasing produc- 
 tion, we hear of declining profits and unremunerative trade. But, 
 on the whole, wages have not declined. The phenomenon, often 
 adverted to in these pages, that a time of low prices is a time of 
 good wages, has been exhibited during the last ten years. I make 
 no doubt that there are compensations. It is admitted that the 
 efficiency of labour in attention, rapidity, and exactness keeps 
 pace with the growing perfection of the machinery which it 
 manipulates ; that the special skill of the mill-hand is getting 
 
136 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 more marked and complete ; and that, perhaps, were it not for 
 the increasing number of those who share in the employers^ profit, 
 the cheapening of the process would more than compensate for the 
 cheapness of the product. 
 
 Undoubtedly, if a relaxation of foreign tariffs were to take 
 place, this concurrent efficiency of machinery and labour in 
 England, which, as far as I can observe, is far greater than in any 
 country which I have visited, would be followed by a large 
 increase of profits, and, relatively speaking, a far larger increase of 
 wages. At present I believe that the workmen of this country, 
 speaking of them in the mass, are better paid than those of any 
 other settled and fully peopled community, if one takes into 
 account not merely the money wages which they earn, but the 
 power which these wages have over commodities. But the 
 rise is entirely of the last thirty years, and, unfortunately, it has 
 not been shared by all in equal proportion, while the case of some 
 has been rendered worse. 
 
 The distress of the English workman during the earlier years 
 of the nineteenth century was heightened by the issue of a depre- 
 ciated paper currency. The history of that depreciation, the 
 causes which brought it about, and the consequences which 
 followed from it, have been told so exactly and so exhaustively by 
 Mr. Tooke, that, in my opinion, that branch of monetary science 
 which is concerned with the functions of paper currency has had 
 no substantial addition to it since he wrote, though one frequently 
 meets with the heresies and the fallacies which this acute writer 
 detected or refuted by anticipation. The effects of the depreciated 
 currency fell, as usual, with more severity on labour, and on those 
 generally who had small incomes, than it did on those who could 
 interpret the discount on the currency, and make a profit by their 
 interpretation. In 1813, the premium on gold — ^.6., the deprecia- 
 tion of the paper — was nearly thirty per cent., and nominal wages 
 were therefore in reality little more than two-thirds of their 
 reputed value. The injury which was done to all was made a 
 pretext for continuing the mischief beyond the time in which it 
 could have been removed ; but it has often been found to be the 
 case in the economical history of England that a demonstrated 
 wrong has been defended and its continuance supported on the 
 
Wages in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 137 
 
 plea that to do justice to the many would indict a loss on the 
 ( few. 
 
 In 1814, the quarter sessions assessment and the compulsory 
 I apprenticeship enacted by the Act of Elizabeth were abrogated. 
 They had done their work thoroughly, and the regulation of the 
 labourers* wages had been so completely successful that they 
 were made mechanically to follow the price of food — a sure proof 
 that wages are down to the level of subsistence. Thenceforward 
 they were regulated by the farmers and the employers. There 
 had been symptoms already that the justices were a little too 
 considerate of the labourers* necessities. Besides, the Speenham- 
 land Act, as it was called, of 1795, had authorized the allowance 
 system, under which the employer of labour paid half the wages, 
 and the ratepayers, employers or not, contributed the other half. 
 
 I The farmers, therefore, had only to meet together, when wheat 
 was IOO 5 . a quarter, and meat by the carcase was 7|cZ. a pound 
 (having been less than half the price twenty years before), 
 and agree that they would pay their workmen a shilling a day, 
 with the rider that the rest of the public should pay him another 
 shilling, which they took care to assess, collect, and distribute at 
 their discretion. It is no wonder that, except in the fact thal 
 the breadth of arable land was greatly increased, and that 
 locally certain improvements were made in the breed of sheep, 
 very little real progress was made in agriculture during the sixty 
 years between 1780 and 1840. The Board of Agriculture, over 
 which Young presided with such efficiency and diligence, was 
 dissolved, and agriculture has never since, unfortunately, been 
 I made the object of a department of State. For some unexplained 
 I reason, the political party which has had the principal manage- 
 I ment of public affairs since the first Beform Bill has always been 
 j averse to the revival of this department, and their rivals, who are 
 perpetually talking about the necessity for it when out of office, 
 have as strangely neglected to renew it when they have been in. 
 
 Vicious, demoralizing, and unjust as the allowance system was 
 in principle, it occasionally gave an opportunity to individuals 
 who had sufficient prudence and thrift to make use of it. In 
 my native village in Hampshire, I well remember two instances 
 of agricultural labourers who raised themselves through the 
 
138 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 machinery of the allowance system to the rank and fortunes of 
 small yeomen. Both had large families, and both practised a bye 
 industry. The village was peculiar in its social character, for 
 there was not a tenant-farmer in it, all being freeholders or copy- 
 holders. The rector was opulent and generous, and there were a 
 few persons of some private means in the parish. But, on the 
 whole, the rates and the allowances came from the resources of 
 occupying owners, and were, therefore, the contribution of the 
 vestry from its own resources, the only non-employers being one 
 or two humble tradesmen, the rector, and a country gentleman, 
 whose house and grounds were not a hundred acres in extent. 
 There was no poverty in the whole place. Most of the labourers 
 baked their own bread, brewed their own beer, kept pigs and 
 poultry, and had half-an-acre or an acre to till for themselves as 
 part of their hire. But they had regulated wages, and, when 
 their families were large, allowances. There were not infrequent 
 sales of land in the village, as families came to an end, but rarely 
 in large quantities. The rector built extensively, parsonage, 
 schools, and finally church, from his own means, and, therefore, 
 employment was pretty general. The village mason became a 
 considerable yeoman. But the two labourers of whom I am 
 speaking had their allowances, lived on their fixed wages with the 
 profits of their bye labour, one being pig-killer to the village, 
 and, therefore, always busy from Michaelmas to Lady-day, at a 
 shilling a pig, and the offal, on which his family subsisted, with 
 the produce of their small curtilage, for half the year. In the 
 end, the allowance, saved scrupulously, and, I presume, made a 
 profound secret, was invested in land by each. The one bought 
 some forty acres of poor soil, on which he got a comfortable and 
 independent living ; the other some twenty, on which he did still 
 better, for the land was some of the best in the village. 
 
 The abolition of compulsory apprenticeships in such callings as 
 were specified in the Act of Elizabeth, or had been interpreted to 
 come under its conditions, and the settlement of wages by the 
 quarter sessions assessment or other magisterial authority, was 
 not considered a boon by the artizans in 1814. In the first place, 
 the repeal of Elizabeth's Act was demanded by the employers of 
 labour, and it was, therefore, suspicious. In the next, the legis- 
 
forced. 
 
 ersons employed in the calling, by putting an impediment in the 
 
 iraue regulation under which the workman should refuse to 
 j^r a dishonest manufacturer, and should be assisted by his 
 probably protected by the law, in case the denunciation 
 ^B|eans of oppressing him, the skill of the workman is 
 enlisted in concealing the dishonesty of the em- 
 ^^^^^B^econd aim of those who insist on or advise apren- 
 ^^^^^^^Kdalone is concerned. The further precaution 
 of limiting the proportion of apprentices to 
 
 P^BTore, apparently at least, an injury to those who are kept 
 ■side a calling which they would desire to enter. Mr. Howell 
 Letated the case in his work on capital and labour with great 
 •ness. But it would appear from his own admissions that while 
 fco 1814 the practice of unlimited apprenticeship was general, 
 
 I the results disastrous, the abolition of the law and the conse- 
 nt discontinuance of the practice has been followed by an 
 fch of better and continually increasing wages. Now, though 
 les were said to have been less in the twenty years between 
 
' 6 '. 
 
 famous. 
 
 r°“ ‘“•"Otr ii 
 
 ■ Wages, as measured! 
 if 
 
 pence 
 
 Tgs of seven chief necess?i 
 Fwages stand at 62*75, and the 
 ^Wages, then, had actually risen, an^ 
 
 !Tries of life had greatly fallen. 
 
 ^e chief economical objection to apprenticeship, which has 
 fen anticipated by Mr. Howell, is that it tends to create an eve! 
 (increasing residuum of unprotected labour. That all humd 
 societies as they grow more populous will have a proportionate! 
 larger element of helplessness, misery, and crime within them, i 
 apparently inevitable. It is most visible in countries where em! 
 gration goes on largely from the best and most vigorous stocks 
 and immigration into towns from poorer districts and 
 countries is active ; for when immigration is from near 
 the least desirable addition to the growing population is 
 take place. How during the existence of the 
 Apprenticeship, the residuum was driven to agri< 
 or to the new industries where apprenticeship 
 That the whole body of working men suffered 
 manifest ; that those callings suffered most 
 non-apprenticed classes is proved, if by 
 tance which the workmen made to the a 
 The common defence for the limitation of 
 bad times come, it is better for few to suffer than that m£^ 
 should, and that the limitation of hands is analogous to 
 identical with a limit of output in production. But the ans’d 
 is, that the restraint puts a permanent suffering on those 'sl 
 would otherwise enter a better paid calling, and reduces an] 
 creasing number to permanently low wages. 
 
 In point of fact, the sufferings of the working-classes dull 
 the dismal period on which I have dwelt might have 
 
Wages in the Nineteenth Century, 
 
 141 
 
 gravated by the practices of employers, and were certainly 
 tensified by the harsh partiality of the law ; but they were due 
 1 the main to deeper causes. Thousands of homes were starved 
 order to find the means for the great war, the cost of which 
 as really supported by the labour of those who toiled on and 
 arned the wealth which was lavished freely, and at good interest 
 for the lenders, by the government. The enormous taxation and 
 the gigantic loans came from the store of accumulated capital, 
 hich the employers wrung from the poor wages of labour, or 
 .he landlords extracted from the growing gains of their tenants, 
 'o outward appearance, the strife was waged by armies and 
 generals ; in reality the resources on which the struggle was 
 ased, and without which it would have speedily collapsed, were 
 the stint and starvation of labour, the overtaxed and underfed 
 toils of childhood, the underpaid and uncertain employment of 
 men. Wages were mulcted in order to provide the waste of war, 
 and the profits of commerce and manufacture. It is no wonder 
 that working-men have no great trust in government by party, 
 ^or the two great historical parties have fleeced and ground them 
 ’own with impartial persistence. 
 
 Employers have constantly predicted that ruin would come on 
 he great industries of the country if workmen were better paid 
 and better treated. They resisted, and have resisted up to the 
 present day, every demand which workmen have made for the 
 right of association, for the limitation of children’s and women’s 
 labour, for the shortening of hours, for the abolition of truck, 
 for the protection of their workmen’s lives and limbs from 
 preventible accidents, and are now appealing to the doctrine of 
 liberty of contract, after having for centuries denied the liberty. 
 This misconception as to the consequences which would ensue 
 from just and, as events have proved, wise concessions, has not 
 been due to a cunning selfishness, but to the natural disinclination 
 which all men have to make those efforts which have always 
 compensated the loss which they thought that they foresaw, and 
 have frequently turned it into a gain. For it is a remarkable 
 and an indisputable result of those interferences with what is 
 apparently free action, that when their justice or necessity has 
 been demonstrated, and the change or reform or restraint has 
 
142 
 
 J^ork and Wages. 
 
 concession of the rilht of ^ I consequence. T 
 
 infinite peril and the thought to be al| 
 
 Vroper lengtrLttZ"^"" W gradually learnt the! 
 
 proflts which are reanirojia ™“ ““ engageii, and th, 
 
 their employment The^ . «»«tinu% am 
 
 “S, t‘a “ - ^42 
 
 intelligent, more deceM T/ 
 
 on profits Onlv tl ’ without trenching 
 
 aboSeome 'of ttlr determined I 
 
 ruin were uttered TIip lo ^ ^ same predictions of 
 
 eessionbeing iete a. Z T ‘ <»"- 
 
 they arbitrate between timid intent w!” "■“* ““ 
 by their action demonstrated the futility of th^^" ^?'^*** 
 
 »d the foliyof fhese fears. The p.V SThaT^Ib^^^^^ 
 has not M the coumge to eytend its action I““l-««>e«t 
 
 Ihe old laws against combination and the doctrine of 
 
 conspiracies were £0 dan^erouslv bvt-tlo or. «.«°ctrine of trade 
 
 -y history 0,^ -t'ih? - - -to .0 
 
 4 
 
W 'iges tn the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 143 
 
 iirts was directed towards the emancipation of the peasant and 
 ■e maintenance of personal rights. The process by which the 
 Irf became the copyholder was greatly assisted by the interpreters 
 t the common law. But from the days of the Stuarts, the 
 Idges were servile, timid, and the enemies of personal liberty, 
 jver and over again Parliament has interposed to sweep away 
 leeedents which have coerced natural liberty, and interpretations 
 mich have violated justice. For generations it seemed that the 
 orst enemies of public and private liberty were those courts 
 hose duty it was to adjudicate equitably and to state the law 
 Ith fairness. The English people owes much to the persevering 
 luteness of Bentham and the high-minded courage of Romilly 
 pat it was delivered at last from the Kenyons and the Eldons. 
 [The credit of abolishing the combination laws is due to Joseph 
 lume. He procured a committee in 1824, took evidence, re- 
 ported to the House, and obtained an instruction from it to’ the 
 IChairman of Committees that a Bill should be drafted on the 
 I lines of eleven clauses dealing with the combination laws, and 
 I four which examined the effect of certain prohibitions put on 
 f artizans going abroad. The Committee declared itself unable to 
 express any opinion on the propriety of removing the prohibition 
 then put on the exportation of machinery. The Bill appears to 
 have passed without debate or opposition, for I find no record of 
 any such debate in Hansard. The Act inflicted penalties on such 
 combinations as attempted to further their ends by violence. 
 
 L It was inevitable that the working classes should immediately 
 I take advantage of the powers which the law had at last awarded 
 Ito them. For nearly five centuries law after law had been 
 ■passed under which the workmen’s wages had been regulated, for 
 I the reputed advantage of their employers. The English law has 
 f never affected to fix the price of food, though sometimes procla- 
 mations have pretended to do so, and local authority has occa- 
 sionally been empowered to publish fair prices. But when a 
 I scarcity of labour occurred, due to natural causes, it attempted to 
 , control the claims of the workmen. For more than two cen- 
 j turies the law was a complete failure. For nearly three, as I 
 have shown at length, it was a complete success. Now it was 
 entirely natural for the workmen to believe that what they had 
 
^44 IV ork and IVages. 
 
 gained at last was a boon, since their employers had so long ai 
 so successfully deprived them of its use. The employers'" ai 
 Parliament, became alarmed, and revised the Act of 1824, thouc 
 they did not venture on materially modifying it. 
 
 The ingenuity of the judges, always interested in the defence d 
 property and very little friendly to that of liberty, discovers 1 
 that the common law against combinations was still alive, and b 
 series of prosecutions on false or frivolous grounds was undei 
 taken, convictions recorded, and punishments inflicted. Ml 
 Howell has collected several instances of these trials, and cori 
 ments on the general dissatisfaction felt among working men ■ 
 the administration of the law. The ultimate emancipation I 
 trade unions or labour partnerships from the difficulties arS 
 hindrances to which they were still exposed, and from the diJ 
 abilities which precedents had put on them, is of very recent dat3| 
 
 The condition of the agricultural labourer has been different 
 from that of the artizan. Scattered, and incapable of combined 
 action with his fellows, bowed down by centuries of oppression, 
 hard usage, and hard words, with, as he believes, every social 
 force against him, the landlord in league with the farmer, and 
 the clergyman in league with both, the latter constantly preaching 
 resignation, and the two former constantly enforcing it. he has 
 lived through evil times. Under the allowance system, he seems 
 to have been guaranteed against starvation, and under the law of 
 parochial settlement he avenged himself on some of his oppressors, 
 though not on the worst, those who, on one pretext or another, 
 quartered him on another parish, employed him on quarter 
 sessions or farmers’ vestry assessment wages, and left others to 
 supplement his wages by the allowance, and to support him when ’ 
 they had worn out his body, as they had worn out his spirit long 
 before. There is nothing in the history of civilisation more 
 odious than the meanness of some English landlords, except it be 
 theii insolence. They have been abetted by the foolish farmers, 
 wffio ground down their labourers in order to enrich the landlords, 
 and have finally sacrificed themselves to the rent-rolls of profli- 
 gates and gamblers. 
 
 The sharpest trial they had to bear was the wholesome surgery ^ 
 of the new poor law. This famous measure, which was so 
 
IVages in the Nineteenth Century, 
 
 145 
 
 necessary, so harsh, so inopportune, so unjust, was modelled on 
 the practice which had been adopted in two IS^ottinghamshire 
 parishes, Southwell and Bingham, in the former of which the 
 workhouse test was organised by Sir George Nicholls, in the 
 latter by Mr. Lowe, the father of an eminent statesman and very 
 k rigid economist of the laissez-faire school. The experiment of these 
 ^wo parishes was made the type of the new system. It is only 
 ■ust to say, that what might have been fairly equitable to all, 
 Hhough still severe in the last degree to the agricultural labourer, 
 ■was mutilated by the owners of the close parishes, who succeeded 
 Pin making others pay for the maintenance of their labourers, as 
 all the landed interests had made the occupiers pay. 
 
 The average wages of the agricultural labourer, according to 
 Arthur Young’s calculations, had been Is, ^d, a week from 1767 
 to 1789 ; IO 5 . from 1799 to 1803; and 12^. from 1804 to 1810. 
 In 1811, they were 125. 9cZ. They continued at this rate for 
 three years ; sunk about 17 per cent, from 1814 to 1818; about 
 20 per cent, more in 1819-20 : about 12 per cent, more in 1821 ; 
 and 5 per cent, more in 1822. Then they began to rise, and, 
 according to Mr. Yilliers’ returns in 1861, were 95. 4c?. in 1824; 
 IO 5 . 4c?. in 1837 ; and II 5 . 7c?. in 1860. In 1866, Mr. Levi sets 
 them at 135. It may be doubted, however, whether these 
 several increases of money wages were not, so far as the labourers 
 were concerned, more than counterbalanced by the increase of 
 house rent, the curtailment of allotments and similar indirect aids 
 to labour, to say nothing of the excision of the allowances under 
 the old poor law. In 1837, the cost of maintaining the poor was 
 less than in any year since 1800, and was three millions below 
 what it had been in 1832, though the average price of wheat 
 in the former ye^ was 58s, 8c?. ; in the latter, 52s, 6d ., — a dif- 
 ference in the c®inary consumption of a labourer’s family, as 
 estimated in brM^ of about 4d, a week. The rise thus effected 
 in 1837 probably represents the compensation for the loss of 
 the allowances, for some expenses under the new poor law were 
 considerably increased. I may add, that Young argued in 1813 
 that the wages of the agricultural labourer were below his 
 necessary food, omitting all estimates as to house rent, fuel, 
 do hing, and extras. 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 The beneficent restraints of the Factory Acts were not extended 
 to the children of agricultural labourers engaged as helps to the 
 paternal employment. Much of the activity which assisted the 
 agitation for those excellent acts and insured their success, was 
 the hostility felt by benevolent landowners to over-prosperous 
 manufacturers. Even if the language employed by them did not 
 warrant this inference, and the tactics they adopted did noj 
 confirm such a conclusion, the fact that agricultural children werJ 
 not protected against premature labour would prove my coni 
 tention. One does not see why they should not have beem 
 protected. The exposure of young children to weather, the* 
 custom of putting them under brutal carters and ploughmen, 
 the common practice of sending them to drive birds from newly- 
 sown fields in the most inclement seasons of the year, with scanty 
 food and clothing, was, I imagine, as likely to be injurious to 
 their health and growth as employment in mills. But the desire 
 to secure an increasing rent, to be procured by the stint of the 
 labourer, is, I imagine, as keen a passion in the bosom of the 
 landlord as that of getting an increased profit from the unsuit- 
 able labour of women and children or from the misery of the 
 factory hand has ever been in the constitution of the manu- 
 facturer. 
 
 I do not remember, in the very extended study which I have 
 given to the history of agricultural labour and wages during the 
 six centuries for which there is recorded and continuous evidence, 
 that, in the worst experiences of the labourer, he was till very 
 recently open to the risk of having his young children of either 
 sex taken from him, and put under the care of a gang-master, 
 with a view to their labouring in the fields, being housed for the 
 night in barns, without the pretence of decency, not to say comfort, 
 and apart from the obvious degradation of thef^ondition, exposed 
 to the coarse brutalities of the manager of chL|ftn's labour. But 
 in the Eastern Counties it appears to have beeirtill recently the 
 practice, perhaps still is, for farmers to contract for the services of 
 agricultural gangs, ^.e., of crowds of children set to work under an 
 overseer who had hunted them up. The practice, I remember, 
 was defended on the ordinary gound of cheap labour beii^g a 
 necessity for profitable agriculture, which, when it is interpre -Jed 
 
Wages in the Nineteenth Century. 147 
 
 means that tenant farmers are too cowardly to resist rents which 
 }hey cannot pay, except by the degradation of those whom they 
 employ. That a peasantry, underpaid and underfed, should be 
 onstrained to submit their children to such an odious and demo- 
 •alising slavery, is unhappily intelligible \ that the middle-man can 
 36 found to undertake the office of such an agency, is a fact to be 
 regretted but expected ; that farmers should allow themselves to 
 employ such an expedient, is scandalous : but that they who 
 pretend to consider the condition of the poor, and to be active in 
 ffie interests of humanity, should be complacent and silent, is a 
 legligence which ought to bring its punishment, or is an acquies- 
 cence in ill-doing which I do not care to characterize. 
 
 Some twenty or more years ago, Mr. Girdlestone, a clergyman in 
 i country parish in the west of England, and then or subsequently 
 
 I I canon of Bristol, called attention to the miserable condition of 
 agricultural labour in that part of England with which he was 
 familiar. The agricultural labourers of Devon are more than 
 ordinarily numerous, for within the memory of man, a lucrative 
 local industry, cloth weaving, has decayed, and the ordinary 
 population has been swollen by the accession of unemployed 
 weavers. Mr. Girdlestone had the ordinary fate of those who 
 attack the doings of the landed interest. His better behaved 
 opponents denied the accuracy of his statements, and published 
 their own account of the facts. His rougher critics, the farmers, 
 threatened him with violence and the horse-pond. It is not quite 
 clear that his poor clients thought him their kindest friend in 
 letting the world know what was their condition, for employers in 
 country places have many opportunities of letting their work- 
 men feel that discontent or complaint, even if expressed by an 
 advocate, is dangerous. Quarter sessions^ justice is very often, 
 apparently, partial, but the tender mercies of farmers to their 
 labourers are the reverse of gentle. Hor, indeed, is there much 
 good done in calling attention to such facts as Mr. Girdlestone dis- 
 closed, unless the remedy is clear and can be applied immediately. 
 Even the activity of the press, now far me re searching than 
 it was twenty years ago, and the tenderness of the public conscience, 
 are apt to be transitory. Besides, though modern England is 
 curious and sensitive, we may be certain that much unrecorded 
 
148 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 wrong is done. The public prints do not know everything, andl 
 might find it inconvenient to know everything. 
 
 Some years later, Joseph Arch, a Warwickshire peasant, under J 
 took the heroic task of rousing the agricultural labourer from hiJ 
 apathy, of bearding the farmers and the landowners, and of striv-| 
 ing to create an agricultural labourers’ union. I believe that 
 was the first person in some position who recognised his labours,! 
 by taking the chair at one of his meetings, and I have been ablej 
 to see how good his judgment has been, how consistent his conduct,' 
 and how prodigious are his difficulties. I believe he has done nq 
 little service to his own order, but I conclude he has done mord 
 for the general interests of labour, if only by showing how unin 
 versal is the instinct that workmen can better their condition only 
 by joint and united action. And it should be said, that otherl 
 workmen, trained for a longer peiiod in the experience of labour^ 
 partnerships, have aided, and that not obscurely, the undertaking j 
 in which Arch is engaged. 
 
 The difficulties in creating and maintaining a labour partnership 
 of agricultural hands are very great. In the darkest period of 
 their history, artizans, even when their action was proscribed by 
 the law, still clung together, had common purposes, took counsel, 
 though secretly and in peril, and struck against oppressively low 
 wages. But for three centuries at least, agricultural labourers 
 have had no organization whatever on behalf of their class interests. 
 I shall have written in vain if I have not pointed out how efifec- 
 tively the employers of rural labour contrived to enslave and 
 subdue them. It is hard to see how any one could have hoped to 
 move them. But even when they were moved, it was still more 
 difficult to make the units cohere. I remember that an eminent 
 clergyman of my acquaintance, now deceased, told me that when 
 he first took a country living, — some of Arch’s kindred were among 
 his domestic servants, and he was entirely friendly to Arch’s 
 policy, — nothing struck him more painfully than the evident 
 suspicion with which the labourers in his parish met kindness. 
 He said that he very early despaired of their confidence, for he 
 noticed that invariably any trust he showed in them was distrusted, 
 was supposed to be tendered with the object of overreaching them. 
 I do not comment on the experiences which must have induced 
 
IP^ages in the Nineteenth Century, 
 
 149 
 
 this habit of mind on them, but simply say that this was the 
 material mth Avhich Arch had to deal. 
 
 I am willing enough to admit that my clerical friend s position 
 was more awkward than that of other persons. The landlord, 
 generally non-resident, is, ordinarily speaking, as unknown to the 
 English peasant as if he were a foreign potentate, and I suspect 
 that the Arcadian pictures we now and then get of the peasant - 
 labourer, his wages and his allowances from the great house, are, 
 with rare exceptions, rustic ornaments in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of the country seat, cottages with trim gardens, with 
 honeysuckles trained on the walls, and neat borders of old-fashioned 
 flowers in the little garden by the road, the creations of a benevo- 
 lent despot, who from some good nature and more ostentation 
 keeps his poorer neighbours in apparent content. But the peasant 
 who has to do with the tenant-farmer enjoys none of these 
 amenities, and the parson who took the peasant’s part would be 
 thwarted in a hundred ways, and perhaps threatened with the 
 horse- pond. I do not doubt that most country clergymen are 
 kind and conscientious, but they are poor hands at arbitrating 
 between employers and labourers ; and when the former are 
 farmers and the latter are hinds, I have generally found that the 
 clergy put a personal interpretation on the apostle’s advice, and 
 seek to live peaceably with all men. 
 
 But though, being one of their order, the advocate of an 
 agricultural union occupies a more independent and more con- 
 fidential position than the intelligent parish clergyman, the 
 temper of the peasants must be, even to an enthusiast, no easy 
 instrument to play on. He has to combat with the persistent 
 apathy of despair. He has to contend with the sluggishness of 
 ignorance. He has to interpret the habitual mendacity of distrust. 
 He has to rebuke the low cunning with which the oppressed shirk 
 duty, for only those who are worthy can take a good part in the 
 emancipation of the English serf. I well remember that a friend 
 of mine, earnestly anxious to better his labourers on his model 
 farm, gave them high wages, regular work, and showed them 
 infinite consideration. At last he despaired and sold his property, 
 because they thought him, in their poor puzzled way, a fool ; and 
 he found that he had made them worse knaves than he found them. 
 
Work and Wages, 
 
 ISO 
 
 Again, such a man, constrained to be a leader of men, is 
 obliged to assert an authority and exercise a decision, which 
 others, inevitably less informed, cannot understand and are loath 
 to submit to. This difficulty is universal. The most awkward 
 persons to deal with when debate is needed are two mobs, one of 
 uneducated, and the other of fairly educated persons ; for the 
 former are generally suspicious, the latter generally conceited. 
 Neither will concede to the expert unless there is danger, or till 
 patience wearies conceit. The greatest difficulty, we are told, 
 even with the comparatively well-trained artizan, is willing obe- 
 dience to necessary discipline. It is said that the ill-success which 
 has attended various schemes of co-operation has been due to the 
 disinclination of operatives to obey the necessary orders of one 
 who is of their own order, whom they have invested with 
 authority. They will obey an overlooker whom their employer 
 selects, even though his rule be harsh and severe ; but it is not 
 so easy to induce them to acquiesce in the directions of those 
 whom they could depose at their pleasure. But the difficulty is 
 greater the less instructed persons are, and the less familiar they 
 are with the process by which the reality of liberty is achieved, 
 — by the sacrifice of a portion of liberty itself. I have heard 
 that in Mr. Arch’s efforts he has been constantly baffled for a 
 time by revolts from the necessary authority with which the 
 manager of a labour organization must be invested. 
 
 Again, the scattered character of the agricultural population 
 must needs be a great difficulty in the way of adequately 
 organizing them. The heads of a trade union in towns can 
 summon their men speedily ; and take action, if action seems 
 desirable, promptly. But it is far more difficult to manipulate 
 the scattered elements of an agricultural union, especially when 
 the hostility to it is so marked, as has been generally shown, and 
 the opportunities of giving effect to that hostility are so numerous. 
 I do not believe that the mass of peasants could have been moved 
 at all, had it not been for the organization of the Primitive 
 Methodists, a religious system which, as far as I have seen its 
 working, has done more good with scanty means, and perhaps, in 
 some persons’ eyes, with grotesque appliances for devotion, than 
 any other religious agency. I have often found that the whole 
 
IVages in the Nineteenth Century, 
 
 151 
 
 character of a country parish has been changed for the better by 
 the efforts of those rustic missionaries, who possess many of the 
 qualities, and have reproduced not a little of the discipline which 
 the preaching friars of the thirteenth, and the Lollard Bible -men 
 of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries displayed or enforced. I 
 believe it is true that all successful religious movements have 
 aimed at heightening the morality and improving the material 
 condition of those whom they have striven to influence. 
 
 The poverty of the agricultural labourer is a serious bar to 
 the organization of the order. If trade unions have done, as I 
 feel persuaded they have, much to raise the moral and better the 
 material condition of artizans and operatives, they still cost 
 money. I see from the excellent and, on the whole, complete 
 apology for trade unions written by Mr. George Howell, that 
 the charges put on the members by the machinery of the union 
 of engineers amounts to an annual average of £1 17s. 2d. for the 
 last six-and-twenty years ; and, if I remember, my friend Mr. 
 Broadhurst told the foreign workmen at the Paris conference, 
 that the funds necessary for the mechanism which he recom- 
 mended would be a shilling a week from every member. But 
 though the work of an agricultural union is greater than that of 
 an urban association, there is no hope that peasants will be able 
 to contribute at this rate. The economies of the agricultural 
 labourers^ union are rigid, the expenditure is cut down to the 
 narrowest limits. 
 
 I am persuaded that the jealousy which the farmers feel and 
 the resentment which they express against Arch and his union are 
 mistaken. The first condition under which a workman can be 
 expected to be honest and intelligent, efficient and effective, is 
 that he should have a sense of self-respect. Half a man^s worth, 
 says the Greek poet, is taken away on the day that he becomes a 
 slave. The increase in the labourer's pay, if it be obtained, will 
 be much more than compensated by the moral education which 
 he has got by submitting to discipline and by understanding the 
 principles of a labour partnership. When working men make a 
 free contract, and they can never make such a contract as 
 individuals, I am persuaded that they will make more intelligent 
 and more beneficial bargains for the use of their labour than 
 
152 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 they ever will if they are hindered from corporate and collective 
 action, remain under the impression that their wages are fixed 
 without any discretion on their part, or are constantly called 
 upon to defend or apologize for what they believe is their 
 undoubted right, — a right which no consistent economist would 
 dispute. The public is profoundly interested in the eificiency 
 and the independence of the working man. By the former the 
 industrial success of the country is guaranteed and secured. In 
 the latter, there lies the only hope that we shall ever be able 
 to realize in our day what the trade guilds of the middle ages 
 aimed at, and in some directions unquestionably secured, — the 
 character of the workman, as contained in his moral and 
 professional reputation, and the excellence of the work which he 
 turned out, to say nothing of the practical refutation of social 
 fallacies. Among the members of the Agricultural Labourers^ 
 Union, sobriety, independence of public charity, and education, 
 are conditions. The trade unions of London and other large 
 towns do not perhaps exercise the moral discipline over their 
 members which they might do if their fellows more generally 
 enlisted in the system, and they will do, as they get stronger and 
 better informed. But I am abundantly convinced that the 
 English trade unionists include in their numbers the most 
 intelligent, conscientious, and valuable of the working men. 
 
 I have referred to the difficulties which beset those who strive 
 by the machinery of trade partnership to better the condition of 
 the agricultural labourer. At all times they would be many, 
 but they are sensibly enhanced at the present time. It is patent 
 to every one, that a vast amount of English land is going out of 
 tillage. It is known that the value of land during the last five 
 years has sunk to panic prices, for much of the price of land was 
 due to the expectation, realized during three centuries, that 
 agricultural land would continually rise in value. Now the 
 mischief cannot have come from lowered prices, for they are in- 
 contestably higher than they were ten years ago. It cannot have 
 come from the fact that efiective agriculture is a lost art ; for if 
 one takes every particular in the schedule of the conditions under 
 which agriculture is successful, the progress of the art in the 
 United Kingdom is as remarkable and as continuous as it is 
 
Wages in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 '53 
 
 ( 
 
 i 
 
 ■i 
 
 possible to conceive it. Agricultural machines are better, bi eeds of 
 animals are better, seeds are vastly better, manures have been 
 multiplied by chemical skill and tested by elaborate experiments, 
 and in every direction progress of a solid and substantial kind has 
 been made. But in spite of all this, there is serious agricultural 
 depression and serious national loss. For once, at least, the 
 complaints of the farmers are substantial, for they have in numbers 
 abandoned their calling. 
 
 There is only one explanation possible for the decline of agri- 
 cuitm-al profit. It must be that the income is not proportioned 
 to the outlay, that the cost of agriculture with a number of 
 individuals who have hitherto followed the calling has been 
 excessive. 'Now there may be four causes for this result, any one 
 of which would be serious, but altogether may be now, as in past 
 times, fatal. They are, first, insufficient capital ; second, ex- 
 cessive rent ; third, insecure tenure ; fourth, inefficient labour. 
 No writer on agriculture has ever hesitated to ascribe disastrous 
 consequences to the occurrence of any one of these incidents. 
 What may we expect if all four are coincident ? That there are 
 many agriculturists who during the last few years have escaped 
 these evils I can readily believe. But that many have failed 
 through the pressure of the whole is manifest. And it should be 
 remembered that excessive rent is a relative term ; that rent is 
 excessive to one farmer which is easy to another ; and to discover 
 what was the rent that not only the land but the cultivator could 
 bear should have been, as it assuredly has not been, the business 
 of the landowner, and his too often most dangerous adviser, the 
 agent or surveyor. Of this I am convinced, that the effect of 
 unpropitious seasons has been trivial when compared with the 
 other causes. Foreign competition has had no effect except in 
 the muddled and selfish heads of protectionists, as may be proved 
 by obvious and measurable facts. Whether the partial and 
 halting security which the late Act gives to the tenant will have 
 any solid effect is too pioblematical for any one to anticipate. 
 
 The inefficiency of agricultural labour, its alternate scarcity 
 and abundance, is, I believe, to be admitted. Low wages, harsh 
 usage, and the temptation of advantage in other localities, explain 
 much of the evil. Perhaps changes in the mode of cultivation, 
 
154 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 the extension of pasture, and the use of machinery may have 
 contributed in some slight degree. But the most hopeful prospect 
 in this direction appears to me to lie in the extension of union 
 principles among agricultural labourers. It is quite possible to 
 pay too little for labour. Low wages, as economists have 
 frequently demonstrated, do not always mean cheap labour. 
 What Young says about land, that you cannot give too little for 
 poor soil or too much for good soil, is true of your workmen. 
 Some few years ago, an eminent agriculturist of my acquaintance 
 told me that he preferred to have union men on his land, and 
 bore testimony to their sobriety, steadiness, and integrity. Dis- 
 content with one’s lot is not always a vice ; it may be the prelude 
 to many virtues, the parent in the end of that which its timid or 
 jealous critic would be the first to welcome. It seems that the , 
 foolish and frantic calumnies which have been told about labour 
 partnerships have this foundation. They who utter these state- 
 ments are uneasy at the supreme utility of labour, and are afraid 
 that it will destroy public prosperity. Labour knows the con 
 ditions of its existence and continuity better. Meanwhile the 
 retention of foolish and suicidal privileges has created a dangerous 
 interest, as yet wild and undefined, about the relation in which 
 the people of England stand to the land of England. The lack of 
 wisdom and foresight is, I am convinced, more prevalent among 
 those who have governed the nation than in the nation whom 
 they have governed. 
 
CHAPTEE YIL 
 
 THE PRESENT SITUATION. 
 
 Summary of the Preceding Statements — Mr. Newmarch’s Inferences — Labour 
 Partnerships — Views of Senior, Thornton, and Mill — Trade Unionists 
 and Political Economists — Certain Writers and their Views — Utility of 
 Kigid Theories — The Statesman’s and the Social Philosopher’s Use of 
 these Theories — Effect of Interference with the Natural Development 
 of Society — This Universal in all Civilised History — The Services of 
 Political Economy to Free Trade — The Distribution of Wealth, its 
 Importance in the Theory — Restraints on Some Labour Necessary — The 
 Remaining Facts of the Past which need Reform — The Land System 
 and Local Taxation, Exceptional Advantages Given in Each to Certain 
 Classes, and the Results — Rent of Land in Towns — Mr. George — Effects 
 of Putting Local Taxation on Occupiers, on Public Opinion, on the 
 Value of Land — Incidence of Local Taxation — The Common State- 
 ment — The Fact — Effects on Agriculture, Trade, Labour — The Practice 
 in America — The Effect on Workmen of State Paid Dwellings — Com- 
 parison of Fifteenth Century Wages in Building Trades and Present 
 Rates — Women’s Wages at the Two Epochs — Allowances other than 
 Wages now and then — Effects of Machinery on Agriculture — The Old 
 Day of Eight Hours — The Character of the Work done under it — Effects 
 of Great Business in which Labour is Employed — Spontaneous Increases 
 of Wages — Power and Weakness of Labour — The Course of History. 
 
 I HAVE now, I trust, stated with sufficient distinctness the 
 facts which bear on the history of wages and labour for six 
 centuries in England. The evidence is taken from unimpeachable 
 sources, from the record of what was actually paid, and the power 
 which the wages earned had over the necessaries and conveniences 
 of life. For nearly half the period, I have myself supplied all the 
 evidence from which the inferences have been derived, or could be 
 as yet. For another century I have relied on the notes which I 
 have already collected for the history of prices during the period 
 extending from the middle of Elizabeth’s reign to the accession of 
 Anne. For the rest I have trusted to Arthur Young and Edea 
 
IS6 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 to the end of the eighteenth ; to Tooke, Porter, and others for the 
 nineteenth. I have been able, I hope, to discover and explain the 
 special causes which affected the labourer from the middle of the 
 sixteenth century to the end of the first quarter in the nineteenth. 
 I have shown that from the earliest recorded annals, through 
 nearly three centuries, the condition of the English labourer was 
 that of plenty and hope, that from perfectly intelligible causes it 
 sank within a century to so low a level as to make the workmen 
 practically helpless, and that the lowest point was reached just 
 about the outbreak of the great war between King and Parlia- 
 ment. From this time it gradually improved, till in the first half 
 of the eighteenth century, though still far below the level of the 
 fifteenth, it achieved comparative plenty. Then it began to sink 
 again, and the workmen experienced the direst misery during the 
 great continental war. Latterly, almost within our own memory 
 and knowledge, it has experienced a slow and partial improvement, 
 the causes of which are to be found in the liberation of industry 
 from protective laws, in the adoption of certain principles which 
 restrained employment in some directions, and most of all in the 
 concession to labourers of the right so long denied, of forming 
 labour partnerships. 
 
 Though the materials before him were exceedingly inadequate, 
 and in many particulars quite untrustworthy, my late friend Mr. 
 Newmarch, one of the very few persons who have been competent 
 to interpret related statistics, discovered and announced, in the 
 last volume of the ‘‘ History of Prices,’^ that the best condition of 
 the English workmen was during the fifteenth century, and 
 subsequently, but in a less degree, in the first half of the 
 eighteenth ; the worst in the first half of the seventeenth and in 
 the first quarter of the nineteenth. The periods, however, for 
 which his information was defective were the fifteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, for one of which, till I published my third and 
 fourth volumes, no evidence of value had been adduced ; for the 
 other, none has been printed. I am glad to have the opportunity 
 of referring here to the great synthetical abilities of my late friend, 
 the more so because one is so constantly vexed by the rashness of 
 many who attempt the work of one who did it so well and 
 thoughtfully, and even put their names to it. 
 
 
The Present Situation. 
 
 157 
 
 My reader will observe that I set great store by the reparative 
 energy of labour partnerships or trade unions in improving the 
 material prospects of the working classes. These institutions were 
 repressed with passionate violence and malignant watchfulness as 
 long as it was possible to do so. When it was necessary to relax 
 the severities of the older laws, they were still persecuted by legal 
 . chicanery whenever oppression could on any pretence be justified. 
 I As they were slowly emancipated, they have constantly been the 
 object of alarmist calumnies and sinister predictions. I do not 
 speak of the language used by newspapers and reviews which 
 merely take the capitalist side of the question and give anonymous 
 utterance to the passion of the hour. Far gravei were the 
 allegations of such persons as Senior and Thornton, economists 
 whom I knew and respected for their clearness of sight and the 
 excellence of their intentions. Even my friend Mr. Mill treated 
 these forces of industrial life with a strange indifference. I confess 
 to having at one time viewed them suspiciously ; but a long study 
 of the history of labour has convinced me that they are not only 
 the best friends of the workman, but the best agency for the 
 employer and the public, and that to the extension of these asso- 
 ciations political economists and statesmen must look for the 
 \ solution of some among the most pressing and the most difficult 
 problems of our own time. I shall hope to show this after I have 
 dealt with the facts of the present situation. 
 
 The trade unionists speak with considerable bitterness of political 
 , economists, and with some reason. The ordinary teaching of 
 I political economy admits as its first definition that wealth is the 
 product of labour ; but it seldom tries to point out how the pro- 
 i ducer should obtain the benefit of his own product. It treats of 
 ! the manner in which wealth is produced, and postpones or neglects 
 I the consideration of the process by which it is distributed, beings 
 it seems, attracted mainly by the agencies under which it is 
 I accumulated. Writers have been habituated to estimate wealth 
 ! as a general does military force, and are more concerned with its- 
 I concentration than they are with the details of its partition. It 
 i is not surprising that this should be the case. Most writers on 
 * political economy have been persons in opulent or at least in easy 
 ^ circumstances. They have witnessed, with profound or interested 
 
158 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 satisfaction, the growth of wealth in the classes to which they 
 belong, or with which they have been familiar or intimate In 
 their eyes the poverty of industry has been a puzzle, a nuisance, a 
 problem, a social crime. They have every sympathy with the man 
 who wins and saves, no matter how ; but they are not very 
 considerate for the man who works. Ricardo, an acute stock- 
 broker, went so far as to say that there should be no taxation of 
 ^vmgs, so profound was his interest in the process of accumulation 
 by individuals. It was strange that he did not see that the only 
 fund which can be taxed is what the individual may save. To 
 tax what he must spend is to destroy industry. 
 
 In point of fact, ordinary political economy does not go further 
 than to describe the process and some of the consequences of 
 a state of war. The war is industrial, in which each man is 
 striving to get the better of his neighbour, to beat him in the 
 struggle for existence. Malthus and the elder Mill laid down the 
 Darwinian hypothesis before the modern prophet of the physical 
 life of the future and the past began to speculate on natural 
 forces. Malthus, a most excellent and benevolent person, was so 
 convinced that the limitation of what produces wealth should be 
 effected in the interests of wealth, that he proposed to do away 
 with aU relief to destitution. The elder Mill endorsed the dismal 
 and absurd theorem of Ricardo that the production of food was 
 obtained only in diminishing quantities by increased labour, and 
 his son insisted on it with pious zeal. John Mill was so impressed 
 with the risk of over-population that he hints, not obscurely, at 
 unqualified restoaint, at even more than the coercion of prudential 
 foresight. It is needless to add that these writers magnify the 
 function of the capitalist employer, are under the impression that 
 capital can be transferred from object to object with almost the 
 facility of a balance from one banker to another banker, and are 
 alarmed at the risk that national wealth may be sacrificed by a 
 change in the relation which exists at any given time between 
 profits and wages. Nothing illustrates this alarm better than Mr. j 
 John Mill’s famous paradox that the fund available for paying 
 wa-ges was a fixed quantity. The countenance which he gave to 
 this docteine has been made the basis of a perennial attack on 
 trade unions. It insists on the inference that when the represen- 
 
The Present Situation, 
 
 159 
 
 tatives of one industry strive to better themselves, they can do so 
 only at the expense of other labourers. This doctrine, which Mill 
 at last saw was an error, has been the greatest difficulty in the 
 way of the trade unions. It is as baseless in industrial life as the 
 quadrature of the circle is in mathematics. But this postulate 
 would not, I think, have been gravely alleged had not Mr. Mill 
 been affected by the supreme significance of the production of 
 accumulated wealth, the ideal of the speculative economists. 
 
 It is exceedingly useful for men to know what will be the 
 consequences of an industrial war, of a struggle for existence in 
 society, of the results of that kind of competition, in which the 
 strongest is entitled to use all his strength, and the weakest is to 
 be judged, not by his utility, but by his success in the scramble. 
 In these days we are told that the inferences of the economist are 
 only tendencies. Had they been veritable, living realities, society 
 would have long since collapsed, for they would have left only the 
 alternative of two conditions — the relentless despotism of the few, 
 or the anarchy of the many. I do not belie^'e that, however 
 great are the forces at the control of government, the logical 
 consequences of rigid political economy would have been suffered 
 to ensue. Force could extinguish discontent for a time, but the 
 extinguisher would have had to be hired, and would in the end 
 itself take fire. 
 
 The political economist of the strict school tells you what will 
 happen (though he seldom tells you all that will happen) under 
 certain conditions. Fortified with this information and warned 
 by it, the statesman in the true sense sees what must not happen, 
 and takes his precautions, applies his remedies, and neutralises 
 the disastrous consequences. The struggle for existence, inter- 
 preted strictly, is not progress but retrogression, and civilization 
 is constantly engaged in moderating the struggle, even at the 
 risk of sometimes burdening itself with indefinite liabilities. The 
 information as to what will come to pass under the unrestrained 
 action of certain social laws, is a boon which we cannot over- 
 estimate, provided, of course, that the antecedent causes are fully 
 stated and properly estimated. The student of social science thus 
 discovers, or tries to discover, which of these causes are preventible, 
 and the statesman, if he be worthy, deals with the problem. In 
 
i6o 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 the sense that the researches of the economist teil us the truth, 
 his laws are beneficent, just as the physical laws, which connect 
 disease with its causes, and show us thereby the means of preven- 
 tion, are also beneficent. It is only when the economist becomes 
 arrogant, and avows that he is a guide to all social action, instead 
 of being the interpreter of certain definite results, that he is 
 informed by the workman that his conclusions cannot be accepted 
 as final in the practice of life, and by the statesman that they 
 may consist with the constitution of another planet, but not with 
 this. 
 
 The case is rendered infinitely more complicated, and abstract 
 political economy becomes still more unpractical, when the social 
 condition of any community has not grown naturally, but has 
 been distorted by selfish laws and mischievous practices, the effects 
 of which still survive, though the causes have passed away ; and 
 more difficult, when some of the most potent among these causes 
 still survive. There has never yet been a civilised society in 
 which nature was allowed to have her way, and where, in conse- 
 quence, the economical condition of the people is one of spontaneous 
 growth. One class has oppressed another; and even when the 
 oppression has been remedied for the future, the present still 
 bears, and for a long time will bear, the inherited tendencies of 
 the past. Even in a country which, like that of the United 
 States, has had an apparently spontaneous development, and has 
 been freed from tyrannous customs, the immigrants bring with 
 them the traditions, the weaknesses, the resentments of the 
 country which they have quitted — feelings and habits which have 
 been engendered by past experience, — and have been cunningly 
 introduced to political and social heresies, promulgated fo;" the 
 benefit of the few, in their new home. 
 
 Political economy has indeed taught one lesson of enormous 
 value, though the truth has only been accepted in its fulness 
 among ourselves. It is that any hindrance put by law or 
 custom on the purchaser’s market is a wrong to every one — 
 to the community first, to the labourer next, to the capitalist 
 employer last. It is due to the facts that the injury comes 
 last to the capitalist, and that before the mischief is worked 
 out such a person is able to gain abnormal profits by the losses 
 
The Present Situation. 
 
 i6i 
 
 of others; and that they who get these profits are an organization, 
 the consumers and the labourers, as a rule, are only a mob ; that 
 protectionist laws, as they are called, exist for a day. When 
 labour is thoroughly organised, and workmen find out the 
 significance of the truth, which I have insisted on and illustrated 
 in this work, that wages have always increased absolutely,— ^.e., 
 in their money amount, and relatively, ^.e., in their purchasing 
 power, when prices were low, — they will be still less disposed to 
 listen to the insidious advice of those who counsel them to help 
 the movement for raising prices, through restraints on trade, 
 under the plea of fairness. But it will be found that all the best 
 inferences of the political economist have had the advantage of 
 being inductions from experience, and have been supported by 
 practice after they had been demonstrated in theory. 
 
 Had economists worked out the most important part of their 
 science, that which deals with the distribution of wealth, instead 
 of merely busying themselves with hypothetical theories about 
 rent, profits, and population, they would have inculcated every one 
 of those legislative acts which have seemed to control the pro- 
 duction and distribution of wealth, but in reality have assisted the 
 former, and have made the latter more natural, and therefore 
 more equitable. I think that my contention, which I see quoted 
 by Mr. Goschen, could be exhaustively proved, that every act of the 
 legislature which seems to interfere with the doctrine of laissez- 
 faire, and has stood the test of experience, has been endorsed 
 because it has added to the general efficiency of labour and, 
 therefore, to the general well-being of society. A civilised people 
 desires that they who produce its wealth should be intelligent, 
 honest, thrifty, far-seeing, prudent, and, to the fullest extent 
 possible, cultivated and well-mannered. It is impossible that 
 these advantages should be secured, and the economies which they 
 invariably effect secured with them, unless the workman is 
 adequately remunerated for his labour, and is encouraged to hope. 
 
 The liberal reward of labour,^’ says Adam Smith, as it is the 
 necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing 
 national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, 
 on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at 
 a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast 
 
 11 
 
Work and Wages, 
 
 162 
 
 backward.” The first sentence is indisputably true; but the 
 phenomena referred to in the second may be artificially induced 
 and were induced for a generation or two after Smith wrote. 
 Employers will get labour cheap if they can ; it is the business of 
 the State to prevent them getting it so cheaply, that they imperil 
 the future of the race by the process ; and it is the business of 
 particular crafts of workmen to sell their labour at as good a 
 price as they can. They never have ruined, and they never will 
 ruin, the capitalist employer by the process, for they may be 
 trusted not to ruin themselves, since they are quite as acute as 
 their employers in discerning what price the market will 
 bear. 
 
 There still exist in all their mischievous force two factors in the 
 evil legacy of the past, which exercise a mischievous influence on 
 the fortunes of English industry. One of these is the permission 
 still given to accumulate land under settlements, and to suggest 
 its devolution by primogeniture. The other is the unfairness 
 which puts local taxation on the occupier in place of putting it, in 
 part at least, on the owner. The first of these is partly an 
 inheritance of the Norman Conquest, partly a result of the great 
 War of Succession in the fifteenth century, partly the acquiescence 
 of corrupt courts of justice in conveyancing practices, which were 
 contrary to public policy and to the declared purposes of the 
 common law. The second begins with the poor law of Elizabeth. 
 At that time the occupier was generally the owner, and the rule 
 was commended for its simplicity. But the slow operation of the 
 "former practice changed the conditions of the latter, and the 
 occupier is rarely the owner, and can rarely become the owner. 
 The convenient rule of Elizabeth’s law became the interested 
 practice of every other kind of assessment imposed by Parliament. 
 The cost incurred in the maintenance of roads, the police of town 
 and country, the health of towns, the education of the young, are 
 imposed on the occupier ; and the owner, except when he happens 
 to be the occupier, is freed from all direct payments. As the 
 revision of assessments is put into the hands of the quarter sessions, 
 and the magistrates are not only generally landowners, but have a 
 necessary property qualification, these authorities have invented a 
 special system of valuing their own property, and on the plea that 
 
The Present Situation. 
 
 163 
 
 they assess their houses and grounds at what they would let for, 
 have put nominal rates on themselves. 
 
 Now that the owner of land should be allowed to get the best 
 price he can for that which he has to sell or let is, I conceive, as 
 fundamental a right as that of the manufacturer to secure the 
 fullest price which the market will allow him for his produce, and 
 the labourer the best price for his labour. Nothing is, I think, 
 more foolish than the theory that the State should regulate the 
 prices of land, produce, or labour, should fix a maximum or 
 minimum of either. Nothing, I think, could the theory become 
 a practice, would be more disastrous to all. The English law 
 attempted to carry out the theory with regard to labour, as I have 
 shown, for centuries, and with the most mischievous results to 
 land, produce, and labour. But, on the other hand, nothing is 
 more natural and proper than that a person who owns land, 
 produce, or labour should get the best price he can for it ; should 
 not, in short, be constrained to sell it to the first applicant, either 
 at that personas price or at a fixed price determined by law. 
 
 But it is another thing for the legislature to give any vendor 
 exceptional powers under which he can enhance the price of what 
 he has to sell by constraining him to keep out of the market a 
 large portion of that which is strictly limited in quantity. The 
 custom was originally permitted, in order to protect the successors 
 of an existing generation of landowners against the consequences 
 of their own vices, and the result has been to make them more 
 vicious. This might be of no consequence, except in so far as it is 
 not in the public interest that profligates in high position should 
 be deliberately engendered by law ; but the protection accorded 
 to them is injurious to others, however good the personal charac- 
 ter of the protected individual may be. It stands to reason that 
 if the market of a necessary of life is deliberately straitened, its 
 cost will be enhanced. I have not the slightest doubt that the 
 miserable condition of the poorer classes in our large towns is 
 greatly due to the accumulation of land in few hands in such 
 towns, and to the possession of land by corporations. I cannot 
 doubt that if settlements of land were forbidden by law, and 
 corporations were constrained to grant leases in perpetuity to 
 purchasers, the market for convenient sites would be adequately 
 
164 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 stocked, and the price of land in towns would fall. It is, of 
 course, impossible to find a parallel object to the existing area of a 
 country, its land. But if we could conceive that the supply of the 
 precious metals in any given country became a rigid quantity, and 
 the law permitted individuals to take portions of this quantity 
 out of currency, and hinder its natural distribution, it is certain 
 that all prices but those of the precious metals would constantly 
 fall. Something analogous to the case is to be found in the fact 
 that the paper currency in the United States is limited by the 
 necessity of purchasing government stock by the issuing banks. 
 The debt in the States is rapidly being decreased, and the price 
 of the residue is gradually advancing. It has been found necessary 
 to permit an issue based on silver certificates, that is, on deposits 
 of silver estimated at the factitious value of the silver coin. This 
 expedient will, however, soon be ineffectual, and it will become 
 necessary, unless the paper currency is to bear a premium, to find 
 a further basis for the security of the issues, or to discover some 
 new means for supplementing the paper circulation. 
 
 No parallel, however, can be found to exactly illustrate the 
 effect of an artificial stint of marketable land. It is a perpetual 
 corner, to use an Americanism, created or permitted by the 
 law to the injury of the multitude and for the advantage of 
 the few. It gives the owner the power, not only of constraining 
 the public to purchase in an artificially narrowed market, but of 
 compelling him to part with capital which he has laid out on 
 a terminable lease at the expiry of the term. Now this may be 
 no injury to the middle man, for he will recoup himself from the 
 necessities of the public, his customers. It may be no injury to 
 the trader, though there are signs, not very obscure, in the 
 growth of so-called co-operative shops, that the public are begin- 
 ning to see that enormous rents for shops enter into the price of 
 commodities purchased in them ; and it may be no injury what- 
 ever to persons whose transactions are very large, because the 
 addition of a percentage to cover ojO&ce expenses is infinitesimal 
 under such circumstances. But where rent is the most important 
 and the most increasing part of the cost of subsistence, as it is 
 with the urban labourer, especially in large towns, the mischief 
 is prodigious. The self-complacency with which some persons — 
 
The Present Situation. 
 
 165 
 
 owners of land to a great extent in London, for the temporary 
 use of which the severest terms which the law allows and the 
 market gives are extorted, to say nothing of taxes on renewal, 
 equivalent to the appropriation of the tenant’s good- will — advocate 
 the housing of the London poor at the cost of the London 
 occupiers, and, of course, to the enormous benefit of those who 
 hold this induced monopoly, and will be vendors under forced 
 sales, would be absolutely amazing in any other country besides 
 England. But this kind of complacency is dangerous. 
 
 While in the United States in 1881, I found that the reading 
 public was interested and amused by Mr. George’s work on 
 ^‘Progress and Poverty.” A clever man had caught up a few 
 real facts and a few doubtful theories, and had constructed from 
 them a sketch of social life, which was characterized by growing 
 evil and waning hope. The sketch was not lacking in dramatic 
 force, and in that probability which is frequently unreal, because 
 it is based on, or appeals to, narrow or exceptional experiences. 
 For this misery of the present and the future, Mr. George 
 prescribes a single and, in his opinion, a complete remedy, just as 
 the owner of a patent medicine is ready to assert and advertise 
 that his nostrum will prevent or cure every disease to which 
 either sex and every age is subject. The book was written with 
 great clearness. The Americans, always pleased with clever 
 paradoxes, and not devoid of that interest in speculative pessimism 
 which well-to-do people like to indulge in, especially when it is 
 illustrated from foreign practices, read the book, not seriously, I 
 conclude, and have, I presume, forgotten it. In England it has 
 run through numerous editions, and is said to be eagerly accepted 
 as a new gospel of labour by multitudes of intelligent workmen, 
 who recognize in the English land system the aggravation of 
 their discomforts, the spoliation of their wages, and the present 
 beggary of agriculture. The situation, it seems to me, is 
 sufficiently ominous, and the attitude which landowners take, 
 have taken, and appear likely to take in the future, discourages 
 the defence of what is their proper right in the minds of competent 
 and disinterested advocates. It is clear that class is set against 
 class ; but who is to blame, in the past and in the present for 
 this distrust is not always made manifest. It is certain, however, 
 
Work and Wages, 
 
 i66 
 
 that if discontent retaliates injustice by injustice, they are most 
 in fault who gave the original provocation, and affect to be 
 ignorant that they gave it, and continue to give it. 
 
 The other serious cause of dissatisfaction is the practice of 
 putting all local taxation on the occupier. This is especially felt 
 in towns, where local taxation is increasingly severe. The 
 industries which aggregate in towns have, by their natural 
 competition for building sites, aggravated by artificial scarcity 
 induced on a limited area, continually enhanced the ground value 
 of house property in densely peopled localities. I could show, if 
 the nature of my work required the proof, that land for two 
 miles round St. Paul's has increased during the last hundred and 
 fifty years a thousand fold in value. In so far as such an 
 exaltation in value is not the arbitrary creation of a partial law, 
 it is a natural result. If it could be shown to be the entire 
 creation of labour and capital, as the Thames Embankment was, 
 it is as much the property of the producers as a bale of cloth or 
 a cask of sugar. Now it is the opinion of many, and these very 
 respectable persons, that a very large portion of this enhanced 
 value should become the property of the tax-payer, and that the 
 revenue of it should be employed to diminish his burdens. Others 
 go further. As a matter of fact, the owner contributes nothing to 
 local taxation. Everything is heaped on the occupier. The 
 land would be worthless without roads, and the occupier has to 
 construct, widen, and repair them. It could not be inhabited 
 without proper drainage, and the occupier is constrained to con- 
 struct and pay for the works which give an initial value to the 
 ground rent, and, after the outlay, enhance it. It could not be 
 occupied without a proper supply of water, and the cost of this 
 supply is levied on the occupier also. In return for the enormous 
 expenditure paid by the tenant for these permanent improve- 
 ments, he has his rent raised on his improvements, and his taxes 
 increased by them. The occupier in towns is worse used by far 
 than the Irish tenant was before the changes of the Land Act, 
 for if the landlord made him pay interest on his own outlay, the 
 cost of local taxation was shared between the parties. 
 
 It is commonly and confidently said that these taxes are only 
 paid through the occupier, and not by him ; that if they were 
 
The Present Situation. 
 
 167 
 
 shifted to the landlord or the owner of the ground-rent, the price 
 would be enhanced by all the tax. To this it is a sufficiently 
 practical answer to say, that in such a case no wrong can possibly 
 be done by transferring local taxation to the ground owner and 
 building owner in towns, where the tenancy is precarious ; and 
 where the tenancy is a term, by dividing the charge between 
 house landlord and ground landlord, according to the respective 
 capital values of their interest, with the object of imposing the 
 whole of the taxation on the ground landlord at the termination 
 of the lease. When this period arrives, the ground landlord may, 
 if he pleases, not now being supplied by the law with a protected 
 market, and under another condition to be stated hereafter, make 
 his subsequent bargain with the tenant. Such an arrangement 
 would test the truth of the allegation, and would clearly not 
 mulct the owner of the unearned increment, since it would come 
 back to him in an increased rent. I have never found that 
 ground landlords welcome or even relish this proposal, which, 
 on their own showing, would only involve a re-arrangement. 
 
 The fact is, the statement is not true. It is, of course, the 
 case, that when a tenant-farmer takes a farm he inquires about 
 and calculates the outgoings before he offers a rent. A tithe 
 rent charge, he knows, is only part of the rent, and if the and 
 be tithe free, or if the landlord pays this rent charge, he gives 
 all the more for the land. If the two other charges were 
 remitted, it entirely depends on the way in which they are 
 remitted whether he will include them in his rent or not. I 
 am referring to poor rates and highway rates. If the legal 
 relief of the poor were extinguished, he would pay less rent, 
 for he would assuredly have to pay more for labour, plus what 
 those pay in poor rates who do not employ labour. If the 
 highway rates were extinguished, and the state of things re- 
 curred which was general before the Act of 1773, under which 
 every occupier or owner was bound to find at least six days’ 
 labour on the roads, he would probably pay less rent, because 
 the cost of carriage would be enhanced, and the charge of 
 taking goods to market would be increased. The fact is, the 
 two principal rates levied on rural occupancy are in reality 
 beneficial outlay, since without labour and roads no land has 
 
Work and Wage^, 
 
 1 68 
 
 value. They are antecedent conditions of agriculture in the 
 first place, and rent in the second, in satisfying which the 
 landowner and the farmer get subventions from other occupiers, 
 who do not employ labour and yet contribute to the double fund. 
 
 These taxes are transferred from the farmer to the land- 
 owner in the shape of a reduced rent, because they are associated 
 with what is essential to agricultural operations. A tax levied 
 on an individual remains with him, unless he has some relation 
 of exchange with another person, when he always strives to 
 transfer that tax to such a person. If an income tax is levied 
 on a farmer, he cannot transfer it to his landlord, or to the 
 purchaser of agricultural produce ; not to the former, because 
 there is no transaction to which it can be annexed ; not to the 
 latter, because it is excluded by the competition of the market. 
 A landlord who pays an income tax cannot make his tenant 
 or any one else reimburse him. A tradesman who pays an 
 income tax can possibly add it to the price of his goods, and 
 would certainly attempt to do so, and it seems, from what 
 tradesmen have said, may succeed in doing so. But in the case 
 of beneficial outlay, such as that on poor rates and roads, the 
 poor really pay the former in stinted wages, and the landowners 
 do, and should do, most of the latter. 
 
 These operations do not apply, or do not in anything like the 
 same degree apply, to dwellings in towns. That the tenant takes 
 the outgoings into account is certain. But what determines his 
 rent in the vast majority of cases is not the profit which he makes 
 on the occupancy, but the proportion which rent bears to his 
 income. It has been long since seen that the ground-rent of 
 shops, and also the rates, in popular and business thoroughfare^^, 
 are compensated for by enhanced prices to purchasers, or, at least, 
 by a much more rapid turnover, the latter being frequently a 
 matter of personal reputation. If the local taxation were trans- 
 ferred from him to the ground-landlord, he might lower his prices, 
 but there is no reason to believe he could be made to pay more 
 rent. A man does not pay an increased rent because he makes 
 more profits, but because the owner of his place of business can 
 reduce his profits by offering, when opportunity occurs, this site 
 to a rival tradesman. The local tax, therefore, tends to remain 
 
The Present Situation, 
 
 169 
 
 with him, but is transferred along with the greater portion of his 
 rent to the customer, under the head of trade charges, in so far as 
 his energy and ingenuity can efiect the transfer. 
 
 With the mass of those who live in town tenements, these 
 circumstances do not apply. A London labourer, I conclude, does 
 not get better wages because he lives in London and pays a higher 
 rent, but because, as a rule, the best labourers gravitate to the 
 best market. I have pointed out before, that during the period 
 in which the best wages were paid to the labourer, London wages 
 were about 25 per cent, more than country wages of the same 
 kind, and that when labour was depressed universally, the London 
 labourer lost his advantage. During the first twenty years of the 
 present century, London wages were higher than country wages, 
 but then both were on the margin of existence. At present, the 
 more important orders of artizans in London are in receipt of 
 higher wages than those who ply the same craft in the country; 
 but I have always been told that this was because they were 
 worth all the difference. I have been constantly informed that it 
 pays the employer to take London workmen into the country, at 
 London wages, because their superiority is so marked. 
 
 The practical immunity of ground rents from all taxation 
 except income tax raises, naturally, the cost of sites. Local 
 taxation in London is in the aggregate about one-third the annual 
 value of ground and building rent together, the proportion of the 
 two varying from many times more in the ground rent, to 
 equality, and to the reverse. I am persuaded from my experience 
 as a director in an industrial dwellings company, whose buildings 
 are erected in the borough which I represent (1883), that if the 
 charge of local taxation were distributed equitably over the ground 
 landlord and the building landlord, the effect on the cost of sites 
 would be such as to render the housing of the industrious poor, 
 in a two-roomed fiat, with all conveniences of decency and clean- 
 liness in each habitation, a matter of comparative ease and of 
 moderate commercial success. The solution of the problem would 
 be easier still, if the law permitted a cheap registration of title 
 and an inexpensive mortgage on advances made by Government, 
 with a wide margin for security. The unnatural cost of sites and 
 the unnatural cost of legal instruments are the great hindrances 
 
170 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 to the economical housing of the poor in large towns. In the 
 worst parts of London the ground rent is almost the whole of that 
 for which rent is paid ; and it is well known that when the 
 Metropolitan Board of Works purchased the rookeries, they often 
 paid for a filthy and dilapidated tenement the price of a mansion 
 in a fashionable square. 
 
 In the eastern and middle states of the American Union, local 
 taxes are levied on owners, and not on occupiers ; upon property, 
 and not on the use of property ; no kind of property being exempt 
 from contribution, as is, I think, absolutely just and necessary. 
 Hence the owner of a magnificent house, with well-appointed and 
 ample grounds, does not, as in England, escape with a nominal 
 assessment, on the ground that the letting value of the property 
 is problematical and, therefore, low. Again, the owner of void 
 tenements is not excused from contributing on their assessed 
 value. It is not the duty, American statesmen argue, of the 
 public to remit an obligation on the ground that an owner does 
 not dwell in his own house or discover a tenant for it. This 
 system of taxation values stock-in-trade, furniture, even the 
 balances of customers at bankers, and taxes all. There is no 
 reason why an empty house or shop should escape, because the 
 owner does not employ it for the purpose which led to its erection. 
 Hence, while in England landowners, being relieved from a tax 
 on void tenements, escape everything but loss of interest on their 
 property, and, therefore, if rich, are able to withhold their 
 property from the market, under terms of special advantage, the 
 American owner gets the sharp reminder of local taxation that it 
 is his business to inhabit or sell or let his tenements. 
 
 I have no doubt that strenuous efibrts will be made to impose 
 the expenditure necessary for the adequate housing of the 
 industrial classes in London and other large towns on the local 
 ratepayers or on the general public; and that, if possible, the 
 purchase of sites for the erection of such habitations as are needed 
 will be made a means for procuring exaggerated prices for those 
 owners of town property who have been able hitherto to evade all 
 contributions to local purposes from their property, and to employ 
 the machinery which the law allows them or confers on them in 
 order to enhance the price of that which is needed to satisfy what 
 
The Present Sttuaiton. 
 
 171 
 
 either social danger, or a sense of moral duty, or an awakened 
 humanity declares to be urgent. What the other cities may do^ 
 I do not pretend to predict, nor how far they will realise that 
 they will be called on to perform a duty at a great cost to them- 
 selves and at a great profit to the landowners. But London is 
 helpless. Nothing can be conceived more ludicrously incompetent 
 than the Board which manipulates its expenditure and at present 
 transacts its municipal business. It is to be hoped that London 
 may have an audible voice given it before the Legislature attempts 
 to aggravate its burdens. But as yet London is administered, and 
 not self -governed. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the demand for some action on the part 
 of the Legislature for the better housing of the poor has not 
 proceeded from labour itself. The working classes have made no 
 claim on the State for the supply of one of the necessaries of life 
 at an arbitrated rate. It is probable that they can foresee that 
 this process is not friendly to the object which they have before 
 themselves, — to sell their labour at the best possible price ; and to 
 effect that object by selling it collectively, and on the joint-stock 
 principle. On the other hand, they have not resented, except 
 when the action proceeded from the masters, the competition of 
 foreign workmen. Nor have they been, in the only capacity in 
 which they deliberate, deluded by the sing-song of the fair trade 
 syrens. To commend them for this is to patronise their good 
 sense ; for it is certain, and they are, I conclude, as convinced as 
 any one can be, that state gifts, like charitable donations for 
 purely business transactions, are always more than compensated 
 by the reduction of what is, without them, the natural market 
 rate of wages. If they are wise, they should be resolute in 
 determining that the conditions under which they will engage in 
 the social warfare and the social harmony are that those with 
 whom they are concerned shall have or shall retain no privilege, 
 and that they will be beguiled with no gifts, the most insidious 
 manner in which the workman may be led to sacrifice the advan- 
 tages of his position. 
 
 Some of the working classes in London, and those who have 
 been long educated in the machinery of labour partnerships, have 
 at last regained the relative rate of wages which they earned in 
 
Work and Wages. 
 
 172 
 
 the fifteenth century, though, perhaps, in some particulars, the 
 recovery is not complete. I can illustrate what I mean by giving 
 the details which I promised above. From 1449 to 1450 divers 
 workmen were engaged in building at Oxford. The head mason 
 got 4:S, a week for nine months in the year ; the others, 3s. id. 
 for ten. For two months the under masons got 2s. lOd. 'Now 
 a multiple of twelve will fairly represent, except in house-rent, 
 the general difierence in the cost of living at the present period 
 and that to which I have referred. In modern values, then, 
 these sums represent 48^., 40^., and 345. Mr. Howell informs us 
 that the building trades in London in 1877 had reached 7s. \^d. 
 a day, or 425. 9(i. a week. I am not informed whether this rate 
 is for the whole six days, and for how many days in the year it 
 may be reckoned on. The workman of the fifteenth century only 
 missed eighteen days of the year, of which a fortnight was at 
 Christmas, three days at Easter, three at Whitsuntide, and six on 
 other days scattered over the year. My reader may care to see 
 the average prices for the two years 1449-50. Wheat was 55. lOd. 
 Sb quarter; malt, 3s. \0\d. ] oatmeal, 5s.; beef, 45. Id. the cwt. ; 
 mutton, 4s. 3d.; pork, 5s.; geese, 4d. ; fowls, l^d. ; pigeons, 4d. 
 a dozen; candles, I 5 . Id. the dozen pounds ; cheese, 50 ?. a pound; 
 butter, ^d. ; eggs, 5§d. the hundred of 120; firewood, I 5 . 10|(i. 
 the load ; shirting, 6 6^. a yard ; and cloth I 5 . 5^d. If my reader 
 cares to construct a table for himself from these facts, he will find, 
 I think, that, leaving out house-rent, the most formidable item in 
 modern, the most trivial in ancient times, my multiple of twelve 
 is moderately low. 
 
 I have taken the best prices of artizan labour in the best 
 English market for such labour in order to contrast them, 
 improved as they are by the mechanism of a trade union, 
 with the prices paid spontaneously in a country town in England 
 434 years ago. I will now contrast the lowest prices of the 
 most poorly paid labour (not, indeed, that in London, where 
 the extremes of poverty are to be expected and are witnessed, 
 hut) in places where, if kindness can discover and aid struggling 
 and ill-paid industry, the search will be made and the assistance 
 accorded, with the remuneration of the same kind of labour 
 more than four centuries ago. 
 
The Present Situation, 
 
 173 
 
 Women’s labour in agriculture is rare in the fifteenth 
 century. When it is found, it varies from 2s. a week paid in 
 hay and harvest time to I 5 . 6d. ; for ordinary field work, 
 such as hoeing corn, I have found it as low as 1^., the rate paid 
 old women for weeding pitched pavements. In the calculations 
 made as to the rate of women’s wages in the agricultural districts 
 supplied by Mr. Yilliers in 1860, the average given is 45. 2d. 
 But if the price of this kind of labour had risen as highly as 
 that of other commodities has, the wages of a woman labourer 
 in husbandry would be from 24s. the best paid, and I 85 . the 
 ordinary rate, to 125. the most poorly paid. I do not know 
 whether any material increase has occurred in such wages since 
 1860, very little information being given as to the amount 
 generally paid, and I think that such an outgoing would have 
 been put prominently forward as a further cause of agricultural 
 distress ; but even if it be the case that it has increased some 
 twenty-five per cent, and is now at 65., the wages of ordinary 
 agricultural labour earned by women are not more than a third 
 of the amount which they were four centuries ago. 
 
 In almost all comments on the wages paid the agricultural 
 labourer, they who invite our attention to the facts in the 
 public prints, and are invariably the landowners, dwell with 
 satisfaction on the indirect allowances made to the peasant, his 
 low-rented house and, garden, his bit of potato ground, his 
 occasional payment in kind by a periodical bushel of unsaleable 
 wheat, and the concession of collecting wood or getting an 
 allowance of loppings and roots as fuel, and insist that these 
 are substantial additions to his weekly earnings. Undoubtedly 
 he would be worse off without them, and generally when they 
 are given they are an addition to such wages as the labourer 
 could not live upon alone. But it should be remembered that 
 these are to be compared with the facts of far better days, of a 
 time in which the peasant’s hut and curtilage was occupied at 
 a fixed rent of 2s. a year, which, treated by the multiplier 
 given above, would be less than sixpence a week at present ; that 
 the curtilage of his cottage was far larger than the villager’s 
 garden is in our time ; that he had his share in the common 
 of pasture ; that he was able to keep poultry, probably a cow. 
 
174 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 -certainly pigs ; that his employers constantly gave him portions 
 of food, under the name of nonschenes, daily ; and that in 
 harvest-time his wages were not only increased, but he was 
 frequently boarded as well. I do not imagine that the present 
 privileges and allowances of labourers in husbandry are to be 
 reckoned as spontaneous acts of generosity on the part of 
 employers, in whom I have never seen any such tendency, but 
 simply as the curtailed and by no means equivalent survivals 
 of much larger and more solid advantages, which could not, 
 perhaps, with safety be suddenly and entirely extinguished. 
 
 It is probable, too, that the wages of labour were far more 
 •continuous in agricultural operations than they are at present. 
 The farmer, before the use of machinery in substitution for 
 human forces was adopted, and for a considerable time after 
 it was familar, employed his hinds in many kinds of service 
 for which mechanical means are now found. We learn from 
 Young that many improvements had been made in the imple- 
 ments employed in agriculture, and his English tours are full 
 of engravings of such machines as he found in use. But 
 sowing, reaping, mowing, and threshing were all done by 
 hand; ploughing, of course, and the building of ricks. It was 
 Young’s great desire to see improved ploughs adopted, and 
 with them much more rapid and clean work, with less wear for 
 man and cattle. How, many of these necessary processes are 
 -effected by machinery, sowing universally, mowing generally, 
 reaping and binding frequently. Hicks are often built by 
 means of elevators, and the threshing of corn is invariably 
 done by machines. But the six or eight w^eeks of the labourers' 
 hay and corn harvest were what he relied on for supplementing 
 the scanty earnings of the rest of the year, and were constantly 
 the source from w^hich he supplied himself with the extras, 
 over and above the bare food, of fuel, house-rent, clothing, and 
 casualties. He expected to have much work in the barn during 
 winter at threshing, and now the use of the flail is a lost art. 
 It is more than likely that the shortening of his exceptional 
 advantages, and the change w^hich has come over the previous 
 regularity of his occupation, would be very indifferently com- 
 pensated by a rise of 25 per cent, in his wages when he is employed. 
 
The Present Situation, 
 
 175 
 
 I stated in a previous chapter that the day was one of eight 
 hours’ work, and grounded my opinion on the fact that winter 
 wages were reckoned to be payable only in the months of 
 December and January, and from the fact that extra hours, 
 sometimes as many as forty-eight in the week, are frequently 
 paid for by the king’s agents when hurried work was needed. 
 These hours, of course, were not continuous, being broken for 
 nonschenes, dinner, and supper in the summer, and for nonschenes 
 and dinner in the shorter days. During the winter solstice it 
 seems that only the dinner-time was allowed. Even when the 
 Act of Elizabeth and the regulations of the quarter sessions 
 prescribed a day of twelve hours all the year round, for this is 
 in effect the meaning of the clause, two hours and a half were 
 allowed for rest, and the day was brought down, on an average, 
 to nine hours and a half. But this was precisely one of those 
 prescriptions which labourers would be sure to resist and em- 
 ployers would find it expedient not to insist on. That it was 
 evaded is, I think, clear from the fact that the quarter sessions’ 
 ordinances constantly call attention to the law, and remind 
 artizans of the penalties they incurred, — a penny for every hour 
 of absence. Employers were very likely to discover that the 
 labourer’s resistance to an excessively long day was not entirely 
 personal, and that the work might suffer from the workman’s 
 weariness or exhaustion. Now the quality of the work in the 
 old times of which I have written is unquestionable. It stands 
 to this day a proof of how excellent ancient masonry was. The 
 building from the construction of which I have inferred so 
 much as to work and wages, is still standing as it was left 
 four centuries ago. I am persuaded that such perfect masonry 
 would have been incompatible with a long hours’ day. You may 
 still see brickwork of the next century, which I venture on 
 asserting no modern work would parallel ; and within five 
 minutes’ walk of it Homan brickwork, probably sixteen centuries 
 old, which is as solid and substantial as when it was first 
 erected. The artizan who is demanding at this time an eight 
 hours’ day in the building trades is simply striving to recover 
 what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago. It is 
 nly to be hoped that he will emulate the integrity and thorough- 
 
176 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 ness of the work which his ancestor performed. According to 
 Mr. Leone Levi, the average amount of hours in the building 
 trades at the date of his work on the wages of the working 
 classes (1867) was fifty- five hours. 
 
 The magnitude of commercial undertakings, due to the cheapen- 
 ing which ensues when business is concentrated in few hands, is a 
 characteristic of modern times. In some particulars it is better 
 for the working classes ; in some it induces inconveniences ; in all 
 it makes the organization of labour a necessity, and, as I hope to 
 show hereafter, a solid advantage to the public. I have already 
 stated that in the past, which I have been contrasting with the 
 present, the relation of employer and employed was exceedingly 
 direct ; nor do I doubt that it was to this directness that the high 
 remuneration of the artizan was due. A church or a mansion 
 was to be built, a new wing or new offices to be added to a con- 
 ventual house or college. Perhaps the owner supplied the plans. 
 If not, the master mason knew how to draw his plot,^’ and the 
 master carpenter his. The employer bought all the raw materials 
 direct from the manufacturers, and put them ready for use on the 
 spot. He could calculate within a very moderate margin what 
 the whole would cost, and what would be the charge of labour. 
 In the building to which I have referred, the cost of materials, on 
 much of which labour is expended, was J654 IO 5 . ; of labour, 
 £73 Os. 0\d.-, and the extras connected with the structure, but not 
 immediately associated with the materials and labour, £14 05. 0\d. 
 Thus in the aggregate charge, the cost of materials is 38*3 per 
 cent.; that of labour, 51*4 per cent.; and of extras, 10*3 per 
 cent 
 
 The multiple of twelve would put this structure at a cost of 
 £1,703 12^. Od., from which should be deducted the sale of certain 
 cranes, worth, on the same estimate, £73 12^., and therefore 
 leaving £1,630. How I make no doubt that at the present day 
 the tower would cost from £4,000 to £5,000, and I infer that the 
 additional cost would be entirely due to the charge of contractor’s 
 profit, architect’s commission, and middle-men’s advantage. It is 
 upon the saving of this enormous waste that the energies of the 
 intelligent employer are directed, and the advocates of increased 
 wages for workmen should be. When the economy is efiected, it 
 
The Present Situation. 
 
 177 
 
 will be found, concurrently with another reduction of charge 
 alluded to already, that workmen may get better wages and may 
 be more cheaply housed. It is assuredly from the stint of wages 
 that the profits of middle-men have been derived. 
 
 The employer in our day is unknown probably to nine-tenths of 
 his workmen. Their relations are generally with his agents and 
 overlookers only, and probably must remain so. But it will be 
 evident that the more able and shrewd the employer is, the greater 
 will be his profits, because such mental qualities are rare ; and the 
 more difficult his workmen make his position, either by slackness 
 or slovenliness of work, or by the necessity of supervision, the 
 greater do they themselves make his profits to be. He has a large 
 margin from which he can save in the competition with those who 
 are engaged in the same calling, by the reduction of the middle- 
 man’s charges. He has another large margin from which he can 
 save, in the character of his workmen and the goodness of their 
 ■svork, for the better this is than the average, and the greater its 
 efficiency is, the cheaper it is to him. If, however, this quality of 
 excellence becomes general in workmen, they ultimately have it 
 in their power to attach a portion of his profits, by a demand for 
 higher wages, and by a conviction that he will not forego a cessation 
 of his advantage by refusing to part with a portion of it. It will 
 be found, I believe, that those heads of firms who best know their 
 business are most amenable to the reasonable demands of their 
 workmen, and the analysis given above shows that the reason of 
 this is that they make greater profits than their rivals. For 
 though it is true that, in the first place, an increase of wages can 
 only be derived from profits, and where rent is a principal result 
 from profits, as it is notably in agriculture, from rent, the efficiency 
 of labour may be so increased in the end that profits and rent may 
 rapidly recover themselves. This is the way in which the judicious 
 employment of machinery tends to raise wages. That it lessens 
 the demand for labour immediately is possible, just as a successful 
 demand for more wages lessens profits, but in the end it increases 
 them, for it cheapens production, and thereupon sets up a fresh 
 demand for labour, and lessens cost, and thereby lea.ves a larger 
 margin of gross profits to be divided. The increase in the wage.i 
 of agricultural labour between 1730 and 1760 was not merely due 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 to the fact that agricultural produce was cheap, but to the fact 
 that profits in agriculture were large, that a rapidly increasing 
 area of cultivation was taken in hand, and that a rapidly increasing 
 capital was put into the land. 
 
 'Now it cannot be denied that capital may seek labour, and that 
 labour may, without an effort, be able to gain the advantage of 
 this demand. Such an event has occurred when there has been 
 a sudden deficiency of labour, as after the great pestilence of 1348. 
 It has occurred when the distribution of employment has become 
 so exactly proportionate to the current demand for labour that 
 demand has been always in excess of supply, as was the case in the 
 fifteenth century, and is normally the case in countries where 
 labour is scarce and the opportunities of wealth are great, as in 
 the western, and especially the mineral districts of the American 
 Union. Such an event has occurred when there has been a sudden 
 and increasing demand for special products, as happened to the 
 coal and iron trades in 1865 and 1873. It does to some extent 
 when the supply of labour is in equilibrio, and the competition of 
 capitalists is great, — a rarer phenomenon. But in the great 
 majority of cases, the whole advantage of a new discovery, a new 
 process, and a new machine rests with the capitalist employer. 
 The great inventions of steam and the machinery employed in 
 textile fabrics remained with those who invented and applied these 
 capital forces and processes. The artizan, by whose labour the 
 development of this wealth was alone possible, became more 
 impoverished and stinted. If population was stimulated, it was 
 made more miserable, and population will grow rapidly when the 
 condition of the people is deteriorated. Now it is impossible to 
 doubt that had labour partnerships been general and legal in the 
 latter part of the eighteenth century, the Englishman of that 
 epoch would have been as assuredly able to make better terms 
 with his employer as we are told he did in the fourteenth, when 
 the Legislature vainly strove to put down the combinations of those 
 ancient trade unions. 
 
 It would be possible to go through the various kinds of labour 
 which weie carried on in those remote times, and are still special 
 industries. But enough has, I trust, been said to sustain the 
 main conclusions at which I have arrived. From what is supposed 
 
The Present Situation, 
 
 179 
 
 to be the natural, and, on the whole, justifiable, tendency of the 
 parties to a contract, the employer strives to enlist the services of 
 the common factor with himself of profit and wealth on the most 
 favourable terms for his part of the bargain. The labourer or 
 workman, on the other side, seeks as naturally to achieve his 
 advantage, though he is seriously hindered by his individual 
 impotence and by the urgency which disables him from lingering 
 long over the terms of the bargain. But in the process of settling 
 it, he has on very rare occasions been put in the position of using 
 his power with prodigious force, so as almost to annihilate interests 
 which seemed secure and progressive, as in the middle of the 
 fourteenth century, and to efiect a social revolution. From time 
 to time, in a minor degree, he has been able to produce, by his 
 discontent and the temporary cessation of his industry, great 
 inconvenience. The power which he possessed, and the use which 
 he made of it, suggested that the rare occasions on which he could 
 act should be anticipated and restrained, and the Legislature at 
 last succeeded in binding them, though he struggled vigorously, 
 and in the end proved that his liberty was less dangerous than his 
 servitude. 
 
 Then began a new departure. The policy of the past had done 
 mischief to the interests which it professed to further, and the 
 new poor law was enacted. The policy of repression had led to 
 results which seemed to threaten the very existence of a large 
 class of artizans and of the future of the nation, and the Factory 
 Acts were passed. The soil of England became too narrow for its 
 people, and employment, even under the circumstances of those 
 restraints on employment which the Factory Acts induced, became 
 precarious. There was danger in the air, and perhaps the Legisla- 
 ture became alive to the duty of considering other interests than 
 one, and free trade in food was established. 
 
 MeanwLile the working classes were not idle, and not a few of 
 them adopted, though still with great risks, the new freedom 
 which was accorded them, and founded labour partnerships. 
 These have grown ; and whatever the capitalist and some of the 
 public may think of them, they are believed by many workmen to 
 be a far greater and more powerful instrument for good to those 
 who have conceived, developed, and supported them than any 
 
i8o 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 guarantee of law or custom. The advocates of the system have 
 demanded as yet hut little from the Legislature beyond what is 
 essential ,to their free action. It remains to be seen whether they 
 have not been a benefit in the past, and are a principal hope in 
 the future, not of that labour merely for whose ends they have 
 been severally established, but of labour in general, of human 
 progress ; and lastly, whether they do not form the readiest means, 
 perhaps the only means, by which the gravest social and political 
 problems may be stated and solved. I shall try to make an esti- 
 mate of this question in the next and concluding chapter. 
 
CHAPTER YIII 
 
 REMEDIES. 
 
 Changes Necessary for the Improvement of the Social State Incomplete — The 
 Eemedies for the Present rendered more Difficult by the Errors of the 
 Past — Labour in Other Countries during the Past — Protection against 
 Foreign Competition, and its Effect on Wages — In the United States — 
 Fair Trade — Extension of the Functions of Government an Error — The 
 Meaning of Frankenstein’s Demon — The Population of Large Towns, 
 though in a Bad State, Better than it was— Foreign Immigration — Theory 
 of Lodging being Provided by the State — Nationalization of Land, 
 Origin of the Movement for — Effects of such a Policy — Emigration of 
 the Young — The Agricultural Remedy — Mr. Vallis on a Peasant Occu- 
 pier’s Earnings — Trade Unions, the Factor in Improving the Condition 
 of Artizans — Their Prevalence in the Fifteenth Century — Duty of the 
 Workman as Regards his Labour — The Economy of Waste — The Effect 
 of Machinery may be Mischievous if not Counteracted by Labour 
 Combinations — ^Labour Combinations and Rent, especially Ground 
 Rents — Domestic Servants’ Wages — Overcrowded Callings often Re- 
 lievable by Trade Unions — Extension of Trade Unions to Women’s 
 Work. 
 
 T he English Government, till very recent times, having been 
 administered by opulent landowners and successful traders, 
 did its best to depress the condition of those who live by labour. 
 Parliament has, indeed, within the last sixty years, done much in 
 abrogating severe and repressive laws, in giving freedom to labour, 
 in making the United Kingdom a free market, and thereby edu- 
 cating its industry, in restraining the greed which employed 
 immature labour, in disabling women from certain degrading 
 employments, in constraining employers to deal fairly with their 
 workmen, and in arbitrating betw^een rapacious landlords and 
 defenceless tenants. It has, indeed, by no means completed its 
 duties to the public. It must sooner or later, the sooner the 
 better, sweep away the distinction between real and personal 
 estate, forbid the settlement of land, and release conveyances from 
 
Work and Wages. 
 
 182 
 
 the grip of the attorney by establishing a cheap and compulsory 
 registration or title. It has been reckoned that the conveyance 
 of real estate in the United Kingdom is mulcted in law charges, 
 exclusive of taxes, to the extent of o£l 2,000,000 annually. I do not 
 answer for the accuracy of the figures, or know, indeed, what are 
 the elements from which they are derived. But I know that such 
 charges are a present loss, which are not only without any 
 equivalent whatever, but constantly bring about an insecurity 
 from which properly registered titles would be free. And, again, 
 there must be a revision of local taxation, under which landowners 
 shall be made to bear their just share in local burdens ; and to 
 which, as I readily admit, all property should, except in the case 
 of poor rates and roads, contribute by relieving occupancy and 
 taxing property. But though much remains to be done, more has 
 been done in this country than in any other to remove the legal 
 disabilities of labour, and give it freedom of action. The result 
 of this wisdom is manifest. The unwise delay in other needful 
 reforms will soon be plain. 
 
 It is, indeed, impossible to do away at once with the effects of 
 the past. The growth of society has been distorted by partial 
 and injurious laws, and the distortion will not be removed by the 
 removal of the causes which induced it. You cannot, as the 
 adventurer in the Greek comedy does, take the nation, and, by 
 some magic bath, restore it from decrepitude, disease, vice, dirt, 
 drunkenness, and ignorance, to manliness, health, virtue, self- 
 respect, sobriety, knowledge, forethought, and wisdom at a stroke. 
 It will need long years of patient and disappointing labour before 
 the marks imprinted by centuries of misrule and wrong* doing are 
 effaced. And furthermore, the renewal, if it is to come, cannot 
 be imposed from without. It must be developed from within. 
 Beyond the removal of positive mischief, which it has in past 
 times created, the Legislature can do little more than give every 
 freedom it can for innocent energy, and check all the mischief, as 
 far as is possible, which comes from the sti'ong domineering over 
 the weak. If it does too much, it enfeebles enterprise and dis- 
 courages practical wisdom. If it neglects to adequately protect 
 the weak, and thereby gives license to selfishness and fraud, it 
 permits a trouble, for which it has assuredly to find a remedy. 
 
Remedies. 
 
 183 
 
 "Nor can the aid of well-meaning persons outside the mischief 
 which has to be remedied do much beyond, perhaps, disclosing the 
 disease and indicating a means of cure. If there be evil at work 
 in the condition of those who live by wages, most of the cure 
 must come from themselves. There is no means for it but self- 
 help. The constitution is needed more than the medicine, and, 
 without it, the medicine is naught. Philanthropy is superficial, 
 intermittent, transient, partial, at best. There is infinite danger 
 that it may become a scheme by which attention is diverted from 
 causes which contribute to or create the mischief, and duties may 
 be enforced vicariously. I can easily imagine a great proprietor 
 of ground rents in the metropolis calling attention to the habita- 
 tions of the poor, to the evils of overcrowding, and to the scandals 
 which the inquiry reveals, while his own income is greatly in- 
 creased by the causes which make house-rent dear in London, and 
 decent lodging hardly attainable by thousands of labourers. It 
 is quite possible for the indirect agents of these evils to denounce 
 the mischief to which they are the contributors, and to claim 
 from others the funds by which to remedy the injuries which they 
 cause and from which they profit. When a London landowner 
 invites the public to consider how the London poor are housed, he 
 should simultaneously recommend that the laws and privileges 
 which aggravate the evil should be repealed or abandoned. 
 
 Bad as the condition of labour has been in England, it has been 
 worse in other countries. When, five centuries ago, the insurgents 
 under Wat Tyler and his associates brought about the emancipa- 
 tion of the serf, the peasantry of Western Europe were thrust 
 into gradually increasing misery. I have already commented on 
 the beggary of the French peasant and the failure which attended 
 his early efibrts for freedom. The Peasants’ War in Germany 
 was the result of intolerable oppression. The conquest of Egypt 
 had closed the last of the ancient routes to the East, and the 
 traders of Italy and the Bhenish cities were impoverished. In 
 the profits of this trade the nobles shared, and when these profits 
 declined they strove to reimburse themselves by extortion from 
 the peasantry. The peasants claimed to be freed not only from 
 these new exactions, but from their ancient dues, revolted, were 
 put down, punished severely, and driven back into moi e hopeless 
 
184 Work and Wages, 
 
 bondage. The Thirty Years’ War in the next century completed 
 their misery. It is noteworthy that as the Black Prince and the 
 Gaptal de Buche suspended hostilities and united their forces in 
 order to chastise the Jacquerie in France, so in 1525 the Duke of 
 Guise, on behalf of the French king, who was then at war with 
 Charles the Fifth, and was his prisoner, took an active part in 
 punishing the boors in Germany. So both the historical parties 
 in England have been equal adepts in oppressing labour. 
 
 At the French Devolution, the people turned on their ancient 
 oppressors and rent them, avenging the wrongs of centuries by 
 a savage butchery. The cruelties of the Terror were due to a 
 reaction from the sense of accumulated wrongs, and to the dread 
 which freed slaves feel that if they are not thorough in their work, 
 the latter end will be worse than the beginning. When, in his 
 old age at Brussels, the infamous Bariere was asked to explain 
 the mad fury into which the French Devolution rapidly developed, 
 and the ferocity which the Mountain exhibited, he merely 
 answered, JS^ous etions des laches The answer is an epitome of 
 the Terror and of its doings. 
 
 Modern governments still wrong labour by pretending to 
 protect it against foreign competition. What they really do 
 is to swell the profits of the capitalist, to cripple the energies 
 of the workman by narrowing his market, and to shorten the 
 means of the consumer by making that dear which he wishes 
 to purchase. The establishment of protective duties is a con- 
 fession that the industry cannot thrive at home, still less 
 be successful abroad, unless the people at home pay an increased 
 price for its use. There is nothing done by levying such a tax 
 on consumption, unless it be imposed on those articles which are 
 in general demand, and therefore are the necessaries or con- 
 veniences of the many; for the more voluntary the use of an 
 article is, the less does it serve the ends which are proposed by 
 the regime of protective duties. It is very likely true that an 
 industry may be developed by protection, and a foreign market 
 found. This is said to be the case with German iron, and that 
 the manufacturers of this article undersell Belgian and English 
 ironmasters. But a moment’s reflection will show that they 
 can do so only at the expense of the German consumer, who not 
 
Remedies. 
 
 185 
 
 only pays an enhanced price for what he uses, but finds the 
 profit which reimburses the manufacturers for what would 
 otherwise be a loss in the foreign market. 
 
 In the United States, the process is being exhibited on the 
 most gigantic scale. The freest people in the world, whose 
 administrations and parliaments have hem able to study and 
 avoid the errors and crimes which older governments have 
 committed against labour, have submitted to a tariff which 
 clips the wages of the workman to the extent of 50 per 
 cent., under the pretence of supplying him with variety of 
 employment. It is a trifle that heavy duties are imposed 
 on a few foreign luxuries, except in so far as they give a 
 semblance of equity to those which are laid on common 
 necessaries, on the clothing of the workman, and on his tools, 
 and on the farmer’s implements of husbandry. The motive 
 of the impost is, of course, to increase the profits of capital; 
 and this has hitherto been the result, and the impoverishment 
 and dependence of labour, — a consequence as certain though 
 not so manifest. The more remote but inevitable consequence, 
 a bitter distrust and a growing enmity of the labourer towards 
 the employer, has been occasionally seen in the furious out- 
 breaks which have from time to time occurred in America, 
 and are likely to recur whenever, as is frequent in protected 
 trades, a great depression comes over the special industry. 
 
 From sheer folly, or from interested motives, a belief that 
 better profits would ensue to employers, or in order to serve 
 party ends by giving a false interpretation of economical 
 phenomena, there are persons who are foolish or wicked 
 enough to advocate the return to a protective policy in England 
 under the name of fair trade. The good sense of the better 
 educated and more experienced English workman shows him 
 that his acceptance of this doctrine would be nugatory in 
 articles of voluntary use, and suicidal in those of necessary use, 
 and he has, therefore, rejected the suggestion. There are, 
 moreover, persons who have the effrontery to invite workmen to 
 accept and acquiesce in a tax on their food, in order that 
 landlords may keep up their rents at the expense of the general 
 public. Such shameless mendicancy is in keeping with the 
 
traditions of aristocratic government, which has, in the history 
 of English finance and legislation, put the burdens of state on 
 the many, and freed the property of the few; but w^hen it is 
 fully understood, it will not serve the men who advocate it, or 
 the party which has the meanness to encourage it. Unless his 
 nature is changed, there is nothing which the average English- 
 man more thoroughly distrusts than a politician who gives 
 furtive and occasional support to a proposal which he publicly 
 condemns. 
 
 When a Government goes beyond its proper functions, which 
 are to maintain the public safety, to propound useful and equitable 
 legislation, to arbitrate between interests when it is necessary, 
 to extinguish privileges, to unite efiiciency with economy in the 
 administration of affairs, to punish fraud and violence, and to 
 undertake those great offices for which private action, individually 
 or collectively, is inadequate, and attempts to distribute employ- 
 ments among its people, to favour one class at the expense of 
 another, to meddle with the innocent habits of its subjects, and to 
 mould their lives after its own pattern, to coerce the open ex- 
 pression of opinion, and to silence criticism crxits own proceedings, 
 it makes itself, or those whose affairs it administers, responsible 
 for all the failures of its action, and engenders the belief that if 
 man is made unhappy, the Government has brought about the 
 result. The English Government, from the days of the Pale till 
 the passage of the second Irish Land Act, has attempted to create 
 or support an aristocracy of race in Ireland, and has thereupon 
 developed a democracy of discontent, hatred, and violence. Half 
 the German army is engaged in protecting the German soil from 
 an invasion of revenge, and the whole believes it is. But the 
 other half is engaged in restraining that wild outburst of socialism 
 which a meddling and pedantic administration has induced the 
 German people to believe to be the only opposition which the 
 government really recognises and fears. The huge empire of 
 Bussia is undermined by a universal conspiracy. The Austrian 
 administration lives by setting race against race, and achieves an 
 apparent union by nourishing implacable aversions. When the 
 traditional purposes of a government are detested, its best inten- 
 tions are distrusted. 
 
Remedies, 
 
 187 
 
 The strange story of Frankenstein was, I make no doubt, 
 suggested to Mary Godwin out of the opinions which she received 
 from her father. Frankenstein had contrived to pub life into a 
 gigantic being which he had constructed, and on which he intended 
 to bestow superhuman strength, stature, and beauty. His crea- 
 tion had strength and stature, but was unutterably and shock- 
 ingly hideous. The maker of the monster abandoned the 
 horrible creature, which had to shift for itself, and to learn the 
 arts of life in solitude, as all fled with loathing from the sight of 
 it. It possessed infinite powers of endurance, infinite capacity for 
 learning, great determination and cunning, irresistible strength. 
 It yearned for society, for sympathy, and for kindliness; and 
 meeting with none of these, being rejected by all and made a loath- 
 some outcast, after it had been called into being, it became an 
 infuriate fiend, which pursued with implacable hate and with the 
 most cruel wrongs the man who, being the author of its existence, 
 was thereupon its most detested enemy. This remarkable con- 
 ception was intended, it is clear, to personify the misery, the 
 loneliness, the endurance, the strength, the revenge of that 
 cnarchic spirit which misgovernment engenders, the suddenness 
 with which its passions seize their opportunities, and the hopeless- 
 ness of the pursuit after it, when it has spent its fury for a time. 
 Most European governments have been engaged in the work of 
 Frankenstein, and have created the monsters with whom they 
 have to deal. 
 
 The great cities and towns of England contain a vast population 
 which lives, one hardly knows how, on mean and precarious wages, 
 in dismal and unwholesome dens. Some of this poverty is merely 
 miserable, some of it is vicious, some is criminal. The growing 
 population of these English towns is partly of local origin ; for 
 though apparently a century ago the deaths in London exceeded 
 the births, the increase of sanitary appliances has made London 
 so healthy that the relations are reversed ; every week the 
 amount of the births equals the number of a large village. There 
 is also a large immigration into London and other towns. The 
 German population of London is fully equal to that of a first-class 
 town in the German empire. The Irish population is probably 
 larger than that in any Irish town, except Dublin and Belfast. 
 
i88 
 
 Work aua Wages. 
 
 London, it is probable, also receives a considerable part of that 
 population which has deserted the agricultural districts. Now 
 London is the greatest manufacturing town in the world. Natur- 
 ally its inhabitants are engaged in an infinite variety of occupa- 
 tions. But these occupations are stinted by the fact that an octroi 
 duty on coal is levied to an amount which seems insignificant, but 
 is sufficient to kill such manufactures as depend on a prodigal con- 
 sumption of this source of power. The tax was first imposed, I 
 believe, to supply a fund for rebuilding St. Paul’s Cathedral, was 
 continued for the use of that absurd and obsolete Corporation of 
 the City Proper, and now forms part of the fund for the purposes 
 of a hardly less grotesque institution — the Metropolitan Board of 
 Works. 
 
 Evil as the condition is of destitute and criminal London, with 
 its misery and recklessness, it is not, I am persuaded, so miserable 
 and so hopeless as nearly all urban labour was sixty years ago. 
 It is not, I believe, so bad as it was at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, when, as one sees from LuttreU’s diary, the 
 executions at Tyburn formed a notable percentage in the weekly 
 bills of mortality. It is not so ignorant nor so unclean as it was 
 twenty years ago, though, as usual, the pedantry of the Education 
 Department, in driving all children through a rigid examination, 
 produces a distaste afterwards for books and learning, which 
 makes the standard of proficiency a barrier towards subsequent 
 study and learning, which is nearly as insurmountable as ignorance. 
 In order to enable the Government officials to calculate the charge 
 of national education in the easiest manner for themselves, they 
 pay by results, and in consequence induce results which are very 
 adverse to those for attaining which public money is expended. 
 
 It is a matter of great gravity whether we should welcome or 
 even permit the perpetual immigration of a foreign element into 
 the country. The American people, with an unlimited extent of 
 territory, decline to allow themselves to be the recipients of 
 European pauperism, and keep a sharp look-out on the character 
 of the steerage passengers to the States. They suspend the rights 
 of citizenship during a considerable period of probation. They 
 have decided, for reasons which are very intelligible, though not 
 very convenient to be published, not to allow their population to 
 
Remedies, 
 
 189 
 
 be polluted by the presence of a Chinese proletariat. Now it is 
 quite certain that the English people at one time gained con- 
 siderably by the influx of foreigners. Some of our best industries 
 were developed before the Reformation by the inflowing Flemish 
 artizans from the time of Henry II. onwards. Others owe, it 
 seems, their development in England (though not without some 
 remonstrance, as we find from an Act of 1454 directed against 
 foreigners engaged in the silk manufacture) to the exiles whom 
 religious bigotry and persecution drove away. Such were the 
 workmen who fled from the Spanish Inquisition in the Low 
 Countries, and the Bourbon Dragonnades in France. We owe, 
 indeed, some of our best stocks in England to these migrations. 
 No Englishman can regret, for the sake of his country, that it 
 was an asylum for a Bomilly. 
 
 But it is quite another thing, when cheap transit being provided, 
 the great towns in England swarm with pauper foreigners. 
 Perhaps the readiness with which this kind of population is 
 accepted, is a survival of the experience in which the addition of 
 the foreign element was an indisputable good ; perhaps it is a 
 convenience to those capitalists who make large profits out of 
 degraded and impoverished labour. Working men, who under- 
 stand the interests of their order, are. alive to the risk which their 
 organizations run from the competition of foreign immigrants, 
 and with characteristic public spirit have suggested to foreign 
 labour that it should seek to raise itself, not at the expense of 
 other labourers, but in concert with other labourers. The advice 
 which Mr. Broadhurst gave last autumn (1883) at the Paris 
 conference of workmen was in the best interests of all workmen. 
 In brief it is. Raise yourselves, not by depressing others, but by 
 acting with them. You cannot escape, try whatever you can, 
 from the influence of competition, any more than from the 
 survival of the fittest. But the survival of the fittest may be 
 the survival of the analogue to Frankenstein's demon, while the 
 efibrt of all true civilisation is to improve those who are im- 
 provable, and to deal with the residuum. It is possible that the 
 struggle for existence, unless controlled and elevated, may be the 
 degradation of all. It nearly came to be so during the first 
 thirty years of the present century. 
 
^ 9 ^ W ork and Wages, 
 
 Various remedies have been proposed for the immediate benefit 
 and the permanent improvement of the working classes, especially 
 the industrious poor in large cities. It may be expedient that I 
 should state, in this conclusion to my inquiry, what appears to 
 me to be the value of the several projects which have been 
 propounded. 
 
 I am persuaded that an attempt to relieve distress, provide 
 proper lodging, and find work for the inhabitants of large towns 
 would in the end produce even worse evils than that condition 
 which the expedients would seek to relieve. No one disparages 
 kindliness and charity. For certain calamities, such as those 
 which are relieved in hospitals, they are indispensable. For 
 extraordinary casualties they are invaluable. But as a universal 
 process they would be disastrous, especially if the charity is 
 ■compulsory, or provided out of the funds which the Government 
 raises by way of taxation. To adopt such an expedient would be 
 to despair of the recuperative power of honest industry. If the 
 London ratepayers, or even the London landlords, are to find the 
 means by which homes are to be provided for workmen at prices 
 which are unremunerative to those who supply the homes, and 
 work on products for which there is no market, or an overstocked 
 market, it needs no particular acuteness to discover that the 
 emigration into such towns will be more rapid than ever, and the 
 restraints on improvidence, not now over strong, will be entirely 
 removed, and the old allowance system restored in its worst form. 
 It seems plain, too, that in the end, what was seen to be not very 
 remote under the old poor law will ensue, and the relief of 
 poverty will absorb nearly all the products of labour. 
 
 The nationalisation of land is a favourite project with those 
 who believe that socialism is the true remedy for low wages. 
 Now I cannot believe that this project, from the extreme form 
 which it takes in Mr. George’s proposal, that the property of all 
 landowners, great and small, should be confiscated, to the milder 
 proposal, that after due compensation secured to existing interests, 
 the state should con.stitute itself the universal landlord and 
 appropriate for public ends all future accretions of value in land, 
 would have been ever gravely contemplated had it not been for 
 the policy of English landlords, who have clung to the obnoxious 
 
Remedies, 
 
 191 
 
 privileges of primogeniture and the right of settling land. The 
 instinct of the public leads them to conclude that there is a very 
 strong motive for the maintenance of these customs, and natu- 
 rally that the motive is a selfish one. They are aware that the 
 soil of this country is limited in extent, that what is scarce is 
 dear, and that if what is scarce can be made artificially more 
 scarce, it will be made more dear. That this impression is correct 
 cannot, I think, be doubted. It is not indeed easy to discover 
 the precise amount of additional or unnatural dearness which 
 the application of Gregory King's Law, which formulates the 
 effect of scarcity on the price of a necessary of life, would prove 
 to be induced on building sites in the metropolis. But it is 
 clearly understood that the cost is greatly enhanced, and dis- 
 content at an unfair advantage conferred by law on the owners 
 of certain kinds of property exaggerates the impression formed as 
 to the amount. I am at least persuaded that the socialism which 
 desires in a more or less drastic manner to curtail the present 
 rights of landowners will become more prevalent and more 
 threatening as long as the invidious privileges to which I have 
 often referred are maintained. These mischievous privileges 
 explain the popularity of Mr. George's theory and his remedy of 
 universal confiscation, — a confiscation which will include not only 
 palaces and parks, mansions and farms, but every freehold 
 cottage or homestead in which working men have invested the 
 savings of their lives. Discontent constantly accepts ludicrous 
 and even suicidal paradoxes. 
 
 The policy which would make the state the universal 
 landlord, after providing for the compensation of existing 
 interests, would be only less fatal and foolish than that 
 which confiscated them without compensation. It would 
 confer on the state the most gigantic functions, which would 
 require for their administration a machinery which, were it 
 entirely honest and thoroughly efficient, would cost more 
 than all which the project hoped to gain, would create an 
 enormous body of fundholders, the recipients of the rents 
 which the government received for the use of the national 
 estate, fundholders who would not be, by the very terms 
 of the bargain, tied by a single responsibility to the society 
 
192 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 which paid them the dividends on the new stock, and would 
 certainly lead to a bureaucracy which would be vexatious, 
 inquisitorial, and corrupt. If the state is to revise its 
 contracts with its tenants periodically, the tenant will be 
 divested of all motives to improve his holding; if the new 
 tenancy is to be a permanent one, the state of things which 
 the nationalisation of land was intended to obviate will 
 instantly recommence. But the progress of human liberty 
 is always connected with the restraint of government inter- 
 ference, except when government, by arbitrating between 
 conflicting interests, saves the weak from the tyranny of 
 the strong, and thus secures justice, and beneflts the whole 
 community by its police. Again, the object of the wise 
 economist, that result to which all the practical teaching 
 of his science and all the experience of social history tend, 
 is the distribution of wealth into as many hands as possible. 
 A country is inflnitely safer, infinitely stronger, infinitely 
 more capable of genuine progress, in which the many are in 
 comfort and content, than that is in which much wealth is 
 accumulated, but the process of distribution is artificially hindered. 
 
 Another remedy is emigration or migration. Spontaneous 
 emigration is almost invariably a loss to the community from 
 which ifc proceeds. It is supposed to relieve the country of a 
 surplus population, and thereupon to be a remedy against the 
 danger of over-crowding. But a process which takes away 
 the best of the working classes, as must be the case with 
 spontaneous emigration, since only the most vigorous and 
 enterprising are influenced by the movement, is the reverse 
 of a gain to the country which loses them, and if their places 
 are filled, as it seems they are, by immigrants of inferior type, 
 and, as is generally the case with such types, of greater 
 fecundity, the loss becomes a double one. The fact that the 
 emigration is a benefit to the emigrant does not alter the 
 resvilt. Now emigration is a boon to the country from which 
 it takes place only when it relieves society from that class of 
 the industrious and honest workers which is certain to be 
 over-crowded, and from which, therefore, depletion is a good to 
 all, to the people which runs the risk of being constrained to 
 
Remedies, 
 
 193 
 
 support the excess, and far more important, to the labour 
 which is likely to be in excess. The class which most exactly 
 fulfils the conditions referred' to, is the young of both sexes ; 
 and it is well known that this is the class of immigrants that 
 our colonies eagerly welcome, and are willing in their new 
 homes to surround with every safeguard. 
 
 I am persuaded, from reason and experience, that the 
 emigration of the young is the best remedy for hereditary 
 pauperism. Some years ago, when I was a guardian of the 
 poor in my own city, my Board took pains to carry out this 
 kind of emigration, through the agency of Miss Bye, and with 
 absolute success. Nor do I doubt that in London and other 
 large towns, especially as education is sharpening the faculties 
 and developing the intelligence of the young, such a system 
 of emigration would be welcome and highly beneficial, espe- 
 cially if care were taken that the parent should be carefully 
 and exactly informed of the way in which the child was going 
 on, and the child were made to understand the duty of relieving 
 the parent, perhaps of finding him or her a home in the new 
 country to which he or she may have gone. The children of 
 the poor are not undutiful or ungenerous to their parents. I 
 am convinced from my personal knowledge that the wages of 
 domestic servants are freely given by young women to their 
 parents, and that the miserable earnings of agricultural 
 labourers are constantly eked out by the wages of daughters 
 in service. In the case of pauper children, I hold that they 
 wLo have put upon others the charge of their maintenance 
 have morally forfeited the right of determining their career ; 
 and that in the case of criminals and persons of infamous 
 character, they should be, in the interest of the children, 
 deprived of parental rights at once and altogether. It is the 
 inteiest of honest and industrious workmen that pauperism 
 should be diminished as much as possible in the present and 
 obviated in the future, and that crime should be isolated and 
 watched. Everything which increases the cost of administer- 
 ing human societies, and still more everything which involves 
 the waste of wealth, diminishes the resources available for the 
 employment of industry. 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 The disastrous dissociation of agricultural skill and com- 
 petent capital has led to a diminution of the rural population, 
 and to the abandonment of tillage over a large and, it is to be 
 feared, an increasing area of English land. The poverty of 
 the towns has been swollen by agricultural immigration, and 
 the necessary cultivation of the country has been injured by 
 the lack of hands. Hence it has been proposed, and with 
 great reason, to revive and extend the system of small hold- 
 ings, so as to attract a rural population to the land before it 
 is too late. My friend, Mr. Jesse Ceilings, in the House of 
 Commons, has already procured some legislation in this 
 direction, and the system has the warm support of Mr. Arch’s 
 practical experience. I believe that the only reason why 
 farmers are hostile to such an arrangement is that they fear 
 it will make the agricultural labourers too independent. It 
 seems that it is disliked by landowners because they are 
 wedded to the tradition of having large farm tenants and a 
 system which is plausible in itself, and, until the recen tagri- 
 cultural break-down, has been apparently successful. But at 
 the present crisis one would think that any and every expe- 
 dient which would tend to replace labour on land and attract 
 new capital to land would be advantageous, and should be 
 eagerly adopted. Though the individual capital of peasant 
 holders (I am thinking of much more than miserable acre 
 allotments of the worst land in the parish, at double the rent 
 of the best) is small, the proportionate capital is large. I am 
 sure, at least, that if intelligent labourers had the prospect of 
 getting a ten or fifteen acre farm, with a decent dwelling and 
 corresponding farm offices, the amount of capital per acre 
 with which they would stock their holdings would soon be 
 relatively far higher than that of the large farmer, and that 
 the produce per acre would be far larger, especially if they 
 betook themselves to dairy farming and ensilage, as the small 
 fifty acre farmers of the Eastern States in America are doing, 
 and with such marked success, on the worst land in the world. 
 Fortunately small farms are under the protection of the Agri- 
 cultural Holdings Act. 
 
 I have before me a little work, written by a national school- 
 
Remedies. 
 
 195 
 
 master some fifteen years ago, and to which I then put a 
 preface. I stated in it that the position of the agricultm*al 
 labourer in husbandry was one which pressed for a solution, 
 and that speedily, or that the country would have to face 
 difficulties which cannot be evaded, difficulties which, unless fore- 
 seen and provided against, may be in the highest degree serious.*' 
 The crisis has come, and it is worse than I anticipated. 
 
 Mr. Samuel Yallis, in the little book to which I have 
 referred, gives a balance-sheet of his receipts and expenditure 
 on five acres of land cultivated by spade husbandry. He shows 
 a gross return of <£109 IO 5 ., his live stock being two cows and 
 two pigs, his grain crops being an acre of wheat and half an 
 acre of green peas. He puts down on the other side <£3 an 
 acre for rent, — an unconscious avowal as to the enormous rent 
 procured for cottage farms, — <£5 IO 5 . for seeds, and <£20 I 65 . 
 for labour, the latter item being of course one which was 
 necessary for the schoolmaster, but would not be incurred as a 
 money payment by the labourer, and so shows a profit of <£68 4^., 
 which he states, almost superfluously, is more than double the 
 the wages of the ordinary farm labourer. He steadily pursued 
 what he calls the soiling system ** with his cows, ^.e., they were 
 constantly fed under cover, and he reckons that the advantage of 
 this over the exposed system ’* is fully 25 per cent. He adds 
 that if young agricultural labourers remained single till twenty- 
 five, and saved half their wages, they would soon find the 
 necessary capital for such a little holding, or, indeed, for one 
 three times the size. 
 
 I do not doubt that it is still possible to recall a rural 
 population to the English soil, to renew and extend the 
 productiveness of English land, and to find abundant high-class 
 labour, for the capitalist farmer when he reappears. It is true 
 that the occupiers of peasant holdings might demand higher 
 wages than they now earn. But what of that % They might 
 illustrate anew the doctrine that low wages do not mean cheap 
 labour, and that high wages may. It is certain that the possession 
 of property is the best, nay the only means under which people 
 are educated into respecting property, and that diligent labour on 
 a small holding will lead to diligent labour on another's tenancy. 
 
196 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 I am told that the experiment of a beneficent despotism, under 
 which the labourer has been gifted with enough land for cow and 
 pigs to his cottage, with the condition that he worked honestly 
 for an employer at hire, has been tried successfully, the landowner 
 being the arbiter as to the wages paid. The system is the revival 
 in our own day of the old tenancy in villeinage, though with less 
 land and on an uncertain tenure. If this system succeeds, though 
 the intrinsic faults which belong to it were found out and com- 
 mented on in the earliest agriculture, I should anticipate that a 
 more generous tenure would be still more successful, and that 
 the most obvious solution of the agricultural dilficulty would 
 be to win back the labourer to the land by the temptation 
 that there is annexed to his cottage such an amount of land as 
 would give him an interest in the soil, and by leaving him free 
 to contract for his time and skill with the larger tenants. 
 
 In course of time it may be possible to reunite capital and ^ 
 agricultural skill, and bring back the labourer to the soil. It is ? 
 necessary to do both, and to face the solution of the problem. ' 
 At present, the parties immediately interested will not see the ■ 
 facts, and the public at large, which is profoundly interested in 
 the rehabilitation of agriculture, is kept in the dark. No more ; 
 deplorably unsatisfactory and incomplete account of the situation ( 
 can be conceived than that contained in the report of the Duke of 1 
 Richmond's commission, which is crowded with irrelevances, and 
 destitute of true information on the real facts of the situation. ! 
 So ill-informed are those who are concerned for agriculture, or 
 pretend to be, that there are persons addressing working men who 
 imagine that they can by bold assertions induce industry to 
 believe that it will benefit itself by replacing taxes in the form of 
 a sliding scale on wheat, by so restricting the foreign market, and 
 thus rendering the wages of the workman more uncertain than 
 they otherwise would be, and by raising the price of food, and 
 thus diminishing their purchasing power. 
 
 The future of the artizan, factory, and urban population has 
 yet to be discussed. For this there is but one remedy, — the 
 extension of labour organizations on the trade union principle, but 
 with considerable improvements in detail. If it be found that 
 those callings alone have prospered in which labour partnerships 
 
Remedies, 
 
 197 
 
 have been developed, and those have prospered most in which the 
 fundamental principles of such labour partnerships have been 
 most prudently kept in mind and acted on, it stands to reason 
 than an extension of the system to other callings, now notoriously 
 underpaid, is the most obvious remedy for low wages and un- 
 certain prospects. Such associations are a revival of the best 
 traits in the mediaeval guilds. 
 
 I confess that in my earlier writings, before I had studied the 
 history of labour and its strange vicissitudes in England, I was of 
 opinion, though with some misgivings, that the organization of a 
 trade union was directed against the consumer through the 
 employer, that it appropriated out of an elastic but common fund 
 from which labour was paid (though I never agreed with Mr. 
 Milks wage-fund theory), an undue share, and that it aimed at 
 establishing an aristocracy of labour, from the benefits of which 
 the great mass of working people would be excluded. An inquiry 
 into the history of labour has dispelled these opinions. I do not 
 aver that the organizations of the middle ages are models for 
 woiking men in modern times to imitate. They were partly 
 concessions to artizans in towns, partly encouraged in so far as 
 they were benefit societies ; but they were much more a reaction 
 against interested oppression. The modern labour partnership 
 is freed from the enforced vices of the older organization, and has 
 generally purged itself from the equally adventitious vices which 
 were engendered by the interpretations which the courts put upon 
 the atrocious combination and conspiracy laws. 
 
 Now the existence and development of the ancient system, 
 described in detail in the previous pages, was accompanied by 
 remarkable and general prosperity, for the vices of society in the 
 fifteenth century were mainly those of the Church and the nobles. 
 Every one throve, except the foolish people who, after wasting 
 France, came back to England and wasted each other. The 
 singular prosperity of the age has greatly puzzled those who have 
 even in part recognised its character, but was easily seen, to such 
 experienced eyes as those of Tooke, to have had no relation to the 
 reputed value of the currency, or to the other explanations which 
 had been given of so remarkable a phenomenon. 
 
 T can discover no other cause for this remarkable material 
 
198 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 progress beyond the universal associations of labour. I admit 
 that the situation was in itself favourable to high wages. Liand 
 was greatly distributed. The seasons must have been singularly 
 propitious. The country was permeated by a religious feeling 
 which scorned the woildliness and immoralities of the established 
 system, was severe, parsimonious, ardent, secret, and personal. 
 Unfortunately, the mass of the people either could not or would not 
 use what power they had to check the growing violence of the 
 nobles, the scandals of the Church, and the vices of the administra- 
 tion. They sided, it seems, with the reforming party among the 
 nobles, the Yorkist faction, and found, as people always find who 
 entrust popular interests to a noble partizan, that they were made 
 tools of and deluded. 
 
 It is probable, too, that the success of their private organiza- 
 tions, necessarily a secret, made them indifierent to such political 
 action as they could take. The towns, and even the villages, had 
 their guilds, and it is certain that these guilds were the agencies 
 by which the common interests of labour were protected. In a 
 prosperous people, legal persecution develops cautious resistance 
 and judicious organization. In an unprosperous one, it encourages 
 the growth of violent opinion and a pasi-ion for destructive 
 remedies. I can quite believe that the working classes of the 
 fifteenth century grew indifierent to politics, or found that they 
 could not grapple with lawless domestic feuds. I am certain that 
 the factions let them alone, just as I am certain that when the work- 
 ing classes became impoverished and powerless in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, the destruction of the guilds was seen by their oppressors to 
 be the best way of breaking up their organization. In the same 
 way the modern trade union has had to fight for two generations in 
 order to get its funds protected against fraud or embezzlement. 
 
 The evidence of the present and the example of the past appear 
 to prove that labour partnerships are the remedy for low wages. 
 They undoubtedly put the employer in a difficulty. They claim a 
 greater share for lajbour in the gross profit of industry. They 
 constrain him (if he is to hold his own in the struggle) to find his 
 remedy in the economy of waste, in the development of invention, 
 or in the reduction of rent. The analysis of these agencies 
 requires a fuller exposition of the circumstances. 
 
Remedies, 
 
 199 
 
 The workman should seek to make his labour as efficient 
 and fruitful as possible. The honourable desire to protect 
 every workman in the same craft, by seeking to establish a 
 minimum of wages, may lead to the suggestion of a minimum 
 standard of efficiency. It is entirely essential not only to the 
 dignity but to the strength of labour that it should do what 
 it has to do as well as it possibly can. I am sure that the 
 workman of the fifteenth century was as proud of the integrity 
 of his work as he was of the agencies by which he was 
 independent. We can, even at the present day, measure and 
 appreciate its excellence. And in order to maintain their 
 own character, workmen are, in my opinion, justified in de- 
 nouncing incompetence, sloth, or scamping work in their own 
 order, and in exposing fraud and dishonesty among employers. 
 If it were possible for the employer to dispense with over- 
 lookers, and trust his workmen, much saving would be effected, 
 for in order to get a larger share in the joint profits of the 
 capitalist and workmen, it is essential that the deduction from 
 gi’oss profits should be as little as possible. But it must, I 
 fear, be admitted, that in the modern strife between labour 
 and capital, the importance of securing that every care should 
 be taken of the employer's interest by the workmen has been 
 lost sight of, and, in consequence, tha,t fund from which alone 
 the condition of the workman can be bettered, the net profits 
 of the whole industry, has been needlessly and injuriously 
 diminished. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that em- 
 ployer and employed have a common interest, — the production 
 of a maximum profit from their common industry ; and that the 
 only question which ought to arise in the partnership between 
 them, is that of the respective shares which each should receive 
 in the equitable distribution of the profit. But I venture on 
 asserting that the economy of this kind of waste is the most 
 important of all. 
 
 There are various other forms of it. The extraordinary 
 application of natural forces to purposes of human utility is 
 the most striking fact in the history of modern industry. The 
 economy of waste is the discovery of the process by which 
 the force may be used with the least friction and loss, and the 
 
200 
 
 W 'jrk and Wages. 
 
 success which has attended individual effort in this direction, 
 is a commonplace in the history of industry, manufacture, and 
 wealth. Such discoveries, secured as they are by patents, 
 exist entirely for the benefit of the capitalist, and the profits 
 derived from them can be appropriated in no degree by any 
 one. In just the same way the special skill of the individual 
 agriculturist, who cannot protect his processes by patent, 
 remains with him as a profit-bearing agency, and cannot be 
 appropriated by laboui-er or landowner till the economy is 
 diffused among all persons engaged in the same calling. But 
 other economies, some of which have been alluded to already, 
 viz., the extinction of middle profits and the moral develop- 
 ment of industry, — immediately become the object on which 
 labour may ground its claims to a share in the enhanced; 
 profit of the undertaking, though here again, until the economy ' 
 is diffused over all the operations of a similar kind, the appro- 
 priation of the part is hindered. And perhaps the monopoly ' 
 of the patentee (the natural justice of which I do not dispute, 
 though the grant of the monopoly is constantly inequitable in 
 fact) may help to break that immediate loss to labour which 
 often follows for a while on the economy of productive pro- 
 cesses, and so give time to prepare for the re-arrangement with ' 
 labour, which the greater profits of the employer justify. In : 
 illustration of what I say, I may refer to the effect of sewing ' 
 machines. It was calculated that this invention would mate- ' 
 rially lessen the toils, and, in the end, increase the gains of ‘ 
 tailors^ and seamstresses. It has not done so, because the 
 tailors’ union is not strong enough to enable the members to 
 claim better terms from employers, and the seamstresses have 
 hardly any union at all. That they who have employed the 
 labours of such artizans as I refer to have made prodigious 
 profits, is pretty evident. I find no fault with the advantage 
 which they have acquired, my only regret is that it has not 
 been shared with those who have created the wealth, as it 
 would have been under a proper organization. 
 
 The circumstances under which rent may be made to bear 
 a larger share of public duties, in return for the enormous 
 benefits which industry and the progress of society have 
 
Remedies, 
 
 201 
 
 \ 
 
 J conferred upon landowners, have been already in part referred to. 
 I The well-being of the mere landowner is a matter of no concern 
 j to anybody but himself. The well-being of the labourer, or of 
 \ the capitalist who gives the concentration of intelligence and 
 f administrative power to the affairs of a complicated instrument 
 ‘ of profit, or of the artizan, who conscientiously and faithfully 
 ' carries out the details of work, is of interest to all. I cannot 
 join in the chorus of exultation which comments on the virtues of 
 a middle-man who, having saved ten or twenty millions, dies in 
 the odours of the peerage and of sanctity. I do not care for the 
 p opulence which, beginning with questionable gifts or grants or 
 p plunder, has, through generations of fools or profligate^, at last, 
 j and by the labour and even by the presence of others, contrived 
 t to take enormous tolls on enterprize, on industry, and on popu - 
 ; lation, and is ever on the look-out to fleece all, if they will submit 
 to be fleeced. To suggest that the owner of land should be 
 deprived of his property is dishonest, and, were it carried out, 
 would be disastrous. To value his present interest, and to 
 appropriate the future increase of the area which he possesses, 
 would be an enormous task, and would make government, society 
 being a vague force of which government must be the agent, an 
 ubiquitous function, the jobs of which would be demoralizing, the 
 discontent with which would be dangerous, the cost of which 
 would be enormous, and the risks of which would be formidable. 
 Suppose in 1870 the English Government had adopted Mr. Mill's 
 suggestion, had accepted the position of universal and immediate 
 landlord, and had agreed to pay in perpetuity the agricultural 
 rents which were then raised, it would have made an excellent 
 bargain for the landowners, and an exceedingly bad one for the 
 public. The doctrine that agricultural rent will always rise, 
 which was at the bottom of Mr. Mill's theory of decreasing 
 production from land, is one of the most dangerous, and I may 
 add erroneous notions conceivable. A knowledge of the history 
 of rent, in the third quarter, for example, of the seventeenth 
 century, and the first quarter of the eighteenth, would have 
 entirely dispelled a delusion which was founded on the accidental 
 conditions under which rent was increased in the first half of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
202 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 But the case is quite different with ground rents. Here the 
 State has a right to interfere with that exceptional accretion of 
 value which comes from other than the outlay on the land. It is 
 easy to separate the ground value from the building value, and 
 to tax the one on the principle which should be applied to all 
 property, and the other on the principle which should be applied 
 to property whose only or principal value is derived from the 
 existence and action of others. That the reformers of local 
 taxation should insist on the ground landlord contributing to the 
 fund, which is necessary for the very existence of those who create 
 his wealth, is plain; that they should anticipate the necessity, 
 by joint action, of lessening the exorbitant rents which their 
 supineness induces them to pay for sites, is wise ; for in many 
 branches of business there is clear enough evidence that trade 
 customers will be no longer willing to pay them ; and that what 
 is called co-operative shop-keeping, a system already in its 
 infancy, and still exposed to the risks of inexperience, will 
 seriously limit the future of those traders who are too slovenly or 
 too servile to resist extortion. 
 
 The organization of labour, with a view to its sale in the 
 aggregate, is incomparably more important, when the condition of 
 any class is such that the wages it earns are not progressive, or 
 are retrogressive, than it is when the demand is generally less 
 than the supply. Persons have often stated that there has been 
 no trade union among domestic servants, and that the wages of 
 such persons have greatly risen by the mere operation of demand 
 and supply. There is no doubt of the increase ; and it bears 
 indirect testimony to the fact that the profits of the higher 
 branches of industry are greater than those of the lower, and 
 that there is more employment for domestic labour in con 
 sequence. But it is also certain that the demands made on such 
 labour cause that it should be increasingly select. The domestic 
 servants who satisfied the simple habits of a generation or two 
 ago, were very inferior in tact, in manner, and in function to 
 those which are needed in very moderate households at present. 
 Besides, it is not quite clear that there is not an understanding 
 among domestic servants which is just as effective as a trade union. 
 The training of an efficient domestic servant is a long appren- 
 
Remedies. 
 
 203 
 
 ticeship. Those who enter into this calling know what is ex- 
 pected of them, and what is the reputation which they must 
 acquire and keep, and are very fully aware of the claims which 
 they can make for wages. Good as the position is, and, relatively 
 speaking, high as are the wages of peasant girls who enter into 
 domestic service and are carefully trained in it, the calling is not 
 in itself attractive, and young women often exchange it for a 
 married life of much toil and little hope, for the poor earnings of 
 dressmakers and seamstresses, and even for a ruinous freedom. 
 The supply always tends to fall short of the demand, and those 
 who enter the calling are fairly cognisant of the fact. 
 
 But there is no doubt whatever that many callings are, in 
 technical language, overcrowded. I say technically, for they may 
 not be under a better distribution of profits. I find no fault with 
 employers for attempting to arouse the common scare of those 
 who are threatened with the risk of having to pay higher wages, 
 that the industry will be driven from the country, but I am not 
 called on to believe them. The prediction is made so freely, and 
 has so rarely been verified, that any person who hears it may be 
 pardoned for doubting it. It is certainly not an imminent risk if 
 the profits of the capitalist continue to be large, and there is 
 plenty of evidence that in those callings where the labour of the 
 employed is worst paid, the profits of employers are abnormally 
 high, as in the case, for example, of ready-made clothes. There 
 is plenty of evidence as to the enormous profits of most employers 
 in the manufacture of textile fabrics in the days when factory- 
 hands were very ill-paid. IsTever, I imagine, was wealth more 
 rapidly accumulated in Lancashire and Yorkshire than it was 
 between 1800 and 1840. It is rarely the case, however, that 
 the liberal reward of labour is followed by a material enhance- 
 ment of price. No one believes that if the London seamstresses, 
 tailors, and match-box makers received double the wages which 
 they do at present, there would be an appreciable difference in the 
 price of the products sold, or any present risk that any of those 
 industries would cease to be plied in this country. 
 
 There is some evidence that the principle of organization as 
 applied to labour is extending even to the poorest paid work- 
 people. It is gratifying to see, for instance, that the process is 
 
204 
 
 Work and Wages, 
 
 gradually spreading among women. The first step is the modest 
 benefit society, which provides a fund against sickness, and 
 gradually for accidental or enforced abstinence from employment. 
 The habit of making provision against casualties arising from the 
 weakness of the individual’s own position in relation to the risks 
 of sickness or other contingencies, is soon extended towards 
 making provision against the risks which attend the employment. 
 Thence it is an easy stage to the process by which some slight 
 barrier is made against an arbitrary lessening of wages. This 
 step is aided by the avowed sympathy of those who are convinced 
 that labour should be helped, or, at least, not hindered, in 
 selling its work at the best price which it can get; and is 
 justified in resisting, by all the means it can command, the pro- 
 cess which would compel it to a forced sale of the only article 
 of value which it possesses. In course of time, employers become 
 habituated to the process under which workpeople sell their 
 labour, on the same principle which others adopt in selling their 
 goods, for the dealer knows the ruinous effect of a compulsory and 
 sudden sale. And perhaps, finally, the sternest economist will 
 come to see, not only that workpeople may adopt the principle of 
 the capitalist in withholding goods from the market till a re- 
 munerative price is obtained, but that the process as applied to 
 labour is ultimately as beneficial as most persons see it is when 
 applied to trade. The market price, they tell us, must in the 
 long run conform to the cost of production, plus the profit of the 
 capitalist. Is this to be true of one of the factors in production 
 only, and to be false in the case of the other ? 
 
 The moralist might dwell at length and with satisfaction on 
 the education which the principle of mutual aid gives to human 
 nature. The rational economist knows that the best way in 
 which the various forces which contribute to a common result 
 can carry out their end is by the harmony of these forces. But 
 the harmony is impossible if there be a well-founded distrust 
 as to the equity with which the distribution of profits is effected. 
 There will be a longing for violent remedies if law is plainly en- 
 listed on behalf of any one interest, and to the detriment of all 
 others. For, I repeat, the excellence of the social state does not 
 lie in the fulness with which wealth is produced and accumulated, 
 
Remedies. 
 
 205 
 
 but in the fact that it is so distributed as to give the largest 
 comfort and the widest hope to the general mass of those whose 
 continued efforts constitute the present industry of the nation and 
 the abiding prospect of its future well-being. 
 
 To the historian, however, as distinguished from the mere 
 annalist, the narrative of the varying fortunes which have attended 
 on these centuries of work and wages is immeasurably instructive. 
 Whatever claim other people may make to a share in the common 
 work of civilization, the English race may justly affirm that the 
 English people has instructed mankind in the machinery of 
 government, and in the process by which freedom may be secured 
 in the fullest measure to all, and the administration of public 
 affairs may be effectively carried on. The institutions of England 
 have been copied, with more or less success, by all civilised 
 races. They may be faulty, but they contain the best agencies 
 which experience has discovered and practical wisdom has 
 adopted. 
 
 We do not owe them to the dynasties which have ruled in 
 England, for the English constitution has been wrested from the 
 several families who have been permitted from time to time to be 
 at the head of affairs, and have one and all conspired against the 
 welfare of those who have endured them, till, more frequently 
 than any other people, the English have deposed them, and 
 driven them away. We do not owe them to statesmen and 
 lawyers, for they have constantly abetted their employers in those 
 purposes which have been so happily baffled. We do not owe 
 them to the English aristocracy, which has been by turns turbulent, 
 servile, and greedy, and is now probably the most unnecessary, as 
 a body, that any civilized society exhibits and endures. We do 
 not owe them to the Church, which has been, since the days of the 
 first Edward, the willing servant of statecraft, and has rarely 
 raised its voice against wrong-doing. Had the English people 
 relied on the mere machinery of its government and the character 
 of those who have manipulated this government, it would have 
 never been an example and a model of civilized organization. To 
 my mind, England was as its lowest degradation during the 
 twenty years which intervened between the destruction of the 
 monasteries and the restoration of the currency, when the worst 
 
2C6 
 
 Work and Wages. 
 
 possible government was carried on, but with strict adherence to 
 parliamentary forms. 
 
 The fact is, even in the darkest times there still was something 
 which despotism feared or discovered that it must fear. England 
 has never been entirely without a public opinion, which has been 
 constantly acute, and has not infrequently been dangerous. There 
 have always, too, been public men who could give effect to that 
 opinion, and make it strong by marshalling it. The traditional 
 parties have in turn thriven or become powerful, — the one by 
 appropriating at its convenience the work of those who have 
 interpreted and formulated popular demands ; the other by 
 putting itself at the head of all interests which are hostile to the 
 public good, and by relying on the organization which is sure to be 
 developed on behalf of such interests, and on apathy, ignorance, 
 or unintelligent discontent. But by dint of patience and by 
 watching for opportunities, the English people has developed a 
 *;ystem which, though far from perfect, has achieved much of that 
 which had long been the Utopia of philosophers. But the reforms 
 which have been effected are the work of the people, and they are 
 to be traced in that history only which is rarely written, of the 
 stubborn perseverance with which Englishmen have criticised 
 their own condition, have discovered that from themselves only, 
 whoever may be the agent of the remedy, the remedy can be 
 found, and have, under infinite discouragements, effected so much. 
 The student of social forces will find, that. in order to understand 
 the order of things in his own time, he must take account not 
 only of the process by which the machinery of our social condition 
 has been made and constantly marred, but much more of the 
 opinion and action which have developed and moulded the 
 character of the English people. 
 
NEW BOOKS ON LABOUfi, AVAGES, ETC., 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 W. SWAN SONNENSOHEIN & CO., 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. 
 
 SIX CENTURIES OP WORK AND WAGES : a History 
 of English Labour. By Professoe J. E. Thorold Kogers, M.P., 
 2 vols. 8vo, 25s. 
 
 THE LAND AND THE LABOURERS: Records and Experi- 
 ments in Cottage Farming and Co-operative Agriculture. By Charles 
 W. Stubbs, M.A., Vicar of Stokenham. Crown 8vo, 3^. 6d. 
 
 CHRIST AND DEMOCRACY. By Charles W. Stubbs, M. A., 
 Vicar of Stokenham. Crown 8vo, 3^. 6d. 
 
 REHOUSING THE INDUSTRIAL CLASSES, or Town 
 Rookeries v. Village Communities. By the Rev. Henry Solly. Demy 
 16mo, 6d. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL ECONOMY. By Yves Guyot. 
 
 Demy 8vo, 9^. 
 
 Book I. Economic Science, its Nature, Objects, and Methods. 
 Book II. The Constituents of Value. Book III. Value of Fixed and 
 Circulating Capital. Book IV. The Value of Man. Book V. Experi- 
 mental Economics. Book VI. The Functions of the State. 
 
 THE DILEMMAS OP LABOUR AND EDUCATION. 
 
 By Dr. Akin KIroly. own 8vo, Ss. 6d, 
 
 W. SWAN SONNENSOHEIN & CO., Paternoster Sq,., London, E.C. 
 

/ 
 
 fciir.v i.y i '-.' 
 
 
j. 
 
 
 ‘; * V vS% ' .'>'‘v;^r. 
 
 'MM 
 
 
 Is ) ? 
 
 MiM’f:. 8t 
 
 ,V. ' V'',t *i'^i-VSiiVV , '■ ''’'‘^Im 
 
 '• -vi : -\< ^ '-Wi 
 
 mMMMMmMmkMm 
 
 
 -’ } V’ . , ‘ V>' I ". aV, 
 
 v': V:tt:. ■ fe\y -V VViyAfH)' ' » - 
 
 / I V ''v'-'v, ' 
 
 ' '' 
 
 Mk: 'k 
 
 fili 
 
 vv::i 
 
 Mk ; * ' ■' 8 ^^ 
 
 
 
 >8TvrVrT'8^/t‘-8^"^ ., . . y,y ,.,, 
 
 .s,--.s .,s.A.As ,,,:...-V,.^ 
 
 ' ^yv 
 iMk 
 
 .'l/i )':•■'■■ v^- t; ;; J'.;:: , r'^y 
 
 ' 8 ,.vt>''ts \ ■ * 'r ” 8 ' 
 
 ' r y't’’/,/'''i *'^8’*' 
 
 ■ ■ :■: ,A'.. 'V^'^vy8:»sy; s '^V.y:‘,!i 'I- ,,v v -■' .'■ ?‘i^'it,:v,,'v;' vk V 
 
 ,'v-' , 8"' ,k'\^p ~ 
 
 'V i ' V/vVtV", u ,- 
 
 ^^ ' '' i‘" ''' ''^^ ' 
 
 it;' --Mk' 
 
 mm: : ka$i- '/'•■ 5 ,. liip' ^ 
 
 ipisf M ."v'Hife 'i :'' 8^pstysSteap sS