Mill, John Stuart
Of Wages
II.11.1
§1. Under the head of Wages are to be considered, first, the causes which
determine or influence the wages of labour generally, and secondly, the
differences that exist between the wages of different employments. It is
convenient to keep these two classes of considerations separate; and in
discussing the law of wages, to proceed in the first instance as if there were
no other kind of labour than common unskilled labour, of the average degree of
hardness and disagreeableness.
II.11.2
Wages, like other things, may be regulated either by competition or by custom.
In this country there are few kinds of labour of which the remuneration would
not be lower than it is, if the employer took the full advantage of competition.
Competition, however, must be regarded, in the present state of society, as the
principal regulator of wages, and custom or individual character only as a
modifying circumstance, and that in a comparatively slight degree.*49
II.11.3
Wages, then, depend mainly upon the demand and supply of labour; or as it is
often expressed, on the proportion between population and capital. By population
is here meant the number only of the labouring class, or rather of those who
work for hire; and by capital only circulating capital, and not even the whole
of that, but the part which is expended in the direct purchase of labour. To
this, however, must be added all funds which, without forming a part of capital,
are paid in exchange for labour, such as the wages of soldiers, domestic
servants, and all other unproductive labourers. There is unfortunately no mode
of expressing by one familiar term, the aggregate of what has been called the
wages-fund of a country: and as the wages of productive labour form nearly the
whole of that fund, it is usual to overlook the smaller and less important part,
and to say that wages depend on population and capital. It will be convenient to
employ this expression, remembering, however, to consider it as elliptical, and
not as a literal statement of the entire truth.
II.11.4
With these limitations of the terms, wages not only depend upon the relative
amount of capital and population, but cannot, under the rule of competition,*50
be affected by anything else. Wages (meaning, of course, the general rate)
cannot rise, but by an increase of the aggregate funds employed in hiring
labourers, or a diminution in the number of the competitors for hire; nor fall,
except either by a diminution of the funds devoted to paying labour, or by an
increase in the number of labourers to be paid.*51
II.11.5
§2. There are, however, some facts in apparent contradiction to this doctrine,
which it is incumbent on us to consider and explain.
II.11.6
For instance, it is a common saying that wages are high when trade is good. The
demand for labour in any particular employment is more pressing, and higher
wages are paid, when there is a brisk demand for the commodity produced; and the
contrary when there is what is called a stagnation: then workpeople are
dismissed, and those who are retained must submit to a reduction of wages:
though in these cases there is neither more nor less capital than before. This
is true; and is one of those complications in the concrete phenomena, which
obscure and disguise the operation of general causes: but it is not really
inconsistent with the principles laid down. Capital which the owner does not
employ in purchasing labour, but keeps idle in his hands, is the same thing to
the labourers, for the time being, as if it did not exist. All capital is, from
the variations of trade, occasionally in this state. A manufacturer, finding a
slack demand for his commodity, forbears to employ labourers in increasing a
stock which he finds it difficult to dispose of; or if he goes on until all his
capital is locked up in unsold goods, then at least he must of necessity pause
until he can get paid for some of them. But no one expects either of these
states to be permanent; if he did, he would at the first opportunity remove his
capital to some other occupation, in which it would still continue to employ
labour. The capital remains unemployed for a time, during which the labour
market is overstocked, and wages fall. Afterwards the demand revives, and
perhaps becomes unusually brisk, enabling the manufacturer to sell his commodity
even faster than he can produce it: his whole capital is then brought into
complete efficiency, and if he is able, he borrows capital in addition, which
would otherwise have gone into some other employment. At such times wages, in
his particular occupation, rise. If we suppose, what in strictness is not
absolutely impossible, that one of these fits of briskness or of stagnation
should affect all occupations at the same time, wages altogether might undergo a
rise or a fall. These, however, are but temporary fluctuations: the capital now
lying idle will next year be in active employment, that which is this year
unable to keep up with the demand will in its turn be locked up in crowded
warehouses; and wages in these several departments will ebb and flow accordingly:
but nothing can permanently alter general wages, except an increase or a
diminution of capital itself (always meaning by the term, the funds of all sorts,
devoted to the payment of labour) compared with the quantity of labour offering
itself to be hired.
II.11.7
Again, it is another common notion that high prices make high wages; because the
producers and dealers, being better off, can afford to pay more to their
labourers. I have already said that a brisk demand, which causes temporary high
prices, causes also temporary high wages. But high prices, in themselves, can
only raise wages if the dealers, receiving more, are induced to save more, and
make an addition to their capital, or at least to their purchases of labour.
This is indeed likely enough to be the case; and if the high prices came direct
from heaven, or even from abroad, the labouring class might be benefited, not by
the high prices themselves, but by the increase of capital occasioned by them.
The same effect, however, is often attributed to a high price which is the
result of restrictive laws, or which is in some way or other to be paid by the
remaining members of the community; they having no greater means than before to
pay it with. High prices of this sort, if they benefit one class of labourers,
can only do so at the expense of others; since if the dealers by receiving high
prices are enabled to make greater savings, or otherwise increase their
purchases of labour, all other people by paying those high prices have their
means of saving, or of purchasing labour, reduced in an equal degree; and it is
a matter of accident whether the one alteration or the other will have the
greatest effect on the labour market. Wages will probably be temporarily higher
in the employment in which prices have risen, and somewhat lower in other
employments: in which case, while the first half of the phenomenon excites
notice, the other is generally overlooked, or if observed, is not ascribed to
the cause which really produced it. Nor will the partial rise of wages last
long: for though the dealers in that one employment gain more, it does not
follow that there is room to employ a greater amount of savings in their own
business: their increasing capital will probably flow over into other
employments, and there counterbalance the diminution previously made in the
demand for labour by the diminished savings of other classes.
II.11.8
Another opinion often maintained is, that wages (meaning of course money wages)
vary with the price of food; rising when it rises, and falling when it falls.
This opinion is, I conceive, only partially true; and in so far as true, in no
way affects the dependence of wages on the proportion between capital and labour:
since the price of food, when it affects wages at all, affects them through that
law. Dear or cheap food, caused by variety of seasons, does not affect wages (unless
they are artificially adjusted to it by law or charity): or rather, it has some
tendency to affect them in the contrary way to that supposed; since in times of
scarcity people generally compete more violently for employment, and lower the
labour market against themselves. But dearness or cheapness of food, when of a
permanent character, and capable of being calculated on beforehand, may affect
wages. In the first place, if the labourers have, as is often the case, no more
than enough to keep them in working condition, and enable them barely to support
the ordinary number of children, it follows that if food grows permanently
dearer without a rise of wages, a greater number of the children will
prematurely die; and thus wages will ultimately be higher, but only because the
number of people will be smaller, than if food had remained cheap. But, secondly,
even though wages were high enough to admit of food's becoming more costly
without depriving the labourers and their families of necessaries; though they
could bear, physically speaking, to be worse off, perhaps they would not consent
to be so. They might have habits of comfort which were to them as necessaries,
and sooner than forego which, they would put an additional restraint on their
power of multiplication; so that wages would rise, not by increase of deaths but
by diminution of births. In these cases, then, wages do adapt themselves to the
price of food, though after an interval of almost a generation. Mr. Ricardo
considers these two cases to comprehend all cases. He assumes, that there is
everywhere a minimum rate of wages: either the lowest with which it is
physically possible to keep up the population, or the lowest with which the
people will choose to do so. To this minimum he assumes that the general rate of
wages always tends; that they can never be lower, beyond the length of time
required for a diminished rate of increase to make itself felt, and can never
long continue higher. This assumption contains sufficient truth to render it
admissible for the purposes of abstract science; and the conclusion which Mr.
Ricardo draws from it, namely, that wages in the long run rise and fall with the
permanent price of food, is, like almost all his conclusions, true
hypothetically, that is, granting the suppositions from which he sets out. But
in the application to practice, it is necessary to consider that the minimum of
which he speaks, especially when it is not a physical, but what may be termed a
moral minimum, is itself liable to vary. If wages were previously so high that
they could bear reduction, to which the obstacle was a high standard of comfort
habitual among the labourers, a rise in the price of food, or any other
disadvantageous change in their circumstances, may operate in two ways: it may
correct itself by a rise of wages brought about through a gradual effect on the
prudential check to population; or it may permanently lower the standard of
living of the class, in case their previous habits in respect of population
prove stronger than their previous habits in respect of comfort. In that case
the injury done to them will be permanent, and their deteriorated condition will
become a new minimum, tending to perpetuate itself as the more ample minimum did
before. It is to be feared that of the two modes in which the cause may operate,
the last is the most frequent, or at all events sufficiently so, to render all
propositions ascribing a self-repairing quality to the calamities which befal
the labouring classes, practically of no validity. There is considerable
evidence that the circumstances of the agricultural labourers in England have
more than once in our history sustained great permanent deterioration, from
causes which operated by diminishing the demand for labour, and which, if
population had exercised its power of self-adjustment in obedience to the
previous standard of comfort, could only have had a temporary effect: but
unhappily the poverty in which the class was plunged during a long series of
years brought that previous standard into disuse; and the next generation,
growing up without having possessed those pristine comforts, multiplied in turn
without any attempt to retrieve them.*52
II.11.9
The converse case occur when, by improvements in agriculture, the repeal of corn
laws, or other such causes, the necessaries of the labourers are cheapened, and
they are enabled, with the same wages, to command greater comforts than before.
Wages will not fall immediately; it is even possible that they may rise; but
they will fall at last, so as to leave the labourers no better off than before,
unless during this interval of prosperity the standard of comfort regarded as
indispensable by the class, is permanently raised. Unfortunately this salutary
effect is by no means to be counted upon; it is a much more difficult thing to
raise, than to lower, the scale of living which the labourer will consider as
more indispensable than marrying and having a family. If they content themselves
with enjoying the greater comfort while it lasts, but do not learn to require it,
they will people down to their old scale of living. If from poverty their
children had previously been insufficiently fed or improperly nursed, a greater
number will now be reared, and the competition of these, when they grow up, will
depress wages, probably in full proportion to the greater cheapness of food. If
the effect is not produced in this mode, it will be produced by earlier and more
numerous marriages, or by an increased number of births to a marriage. According
to all experience, a great increase invariably takes place in the number of
marriages, in seasons of cheap food and full employment. I cannot, therefore,
agree in the importance so often attached to the repeal of the corn laws,
considered merely as a labourers' question, or to any of the schemes, of which
some one or other is at all times in vogue, for making the labourers a very
little better off. Things which only affect them a very little, make no
permanent impression upon their habits and requirements, and they soon slide
back into their former state. To produce permanent advantage, the temporary
cause operating upon them must be sufficient to make a great change in their
condition—a change such as will be felt for many years, notwithstanding any
stimulus which it may give during one generation to the increase of people. When,
indeed, the improvement is of this signal character, and a generation grows up
which has always been used to an improved scale of comfort, the habits of this
new generation in respect to population become formed upon a higher minimum, and
the improvement in their condition becomes permanent. Of cases in point, the
most remarkable is France after the Revolution. The majority of the population
being suddenly raised from misery, to independence and comparative comfort; the
immediate effect was that population, notwithstanding the destructive wars of
the period, started forward with unexampled rapidity, partly because improved
circumstances enabled many children to be reared who would otherwise have died,
and partly from increase of births. The succeeding generation however grew up
with habits considerably altered; and though the country was never before in so
prosperous a state, the annual number of births is now nearly stationary,*53 and
the increase of population extremely slow.*54
II.11.10
§3. Wages depend, then, on the proportion between the number of the labouring
population, and the capital or other funds devoted to the purchase of labour; we
will say, for shortness, the capital. If wages are higher at one time or place
than at another, if the subsistence and comfort of the class of hired labourers
are more ample, it is for no other reason than because capital bears a greater
proportion to population. It is not the absolute amount of accumulation or of
production, that is of importance to the labouring class; it is not the amount
even of the funds destined for distribution among the labourers: it is the
proportion between those funds and the numbers among whom they are shared. The
condition of the class can be bettered in no other way than by altering that
proportion to their advantage; and every scheme for their benefit, which does
not proceed on this as its foundation, is, for all permanent purposes, a
delusion.
II.11.11
In countries like North America and the Australian colonies, where the knowledge
and arts of civilized life, and a high effective desire of accumulation,
co-exist with a boundless extent of unoccupied land, the growth of capital
easily keeps pace with the utmost possible increase of population, and is
chiefly retarded by the impracticability of obtaining labourers enough. All,
therefore, who can possibly be born, can find employment without overstocking
the market: every labouring family enjoys in abundance the necessaries, many of
the comforts, and some of the luxuries of life; and, unless in case of
individual misconduct, or actual inability to work, poverty does not, and
dependence need not, exist. A similar advantage, though in a less degree, is
occasionally enjoyed by some special class of labourers in old countries, from
an extraordinarily rapid growth, not of capital generally, but of the capital
employed in a particular occupation. So gigantic has been the progress of the
cotton manufacture since the inventions of Watt and Arkwright, that the capital
engaged in it has probably quadrupled in the time which population requires for
doubling. While, therefore, it has attracted from other employments nearly all
the hands which geographical circumstances and the habits or inclinations of the
people rendered available; and while the demand it created for infant labour has
enlisted the immediate pecuniary interest of the operatives in favour of
promoting, instead of restraining, the increase of population; nevertheless
wages in the great seats of the manufacture are generally so high, that the
collective earnings of a family amount, on an average of years, to a very
satisfactory sum; and there is, as yet, no sign of permanent decrease, while the
effect has also been felt in raising the general standard of agricultural wages
in the counties adjoining.
II.11.12
But those circumstances of a country, or of an occupation, in which population
can with impunity increase at its utmost rate, are rare, and transitory. Very
few are the countries presenting the needful union of conditions. Either the
industrial arts are backward and stationary, and capital therefore increases
slowly; or the effective desire of accumulation being low, the increase soon
reaches its limit; or, even though both these elements are at their highest
known degree, the increase of capital is checked, because there is not fresh
land to be resorted to, of as good quality as that already occupied. Though
capital should for a time double itself simultaneously with population, if all
this capital and population are to find employment on the same land, they cannot
without an unexampled succession of agricultural inventions continue doubling
the produce; therefore, if wages do not fall, profits must; and when profits
fall, increase of capital is slackened. Besides, even if wages did not fall, the
price of food (as will be shown more fully hereafter) would in these
circumstances necessarily rise; which is equivalent to a fall of wages.
II.11.13
Except, therefore, in the very peculiar cases which I have just noticed, of
which the only one of any practical importance is that of a new colony, or a
country in circumstances equivalent to it; it is impossible that population
should increase at its utmost rate without lowering wages. Nor will the fall be
stopped at any point, short of that which either by its physical or its moral
operation, checks the increase of population. In no old country, therefore, does
population increase at anything like its utmost rate; in most, at a very
moderate rate: in some countries, not at all. These facts are only to be
accounted for in two ways. Either the whole number of births which nature admits
of, and which happen in some circumstances, do not take place; or if they do, a
large proportion of those who are born, die. The retardation of increase results
either from mortality or prudence; from Mr. Malthus's positive, or from his
preventive check: and one or the other of these must and does exist, and very
powerfully too, in all old societies. Wherever population is not kept down by
the prudence either of individuals or of the state, it is kept down by
starvation or disease.
II.11.14
Mr. Malthus has taken great pains to ascertain, for almost every country in the
world, which of these checks it is that operates; and the evidence which he
collected on the subject, in his Essay on Population, may even now be read with
advantage. Throughout Asia, and formerly in most European countries in which the
labouring classes were not in personal bondage, there is, or was, no restrainer
of population but death. The mortality was not always the result of poverty:
much of it proceeded from unskilful and careless management of children, from
uncleanly and otherwise unhealthy habits of life among the adult population, and
from the almost periodical occurrence of destructive epidemics. Throughout
Europe these causes of shortened life have much diminished, but they have not
ceased to exist. Until a period not very remote,*55 hardly any of our large
towns kept up its population, independently of the stream always flowing into
them from the rural districts: this was still true of Liverpool until very
recently; and even in London, the mortality is larger, and the average duration
of life shorter, than in rural districts where there is much greater poverty. In
Ireland, epidemic fevers, and deaths from the exhaustion of the constitution by
insufficient nutriment, have always accompanied even the most moderate
deficiency of the potato crop. Nevertheless, it cannot now be said that in any
part of Europe, population is principally kept down by disease, still less by
starvation, either in a direct or in an indirect form. The agency by which it is
limited is chiefly preventive, not (in the language of Mr. Malthus) positive.
But the preventive remedy seldom, I believe, consists in the unaided operation
of prudential motives on a class wholly or mainly composed of labourers for hire,
and looking forward to no other lot. In England, for example, I much doubt if
the generality of agricultural labourers practise any prudential restraint
whatever. They generally marry as early, and have as many children to a marriage,
as they would or could do if they were settlers in the United States. During the
generation which preceded the enactment of the present Poor Law, they received
the most direct encouragement to this sort of improvidence: being not only
assured of support, on easy terms, whenever out of employment, but, even when in
employment, very commonly receiving from the parish a weekly allowance
proportioned to their number of children; and the married with large families
being always, from a short-sighted economy, employed in preference to the
unmarried; which last premium on population still exists. Under such prompting,
the rural labourers acquired habits of recklessness, which are so congenial to
the uncultivated mind that in whatever manner produced, they in general long
survive their immediate causes. There are so many new elements at work in
society, even in those deeper strata which are inaccessible to the mere
movements on the surface, that it is hazardous to affirm anything positive on
the mental state or practical impulses of classes and bodies of men, when the
same assertion may be true to-day, and may require great modification in a few
years time. It does, however, seem, that if the rate of increase of population
depended solely on the agricultural labourers, it would, as far as dependent on
births, and unless repressed by deaths, be as rapid in the southern counties of
England as in America. The restraining principle lies in the very great
proportion of the population composed of the middle classes and the skilled
artizans, who in this country almost equal in number the common labourers, and
on whom prudential motives do, in a considerable degree, operate.
II.11.15
§4. Where a labouring class who have no property but their daily wages, and no
hope of acquiring it, refrain from over-rapid multiplication, the cause, I
believe, has always hitherto been, either actual legal restraint, or a custom of
some sort, which, without intention on their part, insensibly moulds the conduct,
or affords immediate inducements not to marry. It is not generally known in how
many countries of Europe direct legal obstacles are opposed to improvident
marriages. The communications made to the original Poor Law Commission by our
foreign ministers and consuls in different parts of Europe, contain a
considerable amount of information on this subject. Mr. Senior, in his preface
to those communications,*56 says that in the countries which recognise a legal
right to relief, "marriage on the part of persons in the actual receipt of
relief appears to be everywhere prohibited, and the marriage of those who are
not likely to possess the means of independent support is allowed by very few.
Thus we are told that in Norway no one can marry without 'showing to the
satisfaction of the clergyman, that he is permanently settled in such a manner
as to offer a fair prospect that he can maintain a family.'
II.11.16
"In Mecklenburg, that 'marriages are delayed by conscription in the
twenty-second year, and military service for six years; besides, the parties
must have a dwelling, without which a clergyman is not permitted to marry them.
The men marry at from twenty-five to thirty, the women not much earlier, as both
must first gain by service enough to establish themselves.'
II.11.17
"In Saxony, that 'a man may not marry before he is twenty-one years old, if
liable to serve in the army. In Dresden, professionists (by which words artizans
are probably meant) may not marry until they become masters in their trade.'
II.11.18
"In Wurtemburg, that 'no man is allowed to marry till his twenty-fifth year, on
account of his military duties, unless permission be especially obtained or
purchased: at that age he must also obtain permission, which is granted on
proving that he and his wife would have together sufficient to maintain a family
or to establish themselves; in large towns, say from 800 to 1000 florins (from
66l. 13s. 4d. to 84l. 3s. 4d.); in smaller, from 400 to 500 florins; in villages,
200 florins (16l. 13s. 4d.)' "*57
II.11.19
The minister at Munich says, "The great cause why the number of the poor is kept
so low in this country arises from the prevention by law of marriages in cases
in which it cannot be proved that the parties have reasonable means of
subsistence; and this regulation is in all places and at all times strictly
adhered to. The effect of a constant and firm observance of this rule has, it is
true, a considerable influence in keeping down the population of Bavaria, which
is at present low for the extent of country, but it has a most salutary effect
in averting extreme poverty and consequent misery."*58
II.11.20
At Lubeck, "marriages among the poor are delayed by the necessity a man is
under, first, of previously proving that he is in a regular employ, work, or
profession, that will enable him to maintain a wife: and secondly, of becoming a
burgher, and equipping himself in the uniform of the burgher guard, which
together may cost him nearly 4l."*59 At Frankfort, "the government prescribes no
age for marrying, but the permission to marry is only granted on proving a
livelihood."*60
II.11.21
The allusion, in some of these statements, to military duties, points out an
indirect obstacle to marriage, interposed by the laws of some countries in which
there is no direct legal restraint. In Prussia, for instance, the institutions
which compel every able-bodied man to serve for several years in the army, at
the time of life at which imprudent marriages are most likely to take place, are
probably a full equivalent, in effect on population, for the legal restrictions
of the smaller German states.
II.11.22
*61"So strongly," says Mr. Kay, "do the people of Switzerland understand from
experience the expediency of their sons and daughters postponing the time of
their marriages, that the councils of state of four or five of the most
democratic of the cantons, elected, be it remembered, by universal suffrage,
have passed laws by which all young persons who marry before they have proved to
the magistrate of their district that they are able to support a family, are
rendered liable to a heavy fine. In Lucerne, Argovie, Unterwalden, and, I
believe, St. Gall, Schweitz, and Uri, laws of this character have been in force
for many years."*62
II.11.23
§5. Where there is no general law restrictive of marriage, there are often
customs equivalent to it. When the guilds or trade corporations of the Middle
Ages were in vigour, their bye-laws or regulations were conceived with a very
vigilant eye to the advantage which the trade derived from limiting competition:
and they made it very effectually the interest of artizans not to marry until
after passing through the two stages of apprentice and journeyman, and attaining
the rank of master.*63 In Norway, where the labour is chiefly agricultural, it
is [1848] forbidden by law to engage a farm-servant for less than a year; which
was the general English practice until the poor-laws destroyed it, by enabling
the farmer to cast his labourers on parish pay whenever he did not immediately
require their labour. In consequence of this custom, and of its enforcement by
law, the whole of the rather limited class of agricultural labourers in Norway
have an engagement for a year at least, which, if the parties are content with
one another, naturally becomes a permanent engagement: hence it is known in
every neighbourhood whether there is, or is likely to be, a vacancy, and unless
there is, a young man does not marry, knowing that he could not obtain
employment. The custom still [1848] exists in Cumberland and Westmoreland,
except that the term is half a year instead of a year; and seems to be still
attended with the same consequences. The farm-servants "are lodged and boarded
in their masters' houses, which they seldom leave until, through the death of
some relation or neighbour, they succeed to the ownership or lease of a cottage
farm. What is called surplus labour does not here exist."*64 I have mentioned in
another chapter the check to population in England during the last century, from
the difficulty of obtaining a separate dwelling place.*65 Other customs
restrictive of population might be specified: in some parts of Italy, it is the
practice, according to Sismondi, among the poor, as it is well known to be in
the higher ranks, that all but one of the sons remain unmarried. But such family
arrangements are not likely to exist among day-labourers. They are the resource
of small proprietors and metayers, for preventing too minute a subdivision of
the land.
II.11.24
In England generally there is now scarcely a relic of these indirect checks to
population; except that in parishes owned by one or a very small number of
landowners, the increase of resident labourers is still occasionally obstructed,
by preventing cottages from being built, or by pulling down those which exist;
thus restraining the population liable to become locally chargeable, without any
material effect on population generally, the work required in those parishes
being performed by labourers settled elsewhere. The surrounding districts always
feel themselves much aggrieved by this practice, against which they cannot
defend themselves by similar means, since a single acre of land owned by any one
who does not enter into the combination, enables him to defeat the attempt, very
profitably to himself, by covering that acre with cottages. To meet these
complaints an Act has within the last few years been passed by Parliament, by
which the poor-rate is made a charge not on the parish, but on the whole
union.*66 This enactment, in other respects very beneficial, removes the small
remnant of what was once a check to population: the value of which, however,
from the narrow limits of its operation, had become very trifling.
II.11.25
§6. In the case, therefore, of the common agricultural labourer, the checks to
population may almost be considered as non-existent. If the growth of the towns,
and of the capital there employed, by which the factory operatives are
maintained at their present average rate of wages notwithstanding their rapid
increase, did not also absorb a great part of the annual addition to the rural
population, there seems no reason in the present habits of the people why they
should not fall into as miserable a condition as the Irish previous to 1846; and
if the market for our manufactures should, I do not say fall off, but even cease
to expand at the rapid rate of the last fifty years, there is no certainty that
this fate may not be reserved for us.*67 Without carrying our anticipations
forward to such a calamity, which the great and growing intelligence of the
factory population would, it may be hoped, avert, by an adaptation of their
habits to their circumstances; the existing condition of the labourers of some
of the most exclusively agricultural counties, Wiltshire, Somersetshire,
Dorsetshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, is sufficiently painful to
contemplate. The labourers of these counties, with large families, and eight or
perhaps nine shillings*68 for their weekly wages when in full employment, have
for some time been one of the stock objects of popular compassion: it is time
that they had the benefit also of some application of common sense.
II.11.26
Unhappily, sentimentality rather than common sense usually presides over the
discussion of these subjects; and while there is a growing sensitiveness to the
hardships of the poor, and a ready disposition to admit claims in them upon the
good offices of other people, there is an all but universal unwillingness to
face the real difficulty of their position, or advert at all to the conditions
which nature has made indispensable to the improvement of their physical lot.
Discussions on the condition of the labourers, lamentations over its
wretchedness, denunciations of all who are supposed to be indifferent to it,
projects of one kind or another for improving it, were in no country and in no
time of the world so rife as in the present generation; but there is a tacit
agreement to ignore totally the law of wages, or to dismiss it in a parenthesis,
with such terms as "hardhearted Malthusianism;" as if it were not a thousand
times more hardhearted to tell human beings that they may, than that they may
not, call into existence swarms of creatures who are sure to be miserable, and
most likely to be depraved; and forgetting that the conduct, which it is
reckoned so cruel to disapprove, is a degrading slavery to a brute instinct in
one of the persons concerned, and most commonly, in the other, helpless
submission to a revolting abuse of power.*69
II.11.27
So long as mankind remained in a semi-barbarous state, with the indolence and
the few wants of a savage, it probably was not desirable that population should
be restrained; the pressure of physical want may have been a necessary stimulus,
in that stage of the human mind, to the exertion of labour and ingenuity
required for accomplishing that greatest of all past changes in human modes of
existence, by which industrial life attained predominance over the hunting, the
pastoral, and the military or predatory state. Want, in that age of the world,
had its uses, as even slavery had; and there may be corners of the earth where
those uses are not yet superseded, though they might easily be so were a helping
hand held out by more civilized communities. But in Europe the time, if it ever
existed, is long past, when a life of privation had the smallest tendency to
make men either better workmen or more civilized beings. It is, on the contrary,
evident, that if the agricultural labourers were better off, they would both
work more efficiently, and be better citizens. I ask, then, is it true, or not,
that if their numbers were fewer they would obtain higher wages? This is the
question, and no other: and it is idle to divert attention from it, by attacking
any incidental position of Malthus or some other writer, and pretending that to
refute that, is to disprove the principle of population. Some, for instance,
have achieved an easy victory over a passing remark of Mr. Malthus, hazarded
chiefly by way of illustration, that the increase of food may perhaps be assumed
to take place in an arithmetical ratio, while population increases in a
geometrical: when every candid reader knows that Mr. Malthus laid no stress on
this unlucky attempt to give numerical precision to things which do not admit of
it, and every person capable of reasoning must see that it is wholly superfluous
to his argument. Others have attached immense importance to a correction which
more recent political economists have made in the mere language of the earlier
followers of Mr. Malthus. Several writers had said that it is the tendency of
population to increase faster than the means of subsistence. The assertion was
true in the sense in which they meant it, namely, that population would in most
circumstances increase faster than the means of subsistence, if it were not
checked either by mortality or by prudence. But inasmuch as these checks act
with unequal force at different times and places, it was possible to interpret
the language of these writers as if they had meant that population is usually
gaining ground upon subsistence, and the poverty of the people becoming greater.
Under this interpretation of their meaning, it was urged that the reverse is the
truth: that as civilization advances, the prudential check tends to become
stronger, and population to slacken its rate of increase, relatively to
subsistence; and that it is an error to maintain that population, in any
improving community, tends to increase faster than, or even so fast as,
subsistence. The word tendency is here used in a totally different sense from
that of the writers who affirmed the proposition: but waving the verbal
question, is it not allowed on both sides, that in old countries, population
presses too closely upon the means of subsistence? And though its pressure
diminishes, the more the ideas and habits of the poorest class of labourers can
be improved, to which it is to be hoped that there is always some tendency in a
progressive country, yet since that tendency has hitherto been, and still is,
extremely faint, and (to descend to particulars) has not yet extended to giving
to the Wiltshire labourers higher wages than eight shillings a week, the only
thing which it is necessary to consider is, whether that is a sufficient and
suitable provision for a labourer? for if not, population does, as an existing
fact, bear too great a proportion to the wages-fund; and whether it pressed
still harder or not quite so hard at some former period, is practically of no
moment, except that, if the ratio is an improving one, there is the better hope
that by proper aids and encouragements it may be made to improve more and
faster.
II.11.28
It is not, however, against reason, that the argument on this subject has to
struggle; but against a feeling of dislike, which will only reconcile itself to
the unwelcome truth, when every device is exhausted by which the recognition of
that truth can be evaded. It is necessary, therefore, to enter into a detailed
examination of these devices, and to force every position which is taken up by
the enemies of the population principle in their determination to find some
refuge for the labourers, some plausible means of improving their condition,
without requiring the exercise, either enforced or voluntary, of any
self-restraint, or any greater control than at present over the animal power of
multiplication. This will be the object of the next chapter