Part 31 (1/2)
Fifth: That this tendency toward a diminution in the return of labour, and toward an increase of the landlord's proportion, always exists where population increases, and most exists where population increases most rapidly; but is in a certain degree counteracted by increase of wealth, producing improvement of cultivation.
Sixth: That every such improvement tends to r.e.t.a.r.d the growth of rents, while every obstacle to improvement tends to increase that growth: and that, therefore, the interests of the land-owner and labourer are always opposed to each other, rents rising as labour falls, and _vice-versa_.
A brief examination of these propositions will satisfy the reader that they tend inevitably to the centralization of all power in the hands of the few at the cost of the many, who are thus reduced to the condition of slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for their masters, as will now be shown.
I. In the commencement of cultivation labour is largely productive, and the labourer takes for himself the whole of his product, paying no rent.
II. With the increase of population, and the increased power to a.s.sociate, labour becomes less productive, and the labourer is required to give a part of the diminished product to the land-owner, who thus grows rich at his expense.
III. With further growth of population land acquires further value, and that value increases with every increase of the _necessity_ for applying labour less productively; and the less the product, the larger becomes the proportion of the proprietor, whose wealth and power increase precisely as the labourer becomes poorer and less able to defend his rights, or, in other words, as he becomes enslaved.
This state of things leads of course to the expulsion of poor men, to seek at a distance those rich soils which, according to the theory, are the first cultivated. The more they are expelled, the greater must of course be the consolidation of the land, the larger the income of the few great farmers and land-owners, and the poorer the labourers.
Hence universal discord, such as is seen in England, and has recently been so well described by the _Times_.[213]
The poorer the people, the greater must be the necessity for emigration; and the greater the anxiety of the landed or other capitalist for their expulsion, because they are thus relieved from the necessity for supporting them; and the greater the rejoicing of the trader, because he supposes they go from the cultivation of poor to that of rich soils. Here we have dispersion, the opposite of that a.s.sociation to which man has everywhere been indebted for his wealth; for the development of his moral and intellectual faculties, and for his freedom.
The soils left behind being supposed to be the poor ones, and those first appropriated abroad being supposed to be the rich ones, it is next held that all the people who go abroad, should do nothing but cultivate the land, sending their corn and their wool to a distance of thousands of miles in search of the little spindle and the loom; and thus does the Ricardo system lead to the adoption of a policy directly the reverse of that taught by Adam Smith.
The necessary effect of this is the discouragement of English agriculture, and the closing of the market for English capital; and the smaller the market for it at home the less must be the demand for labour, and the greater must be the tendency of the labourer to become the mere slave of those who do employ capital. This of course produces further expulsion of both labour and capital; and the more they go abroad, the less, as a matter of course, is the power of the community that is left behind: and thus the Ricardo-Malthusian system tends necessarily to the diminution of the importance of the nation in the eyes of the world.
That system teaches that G.o.d in his infinite wisdom has given to matter in the form of man a reproductive power greater than he has given to the source from which that matter is derived, the earth itself; and that, with a view to the correction of that error, man must close his ear and his heart to the tale of suffering--must forget that great law of Christ, ”Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you,”--must persuade himself that it is ”to his advantage” that the negro slave ”shall wear his chains in peace,”--and must always recollect that if men _will_ marry; and have children, and he ”stands between the error and its consequence,” granting relief to the poor or the sick in their distress, except so far as to prevent ”positive death,” he ”perpetuates the sin.” This is the science of repulsion, despair, and death; and it has been well denominated ”the dismal science.” It is taught in many of the schools of Europe, but England alone has made it the basis of a system of policy; and the result is seen in the fact that throughout all that portion of the world subject to her influence, we see nothing but repulsion, slavery, despair, and death, with steadily increasing weakness of the communities in the general system of the world, as witness Ireland and India, from, which men are flying as from pestilence--the West Indies, Portugal, and Turkey, in all of which population declines, and the communities themselves seem likely soon to perish of inanition.[214]
From every country that is strong enough to protect itself, she is being gradually shut out; and in every one that is strong enough to carry into effect the exclusion, we see a steady increase of the power and the habit of a.s.sociation, and of the strength of the nation. The little German Union of 1827 led to the great one of 1835; and at this moment we have advices of the completion of the still greater one that is to give freedom of internal trade to sixty millions of people, and that is to do for all Germany what the _Zoll-Verein_ has done for its northern portion. The habit of peace and of combined action thus grows in all the countries of the world which protect themselves, while repulsion and discord increase in every one that is unprotected. In one we see a daily tendency toward freedom, while in the other slavery grows from day to day.
It is the complaint of England that, much as she has done for other countries, she receives no kindness in return. She stands at this day without a friend; and this is not so much the fault of any error of intention as of error of doctrine. Many of those who have directed her affairs have been men of generous impulses--men who would scorn to do what they thought to be wrong--but they have, been led away by a system that teaches the rankest selfishness. The Creator of man provided for his use great natural agents, the command of which was to be obtained as the reward of the cultivation of his intellectual powers; and that he might obtain leisure for their improvement, great stores of fuel were acc.u.mulated, and iron ore was furnished in unlimited quant.i.ty, to enable him, by combining the two, to obtain machinery to aid him in the cultivation of the soil and the conversion of its products. England, however, desires to restrict the use of those great natural agents; and whenever or wherever other nations undertake to call them to their aid, she is seen using every effort in her power to annihilate compet.i.tion, and thus maintain her monopoly.
Of this, the recent proceedings in relation to steam intercourse between this country and Europe present a striking instance; but the maintenance of numerous colonies, avowedly for the purpose of ”stifling in its infancy” every effort on the part of other nations to obtain power to convert their coal and their ore into iron, or to convert their iron into machinery that would enable them to command the aid of steam, and thus lighten the labours of their people, while increasing the efficiency of their exertions, is a thing not only not disavowed, but gloried in by her most eminent and enlightened men. The exceeding selfishness of this effort to retain a monopoly of those great natural agents should, of itself, afford proof conclusive to every Englishman that the system that is to be so maintained could not be right; and it would do so, were it not that their system of political economy teaches that every man must live by ”s.n.a.t.c.hing the bread from his neighbour's mouth” that the land-owner grows rich at the expense of the labourer; that profits rise only at the cost of wages, and wages only at the cost of profits; and, therefore, that the only way to ensure a fair rate for the use of capital is to keep the price of labour down.
This system is to be carried out by producing ”unlimited compet.i.tion”
and in what is it to exist? In the sale of labour; and the greater that compet.i.tion, the greater will be the profits of the capitalist, and the lower will be the wages of the labourer. The more the compet.i.tion for the sale of cotton, the cheaper will be the labourer who produces it; and the more perfect the monopoly of machinery, the cheaper must be the labourer who performs the work of spinning the wool and weaving the cloth, but the larger will be the share of the man who owns the spindles and the looms. The fewer the spindles and looms of the world, the cheaper will be cotton and the dearer will be cloth, and the greater the profits of what is called capital; but the less will be the value of the stock in that great bank from which all capital is derived--the earth; and the poorer and more enslaved must be all those who have shares in it, and all who desire to obtain loans from it--the land-owners and the labourers. Such being the tendencies of the system, need we wonder, that it produces repulsion abroad, or that England is now so entirely without friends that in this age of the world--one that should be so enlightened--she talks of increased armaments with a view to defending herself from invasion, and calls on other nations for help? Certainly not. Were it otherwise, it would be wonderful. She is expelling her whole people from the land, and the more they go, the more she is rejoiced. ”Extensive as has been the emigration from Ireland which has already taken place, there is,” we are told--
”A remarkable proof that it has not been carried too far. There is still no regular demand for labour in the West of Ireland, and wages are still at the low starvation rate which prevailed before the famine.”--_Economist_, (London,) Feb. 12, 1853.
Again, we are told that
”The departure of the redundant population of the Highlands of Scotland is an indispensable preliminary to every kind of improvement.”--_Ibid_.
Further, we are informed that the emigration from England, Wales, and the Lowlands of Scotland has ”almost entirely consisted of able-bodied agricultural labourers,” and that few or none of the manufacturing population have emigrated, except ”a few Spitalfields and Paisley hand-loom weavers.”[215] The loss of all these agriculturists, and the rapid conversion of the whole people of the kingdom into mere buyers and sellers of the products of other nations, is regarded as not only not to be regretted, but as a thing to be rejoiced at; and another influential journal a.s.sures its readers that the ”mere antic.i.p.ation”
of any deficiency in the export of man from the kingdom ”would lead to the most disastrous suspension of industry and enterprise,” and that ”the emigration must not only continue, but it must be maintained with all possible steadiness and activity.”[216]
Little effort would seem to be required to bring about the abandonment of England, as well as of Ireland. Of the latter the latest journals furnish accounts of which the following is a fair specimen:--
”The people are fast pa.s.sing away from the land in the West of Ireland. The landlords of Connaught are tacitly combined to weed out all the smaller occupiers, against whom a regular systematic war of extermination is being waged. * * * The most heart-rending cruelties are daily practised in this province, of which the public are not at all aware.”--_Galway Mercury_.
In the former, we are told that
”The wheel of 'improvement' is now seizing another cla.s.s, the most stationary cla.s.s in England. A startling emigration movement has sprung up among the smaller English farmers, especially those holding heavy clay soils, who, with bad prospects for the coming harvest, and in want of sufficient capital to make the great improvements on their farms which would enable them to pay their old rents, have no other alternative but to cross the sea in search of a new country and of new lands. I am not speaking now of the emigration caused by the gold mania, but only of the compulsory emigration produced by landlordism, concentration of farms, application of machinery to the soil, and introduction of the modern system of agriculture on a great scale.”--_Correspondence of the New York Tribune_.
Nevertheless, wages do not rise. Hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of the poor people of the kingdom have now been expelled, and yet there is ”no regular demand for labour,” and wages continue as low as ever. That such should be the case is not extraordinary, but it will be so if this diminution of the power of a.s.sociation do not result in lowering the reward of labour, and accelerating the dispersion of the labourers. Every man that goes was a producer of something, to be given in exchange for another thing that he required, that was produced by others; and from the moment of his departure he ceases to be a producer, with correspondent diminution in the demand for the cloth, the iron, or the salt produced by his neighbours. The less the compet.i.tion for purchase the more becomes the compet.i.tion for sale, and the lower must be the compensation of the labourer. A recent journal informs us that the condition of one cla.s.s of operatives, the salt-boilers, has ”gradually become most deplorable.”
”Their wages at present do not average 15s. a week, because they are not employed full time; 2s. 6d. a day is the highest price given, and one of these days consists of fourteen or sixteen hours. In addition to this, some of the employers have latterly introduced a new mode of diminis.h.i.+ng the actual payment in wages. As has already been stated, the salt-pans in the course of a few days require cleansing from the impurities and dross thrown down with the process of boiling. The acc.u.mulation may vary from one-eighth of an inch to one foot, according to the quality of the brine. Therefore, every fortnight the fires are let out and the pans picked and cleaned, a process which occupies a full day; and this unavoidable and necessary work it is becoming the fas.h.i.+on to require the men to perform without any remuneration whatever; or, in other words, to demand one month's work out of the twelve from them without giving any wages in return!”--_Dawson's Merchants' Magazine_, February, 1853, 98.