Part 83
“The croppers of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the hecklers or flax-dressers, can unfold ‘a tale of wo’ on this subject. Their earnings exceeded those of most mechanics; but the frequency of strikes among them, and the irregularities in their hours and times of working, compelled masters to substitute machinery for their manual labour. _Their trades, in consequence, have been in a great measure superseded._”
It must, then, be admitted that machinery, _in some cases at least_, does displace manual labour, and so tend to produce a surplusage of labourers, even as over-work, Sunday-work, scamping-work, strapping-work, piece-work, minutely-divided work, &c., have the same effect so long as the quantity of work to be done remains unaltered. _The extensibility of the market_ is the one circumstance which determines whether the economy of labour produced by these means is a blessing or a curse to the nation. To apply mechanical power, the division of labour, the large system of production, or indeed any other means of enabling a less number of labourers to do the same amount of work _when the quantity of work to be done is limited in its nature_, as, for instance, the threshing of corn, the sawing of wood, &c., is necessarily to make either paupers or criminals of those who were previously honest independent men, living by the exercise of their industry in that particular direction. Economize your labour one-half, in connection with a particular article, and you must sell twice the quantity of that article or displace a certain number of the labourers; that is to say, suppose it requires 400 men to produce 4000 commodities in a given time, then, if you enable 200 men to produce the same quantity in the same time, you must get rid of 8000 commodities, or deprive a certain number of labourers of their ordinary means of living. Indeed, the proposition is almost self-evident, though generally ignored by social philosophers: economize your labour at a greater rate than you expand your markets, and you must necessarily increase your paupers and criminals in precisely the same ratio. “The division of labour,” says Mr. Mill, following Adam Smith, “is limited by the extent of the market. If by the separation of pin-making into ten distinct employments 48,000 pins can be made in a day, this separation will only be advisable if the number of accessible consumers is such as to require every day something like 48,000 pins. If there is a demand for only 25,000, the division of labour can be advantageously carried but to the extent which will every day produce that smaller number.” Again, as regards the large system of production, the same authority says, “the possibility of substituting the large system of production for the small depends, of course, on the extent of the market. The large system can only be advantageous when a large amount of business is to be done; it implies, therefore, either a populous and flourishing community, or a great opening for exportation.” But these are mere glimmerings of the broad incontrovertible principle, that _the economization of labour at a greater rate than the expansion of the markets, is necessarily the cause of surplus labour in a community_.
The effect of machinery in depriving the families of agricultural labourers of their ordinary sources of income is well established. “Those countries,” writes Mr. Thornton, “in which the class of agricultural labourers is most depressed, have all one thing in common. Each of them was formerly the seat of a flourishing manufacture carried on by the cottagers at their own homes, which has now decayed or been withdrawn to other situations. Thus, in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, the wives and children of labouring men had formerly very profitable occupation in making lace; during the last war a tolerable lacemaker, working eight hours a day, could easily earn 10_s._ or 12_s._ a week; the profits of this employment have been since so much reduced by the use of machinery, that a pillow lacemaker must now work twelve hours daily to earn 2_s._ 6_d._ a week.”
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The last of the conditions above cited, as causing the same or a greater amount of work to be executed with a less quantity of labour, is _the large system of production_. Mr. Babbage and Mr. Mill have so well and fully pointed out “the economy of labour” effected in this manner, that I cannot do better than quote from them upon this subject:--
“Even when no additional subdivision of the work,” says Mr. Mill, “would follow an enlargement of the operations, there will be good economy in enlarging them to the point at which every person to whom it is convenient to assign a special occupation will have full employment in that occupation.” This point is well illustrated by Mr. Babbage:--“If machines be kept working through the 24 hours” [which is evidently the only economical mode of employing them], “it is necessary that some person shall attend to admit the workmen at the time they relieve each other; and whether the porter or other servant so employed admit one person or twenty, his rest will be equally disturbed. It will also be necessary occasionally to adjust or repair the machine; and this can be done much better by a workman accustomed to machine-making than by the person who uses it. Now, since the good performance and the duration of machines depend, to a very great extent, upon correcting every shake or imperfection in their parts as soon as they appear, the prompt attention of a workman resident on the spot will considerably reduce the expenditure arising from the wear and tear of the machinery. But in the case of a single lace-frame, or a single loom, this would be too expensive a plan. Here, then, arises another circumstance, which tends to enlarge the extent of the factory. It ought to consist of such a number of machines as shall occupy the whole time of one workman in keeping them in order. If extended beyond that number the same principle of economy would point out the necessity of doubling or tripling the number of machines, in order to employ the whole time of two or three skilful workmen. Where one portion of the workman’s labour consists in the exertion of mere physical force, as in weaving, and in many similar arts, it will soon occur to the manufacturer that, if that part were executed by a steam-engine, the same man might, in the case of weaving, attend to two or more looms at once; and, since we already suppose that one or more operative engineers have been employed, the number of looms may be so arranged that their time shall be fully occupied in keeping the steam-engine and the looms in order.
“Pursuing the same principles, the manufactory becomes gradually so enlarged that the expense of lighting during the night amounts to a considerable sum; and as there are already attached to the establishment persons who are up all night, and can therefore constantly attend to it, and also engineers to make and keep in repair any machinery, the addition of an apparatus for making gas to light the factory leads to a new extension, at the same time that it contributes, by diminishing the expense of lighting and the risk of accidents from fire, to reduce the cost of manufacturing.
“Long before a factory has reached this extent it will have been found necessary to establish an accountant’s department, with clerks to pay the workmen, and to see that they arrive at their stated times; and this department must be in communication with the agents who purchase the raw produce, and with those who sell the manufactured article. It will cost these clerks and accountants little more time and trouble to pay a large number of workmen than a small number, to check the accounts of large transactions than of small. If the business doubled itself it would probably be necessary to increase, but certainly not to double, the number either of accountants or of buying and selling agents. _Every increase of business would enable the whole to be carried on with a proportionally smaller amount of labour._ As a general rule, the expenses of a business do not increase by any means proportionally to the quantity of business. Let us take as an example a set of operations which we are accustomed to see carried on by one great establishment--that of the Post Office.
“Suppose that the business, let us say only of the London letter-post, instead of being centralised in a single concern, were divided among five or six competing companies. Each of these would be obliged to maintain almost as large an establishment as is now sufficient for the whole. Since each must arrange for receiving and delivering letters in all parts of the town, each must send letter-carriers into every street, and almost every alley, and this, too, as many times in the day as is now done by the Post Office, if the service is to be as well performed. Each must have an office for receiving letters in every neighbourhood, with all subsidiary arrangements for collecting the letters from the different offices and re-distributing them. I say nothing of the much greater number of superior officers who would be required to check and control the subordinates, implying not only a greater cost in salaries for such responsible officers, but the necessity, perhaps, of being satisfied in many instances with an inferior standard of qualification, and so failing in the object.”
But this refers solely to the “large system of business” as applied to purposes of manufacture and distribution. In connection with agriculture there is the same saving of labour effected. “The large farmer,” says Mr. Mill, “has some advantage in the article of buildings. It does not cost so much to house a great number of cattle in one building, as to lodge them equally well in several buildings. There is also some advantage in implements. A small farmer is not so likely to possess expensive instruments. But the principal agricultural implements, even when of the best construction, are not expensive. It may not answer to a small farmer to own a threshing machine for the small quantity of corn he has to thresh; but there is no reason why such a machine should not in every neighbourhood be owned in common, or provided by some person to whom the others pay a consideration for its use. The large farmer can make some saving in cost of carriage. There is nearly as much trouble in carrying a small portion of produce to market, as a much greater produce; in bringing home a small, as a much larger quantity of manure, and articles of daily consumption. There is also the greater cheapness of buying things in large quantities.”
A short time ago I went into Buckinghamshire to look into the allotment system. And, in one parish of 1800 acres, I found that some years ago there were seventeen farmers who occupied, upon the average, 100 acres each, and who, previous to the immigration of the Irish harvest-men, _constantly_ employed six men a-piece, or, in the aggregate, upwards of 100 hands. Now, however, the farmers in the same parish occupy to the extent of 300 acres each, and respectively employ only six men _and a few extra hands at harvest time_. Thus the number of hands employed by this system has been decreased one-half. I learned, moreover, from a clergyman there, who had resided in Wiltshire, that the same thing was going on in that county also; that small farms were giving way to large farms, and that at least half the labourers had been displaced. The agricultural labourers, at the time of taking the last census, were 1,500,000 in number; so that, if this system be generally carried out, there must be 750,000 labourers and their families, or 3,000,000 people, deprived of their living by it.
Sir James Graham, in his evidence before the Committee on Criminal Commitments, has given us some curious particulars as to the decrease of the number of hands required for agricultural purposes, where the large system of production is pursued in place of the small: he has told us how many hands he was enabled to get rid of by these means, the proportion of labour displaced, it will be seen, amounted to about 10 per cent. of the labouring population. In answer to a question relative to the increase of population in his district, he replied:--
“I have myself taken _very strong means to prevent it_, for it so happens that my whole estate came out of lease in the year 1822, after the currency of a lease of fourteen years; and by _consolidation of farms, and the destruction of cottages, I have diminished, upon my own property, the population to the extent of from 300 to 400 souls_.”
“On how many acres?--On about 30,000 acres.” [This is at the rate of one in every 100 acres].
“What was the whole extent of population?--It was under 4000 before I reduced it.
“What became of those 300 or 400?--The greater part of them, being small tenants, were enabled to find farms on the estates of other proprietors, who pursued the opposite course of subdividing their estates for the purpose of obtaining higher nominal rents; _others have become day labourers_, and as day labourers, I have reason to know, they are more thriving than they were on my estate as small farmers, subject to a high rent, which their want of capital seldom enabled them to pay; two or three of these families went to America.
“Have you any out of work?--None entirely out of work, some only
## partially employed; but since the _dispersion of this large mass of
population_, the supply of labour has not much exceeded the demand, for _whenever I removed a family, I pulled down the house_, and the parochial jealousy respecting settlements is an ample check on the influx of strangers.”
Similar to the influence of the large system of production in its displacement of labourers, as enabling a larger quantity of work to be executed by one establishment with a smaller number of hands than would be required were the amount of work to be divided into a number of smaller establishments,--similar to this mode of economizing labour, is that mode of work which, by altering the produce rather than the mode of production, and by substituting an article that requires less labour for one that required more, gets rid of a large quantity of labour, and, consequently, adds to the surplusage of labourers. An instance of this is in the substitution of pasturage for tillage. “_Plough less and graze more_,” says Sir J. Graham, the great economist of labour, simply because fewer people will be required to attend to the land. But this plan of grazing instead of ploughing was adopted in this country some centuries back, and with what effect to the labourers and the people at large, the following extract from the work of Mr. Thornton, on over-population, will show:--
“The extension of the woollen manufacture was raising the price of wool; and the little attendance which sheep require was an additional motive for causing sheep farming to be preferred to tillage. Arable land, therefore, began to be converted into pasture; and the seemingly-interminable corn fields, which, like those of Germany at this day, probably extended for miles without having their even surface broken by fences or any other visible boundaries, disappeared. After being sown with grass they were surrounded and divided by inclosures, to prevent the sheep from straying, and to do away with the necessity of having shepherds always on the watch. By these changes the quantity of work to be done upon a farm was exceedingly diminished, and most of the servants, whom it had been usual to board and lodge in the manor and farm-houses, were dismissed. This was not all. The married farm-servants were ousted from their cottages, which were pulled down, and their gardens and fields were annexed to the adjoining meadows. The small farmers were treated in the same way, as their leases fell in, _and were sent to join the daily increasing crowd of competitors for work that was daily increasing in quantity_.
“Even freeholders were in some instances ejected from their lands. This social revolution had probably commenced even before the prosperity of the peasantry had reached its climax; but in 1487 it attracted the notice of Parliament, and an Act was passed to restrain its progress; for already it was observed that inclosures were becoming ‘more frequent, whereby arable land, _which could not be manured without people and families, was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen_;’ and that ‘tenancies for years, lives, and at will, whereupon most of the yeomanry lived, were turned into demesnes’[35]. In 1533[36], an Act was passed strongly condemning the practice of ‘accumulating’ farms, which it was declared had reduced ‘a marvellous multitude’ of the people to poverty and misery, and left them no alternative but to steal, or to die ‘pitifully’ of cold and hunger. In this Act it was stated that single farms might be found with flocks of from 10,000 to 20,000 sheep upon them; and it was ordained that no man should keep more than 2000 sheep, except upon his own land, or rent more than two farms.
“Two years later it was enacted that the king should have a moiety of the profits of land converted (subsequently to a date specified) from tillage to pastures, until a suitable house was erected, and the land was restored to tillage. In 1552, a law[37] was made which required that on all estates as large a quantity of land as had been kept in tillage for four years together at any time since the accession of Henry VIII., should be so continued in tillage. But these, and many subsequent enactments of the same kind, had not the smallest effect in checking the consolidation of farms. We find Roger Ascham, in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, lamenting the dispersion of families, the ruin of houses, the breaking up and destruction of ‘the noble yeomanry, the honour and strength of England.’ Harrison also speaks of towns pulled down for sheep-walks; ‘and of the tenements that had fallen either down or into the lord’s hands;’ or had been ‘brought and united together by other men, so that in some one manor, seventeen, eighteen, or twenty houses were shrunk.’[38]
“‘Where have been a great many householders and inhabitants,’ says Bishop Latimer, ‘there is now but a shepherd and his dog.’[39] And in a curious tract, published in 1581, by one William Stafford, a husbandman is made to exclaim, ‘Marry, these inclosures do and undo us all, for they make us pay dearer for our land that we occupy, and causeth that we can have no land to put to tillage; all is taken up for pasture, either for sheep or for grazing of cattle, insomuch that I have known of late a dozen ploughs, within less compass than six miles about me, laid down within this seven years; and where threescore persons or upwards had their livings, now one man, with his cattle, hath all. Those sheep is the cause of all our mischief, for they have driven husbandry out of the country, by which was increased before all kinds of victuals, and now altogether sheep, sheep, sheep.’[40] While numbers of persons were thus continually driven from their homes, and deprived of their means of livelihood, we need not be at a loss to account for the increase of vagrancy, without ascribing it to the increase of population.”
As an instance, within our time, of the same mode of causing a surplusage of labourers, and so adding to the quantity of casual labour in the kingdom, viz., by the extension of pasturage and consequent diminution of tillage, we may cite the “clearances,” as they were called, which took place, some few years back, in the Highlands of Scotland. “It is only within the last few years,” says the author above quoted, “that the strathes and glens of Sutherland have been _cleared of their inhabitants, and that the whole country has been converted into one immense sheepwalk_, over which the traveller may proceed for 40 miles together without seeing a tree or a stone wall, or anything, but a heath dotted with sheep and lambs[41].... The example of Sutherland is imitated in the neighbouring counties. During the last four years _some hundreds of families_ have been ‘weeded’ out of Ross-shire, and nearly 400 more have received notice to quit next year. Similar notice has been given to 34 families in Cromarty, and only the other day eighteen families, who were living in peace and comfort, in Glencalvie, in Ross-shire, were expelled from the farms occupied for ages by themselves and their forefathers, to make room for sheep.” And still we are told to “_plough less and graze more!_”
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We now come to the last-mentioned of the circumstances inducing a surplusage of labourers, and, consequently, augmenting the amount of casual labour throughout the kingdom, viz., by _altering the mode of hiring the labourers_. At page 236 of the present volume, I have said, in connection with this part of the subject,--
“Formerly the mode of hiring farm-labourers was by the year, so that the employer was bound to maintain the men when unemployed. But now weekly hirelings and even journey-work, or hiring by the day, prevail, and the labourers being paid mere subsistence-money only when wanted are necessitated to become either paupers or thieves when their services are no longer required. It is, moreover, this change from yearly to weekly and daily hirings, and the consequent discarding of men when no longer wanted, that has partly caused the immense mass of surplus labourers, who are continually vagabondizing through the country, begging or stealing as they go--men for whom there is but some two or three weeks’ work (harvesting, hop-picking, and the like) throughout the year.”
Blackstone, in treating of the laws relating to master and servant (the greater part of the farm labourers or farm servants, as they were then called, being included under the latter head), tells us at page 425 of his first volume--
“The first sort of servants, acknowledged by the laws of England, are MENIAL SERVANTS; so called from being _inter mœnia_ or domestic. The contract between them and their masters arises upon the hiring. If the hiring be generally, without any particular _time limited_, the law construes it to be a _hiring for a year_ (Co. Lit. 42); upon a principle of natural equity, that the servant shall serve, and the master maintain him, throughout all the revolutions of the respective seasons, as well when _there is work to be_ done, as _when there is not_.”
Mr. Thornton says, “until recently it had been common for farm servants, even when married and living in their own cottages, to take their meals with their master; and, what was of more consequence, in every farm-house, many unmarried servants, of both sexes, were lodged, as well as boarded. The latter, therefore, even if ill paid, might be tolerably housed and fed, and many of them fared, no doubt, much better than they could have done if they had been left to provide for themselves, with treble their actual wages.”