The Principles of Political Economy
by John Stuart Mill

Book 2

Chapter 11

Of Wages

    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.
    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.
    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.
    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, 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.

    2. There are, however, some facts in apparent contradiction
to this doctrine, which it is incumbent on us to consider and
explain.
    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.
    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 he 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.
    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 dear.er 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 assume, 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.(1*)
    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,(2*) and the increase of population extremely
slow.(3*)

    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.
    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 amounts, 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.
    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.
    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.
    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,
hardy 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.

    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,(4*) 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.'
    "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.'
    "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.'
    "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.)'"(5*)
    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."(6*)
    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."(7*) At Frankfort, "the
government prescribes no age for marrying, but the permission to
marry is only granted on proving a livelihood." (8*)
    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.
    "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."(9*)

    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.
(10*) In Norway, where the labour is chiefly agricultural, it is
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 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." (11*) 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.(12*) 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.
    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. 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.

    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. 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 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.
    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 he 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.
    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 Armed 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.
    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.

NOTES:

1. See the historical sketch of the condition of the English
peasantry, prepared from the best authorities by Mr William
Thornton, in his work entitled Over-Population and its Remedy: a
work honourably distinguished from most others which have been
published in the present generation, by its rational treatment of
questions affecting the economical condition of the labouring
classes.

2. Supra, pp. 287 to 291.

3. A similar, though not an equal improvement in the standard of
living took place among the labourers of England during the
remarkable fifty years from 1715 to 1765, which were
distinguished by such an extraordinary succession of fine
harvests (the years of decided deficiency not exceeding five in
all that period) that the average price of wheat during those
years was much lower than during the previous half century. Mr
Malthus computes that on the average of sixty years preceding
1720, the labourer could purchase with a day's earnings only
two-thirds of a peck of wheat, while from 1720 to 1750 he could
purchase a whole peck. The average price of wheat, according to
the Eton tables, for fifty years ending with 1715 was 41s. 7
3/4d. per quarter, and for the last twenty-three of these 45s.
8d., while for the fifty years following, it was no more than a
generation, had time to work a change in the habitual
requirements of the labouring class; and this period is always
noted as the date of "a marked improvement of the quality of the
food consumed, and a decided elevation in the standard of their
comforts and conveniences" -- (Malthus, Principles of Political
Economy, p. 225.) For the character of the period, see Mr Tooke's
excellent History of Prices, vol. i. pp. 38 to 61, and for the
prices of corn, the Appendix to that work.

4. Forming an Appendix (F) to the General Report of the
Commissioners, and also published by authority as a separate
volume.

5. Preface, p. xxxix.

6. Preface, p. xxxiii., or p. 554 of the Appendix itself.

7. Appendix, p. 419.

8. Ibid. p. 567.

9. Kay, op. cit. i. 68.

10. "En general," says Sismondi, "le nobre des maitres etait fixe
dans chaque communaute, et le maitre pouvait seul tenir boutique,
acheter et vendre pour son compte. Chaque maitre ne pouvait
former qu'un certain nombre d'apprentis, auxquels il enseignait
son metier; et dans plusieurs communautes, il n'en pouvait tenir
qu'un seul. Chaque maitre pouvait de meme tenir un nombre limite
d'ouvriers, qui portaient le nom de compagnons; et, dans les
metiers ou l'on ne pouvait avoir qu'un seul apprenti, on ne
pouvait acheter, vendre, ou travailler dans un metier, s'il
n'etait apprenti, compagnon, ou maitre d'annees determine comme
compagnon; et s'il n'avait de plus fait son chef-d'oeuvre, au
execute un travail designe dans son metier, qui devait etre juge
par sa jurande. On voit que cette organisation mettait entierment
dans la main des maitres le renouvellement des corps de metier.
Eux seuls pouvaient recevoir des apprentis; mais ils n'etaient
point obliges a en prendre; aussi se faisaient-ils payer cette
faveur, et souvent a un prix tres-eleve; en sorte qu'on jeune
homme ne pouvait entrer dans un metier s'il n'avait, au
prealable, la somme qu'il fallait payer pour son apprentissage,
et celle qui lui etait necessaire pour se sustenter pendant la
duree de cet apprentissage; car pendant quatre, cinq, ou sept
ans, tout son travail appartenait a son maitre. Sa dependance de
ce maitre etait tout aussi longtemps absolue; car un seul acte de
la volonte, ou meme du caprice de celui-ci, pouvait lui fermer
l'entree des professions lucratives. L'apprenti, devenu
compagnon, acquerait un peu plus de liberte; il pouvait s'engager
avec quel maitre il voulait, passer de l'un a l'autre; et comme
l'entree au compagnonage n'etait ouverte que par l'apprentissage,
il commencait a profiter du monopole dont il avait souffert, et
il etait a peu pres sur de se faire bien payer un travail que
personne ne pouvait faire, si ce n'est lui. Cependant il
dependait de la jurande pour obtenir la maitrise; aussi ne se
regardait-il point encore comme assure de son sort, comme ayant
un etat. En general, il ne se mariate point qu'il ne fut passe
maitre.
    "Il est bien certain, et comme fait et comme theorie, que
l'etablissement des corps de metier empechait et devait empecher
la naissance d'une population surabondante. D'apres les statuts
de presque tous les corps de metier, un homme ne pouvait etre
passe maitre qu'apres vingt-cinq ans; mais s'il n'avait pas un
capital a lui, s'il n'avait pas fait des economies suffisantes,
il continuait bien plus longtemps a travailler comme compagnon;
plusieurs, et peut-etre le plus grand nombre des artisans,
demeuraient compagnons toute leur vie. Il etait presque sans
exemple, cependant, qu'ils se mariassent avant d'etre recus
maitres; quand ils auraient ete assez imprudens pour le desirer,
aucun pere n'aurait voulu donner sa fille a un homme qui n'avait
point d'etat." -- Nouveaux Principes, book iv, ch. 10. See also
Adam Smith, book i, ch. 10, part 2.

11. See Thornton on Over-Population, page 18, and the authorities
there cited.

12. Supra, p. 158.