But the author's concern, as revealed by his preface, is not so much for the poor as these lines would indicate. He admits that machines have not decreased work or wages in the towns, "yet this does not prove but that the circumjacent country is injured; which, to the distance of many miles, used to receive from these towns a supply of labor,"—strange words from one who is arguing that the "circumjacent country,” on account of machines, has its poor houses crowded with people out of work. His bias is further shown by his naïve repetition of the idea prevalent among landlords and farmers that the chief value of manufacturing was to supplement the wages of farm workers:

If manufactures aught a state bestead,
'Tis to employ the poor, and yield them bread.

Finally, he demands, on behalf of land-owning ratepayers, that the tax laws be changed so as to require manufacturers to pay rates for the support of the poor farm workers who, because of loss of spinning, are unable to subsist on their farm wages: since the new machines take away work from the farm laborer's family, the law should provide “that whom they render idle they main

" 36

tain.” 38

When mechanical methods and factory organization began to encroach upon the older forms of industry, a large proportion of English laborers were primarily dependent upon agricultural employments and secondarily dependent upon manufacturing for a subsistence. This two-fold dependence forms the background of one of the major tragedies in English history. The workers were denied a subsistence wage by farmers and landlords, because their families were expected to eke out a subsistence by spinning or some other form of industrial employment. They were denied a subsistence wage as industrial workers because they were expected to depend primarily upon agriculture. Wages, which historically by law and by custom had been kept as near the subsistence level as possible, were at the time of origin of the factory system being rapidly forced farther and farther below the subsistence level,-indeed, in many cases cut off entirely,by the jealous competition of the two sets of employers, agrarian and industrial, in reducing wages; by the upward trend of prices; and by the agricultural processes of enclosing and engrossing.

3. Comparative well-being of old and new types of

workers

On the eve of the modern system of production, the laborer, whether agrarian or industrial, was being crushed and broken by the relentless forces of an economic order from which the new system afforded temporary relief. During the early stages of industrialization, the economic well-being of the new industrial population was decidedly superior to that of the older groups. The views of contemporary observers are in remarkable accord.37

Employers of farm labor made frequent and long-continued complaints that wages were rising and that their laborers were being enticed from the farms. "The advance of wages," wrote the Board of Agriculture's Lancashire reporter, "and the preference given to the manufacturing employment, by the laborers in general, have

37

Some typical general observations: Davies, Case of Laborers in Husbandry, 71, 149; Ruggles, History of the Poor, I, Preface, viii (ed. of 1797, vi, vii); Sheffield, Remarks on the Scarcity of Grain, 63-65; W. Young, Observations Preliminary to a Proposed Amendment of the Poor Laws, 41; McPherson, Annals of Commerce, IV, 529, note; Dyer, Complaints of the Poor People of England, 74.

induced many to forsake the spade for the shuttle, and have embarrassed the farmers, by the scarcity of workmen, and of course advanced the price of labor.” Complaint was made, too, of "the influx of wealth amongst the laboring class” of Lancashire, which led them to form extravagant habits,-as for instance, “to indulge upon many occasions with the wheaten loaf.” Such effects were felt even in the remoter villages, but it was declared that in general, “the rate of wages is in proportion to the distance of townships from the seats of manufacturers.” Another champion of the agrarian employers as against the manufacturers complained that the latter "buy the hands they like best out of others' employ," with the result that “the workmen see their advantage," and he fears that this will lead to "the corruption of the workmen in their moral and civil dispositions,” and to the disruption of “the internal peace of the realm.” But his concern is mainly for the farmers and landlords, who, unwilling or unable to offer equal inducements, were being left without laborers. "In this part of Lancashire (the Granary) you will see in a large field of corn, shaking ripe, not above one-sixth of the number of hands · [needed]. Very few able-bodied men are to be seen about the harvest business, hay or corn, but the few hands are, with few exceptions, composed of females of all ages, males not come to half their strength, or such as have lost more than half of it; the farmer at the same time paying high wages for such defective means of saving his crops.

Similar conditions existed in other industrial regions. We are told that in Staffordshire "the price of labor and the rate of wages vary in different places. They are always highest in the neighborhood of flourishing manufactures, and lowest in remote parts of the country where no such manufactures are established.” Complaint is made that "our men servants often fly off into large towns where they can earn higher wages.” It was the boast of Josiah Wedgwood that the potteries and other

manufactures had transformed a crude, poverty-stricken | and isolated region into a populous and prosperous dis

trict, with "the workmen earning near double their former wages—their houses mostly new and comfortable, and the lands, roads, and every other circumstance bearing evident marks of the most pleasing and rapid improvements. In the Warwickshire region, where enclosures seem to have resulted in an unusual amount of unemployment, farm wages were reported as about twenty-five per cent. higher in the region of the industrial centers than in remoter places. Surplus farm laborers, and even "the hardy yeomanry have been driven for employment to Birmingham, Coventry, and other manufacturing towns," and the employers of farm labor should count themselves happy, so one of their number contended in writing to the Board of Agriculture, in having near them flourishing industries to absorb their superfluous workers. “There are thousands of places within fifty miles round us," wrote William Hutton, a celebrated citizen of Birmingham, in speaking of workers putting up their labor for sale, "where such persons hawk this valuable commodity, but cannot procure a purchaser. Birmingham is a market everlastingly open for this kind of traffic.” Strikingly similar is the evidence in respect

Chester, suitable for a cotton factory, an inducement being "plenty of hands at low wages, as there . [is] no manufactory whatever being carried on there at present").

to Cheshire, Salop, Yorkshire, and Worcestershire. “What would become of one-half of the former inhabitants of the country,” asks the Board of Agriculture's Worcestershire reporter, "if our growing manufactories had not received and supported them?” 39

In Scotland, the contrast was even more apparent. Adam Smith's grim account of the "half-starved” Scotch Highlanders seems not to have been overdrawn, nor characteristic alone of the Highlanders. With the progress of enclosures and engrossing, the condition of the masses of rural population became more critical than when Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations. It is not surprising, therefore, that when "manufactures dawned" on North Briton, "multitudes left the country, the abode of poverty, and fled to the town, the fountain of riches." It is not surprising that such Scotchmen as Sir John Sinclair, president of the Board of Agriculture, viewed manufacturing as the chief recourse of landlords and farmers in disposing of the surplus population without depopulating the country through emigration or starvation. Even in the regions where small holders and agricultural laborers were not being dispossessed and thrown out of employment, the comparison was in favor of the workers in the manufacturing industries. Wages were higher, as evidenced by the almost universal complaint of employers of farm workers that manufacturing had forced them to raise wages in order to retain their laborers. Hours, too, were being shortened, at least in the region of Dumbarton, where employers were said to "complain that the great

80

Pitt, General View, Staffordshire, 20, 107, 161, 163 (ed. 1794), 216, 218, 237 (ed. 1808); Julia Wedgwood, Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 224, 225; Wedge, General View, Warwickshire, 21-24; Langford, Century of Birmingham Life, I, 445; Brown, General View, Derbyshire, 38-40; Holland, General View, Cheshire, 296; Wedge, General View, Cheshire, 26; Bishton, General View, Salop, 28, 29; Rennie, General View, West Riding of Yorkshire, 11, 81, 90; Pomeroy, General View, Worcestershire, 27, 28; Annals of Agriculture, XVI, 422, 423, 534, 535.