310 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



reduced by one-half, the emoluments of those who follow the 

 profession will be proportionately reduced. During the time 

 that the endowments of the two great English universities were 

 practically limited to clergymen, the supply of candidates for 

 the clerical profession was abundant. About sixteen years ago 

 this provision was made matter of open competition, and the 

 oupply of academical graduates to the clerical profession was 

 immediately diminished. The incomes of Roman Catholic 

 priests, especially in Ireland, are very small ; but, on the other 

 hand, until a recent year the vast majority of these priests 

 were educated at the public charge in Maynooth. It is quite 

 certain that the gratuitous education and the lowness of the 

 stipend are related facts, and that if the former be made expen- 

 eive hereafter, the latter will rise, or the number of persons 

 entering into the calling will be diminished. 



The rate of wages then being at any one time the propor- 

 tion between the number of persons seeking employment and 

 the amount ot" employment available for them, the theory of 

 labour and wages is closely connected with two other economi- 

 cal circumstances, the principle of population, and the remedy 

 for low wages. If population is in excess of employment, 

 wages will fall ; if some mechanism can be discovered by which 

 this fall may be prevented or arrested, the remedy for low wages 

 will be discovered. 



Many economists of great repute have given way to the most 

 gloomy forebodings as to the increase of population. They 

 picture to themselves a thoughtless and improvident people, 

 the members of which increase more rapidly than the means of 

 lite possibly can, and they conceive that this increase ca.n go on 

 till a day of unremitting toil leaves the scantiest subsistence to 

 the unfortunate people whose numbers are so inauspiciously 

 large. Now in my opinion, and for reasons which I shall pro- 

 ceed to give, much of this alarm is groundless. 



The theory of population commonly accepted by economists 

 contains one or two unquestionable truths. A nation grows up 

 to the means of the ordinary or average subsistence of its indi- 

 vidual members, or, to vary the language, the majority of a 

 community live up to their income, and are satisfied if they can 

 leave their children no worse off, and perhaps a little better off, 

 than they were themselves. Again, when a community is so 

 well off that the earnings pf its industrial classes are on an 

 average vastly in excess of what they need for their subsistence, 

 th growth of population, should the climate of the country be 

 healthy and favourable to life, is very rapid. 



But though a community will increase up to the average 

 means of subsistence, it does not increase beyond these means. 

 If the people of Great Britain are found to be more numerous at 

 every census, this fact does not of itself prove that the people 

 are reckless or improvident, but that the efficiency of labour 

 has so far increased that more can be maintained by it than 

 were maintained before. It is not the fact that with this growth 

 of population an increase of agricultural produce is obtained by 

 an increase of labour. The fact is precisely the reverse. The 

 increase has been obtained by less labour. If, indeed, the com- 

 munity gives up a more expensive kind of food, and betakes 

 itself to a cheaper or inferior, population will increase, and the 

 condition of the people will have been lowered ; but no one 

 needs to be told that the English people, in the mass, has not 

 lowered its standard of living within the last twenty years, but 

 that it has rather bettered it. 



In a rough kind of way, population does accommodate itself 

 to the means of subsistence in its possession or in its power. 

 It is found that when food is dear there are fewer marriages 

 and fewer births. 



There are, however, two events which have, on their occur- 

 rence, an important effect on an existing generation of labourers 

 seeking employment, since they induce the phenomenon of an 

 excessive population, i.e., of a demand for employment which is 

 b excess of supply. These are scarcity and distrust. 



A man's wages are not only the money which he earns, but 

 the articles which money will buy. When food gets dear, 

 though the labourer's money wages remain unchanged, his real 

 wages that is, what he can buy with his money are diminished 

 by the difference between the average and the present price of 

 these necessaries. He seeks to work harder, and he is obliged 

 to economise. The first condition makes him more eager to 

 compete for his own employment, the second makes him less 

 able to purchase what other labourers produce. A scarcity at 



home always depresses home trade, and a scarcity abroad haa 

 the same effects on foreign trade. When the cost of mainte- 

 nance increases, the margin of earnings, from which a man 

 might buy comforts or luxuries, is curtailed. Temporarily, then, 

 there is an excess of population over the means of subsistence 

 and employment. 



A period of distrust has the same effects. Not a little of the 

 means which an employer devotes towards carrying on his 

 business, and by which he is able to give employment to 

 labourers, or at least to keep them engaged, is capital bor- 

 rowed from others. But in order to borrow, a man must have 

 credit, that is, they who lend must be convinced of his ability 

 and his willingness to repay that which has been lent him. 

 There are, however, times in which confidence is so shaken, 

 owing to reckless speculation, that lenders are shy and timid, 

 and their capital remains unproductive. This phenomenon has 

 happened several times of late years, and at one or two of these 

 crises labourers have suffered from the faults of employers to a 

 very great extent. 



Again, the distrust may be the fault of the labourer. I hava 

 already said that high and low wages do not mean dear or cheap 

 labour ; but that cheap labour is that which is very effective, 

 dear that which is ineffective. If a man is paid ten shillings a 

 day, and his work is worth fourteen, he is a cheaper labourer 

 than a man whose wages are five shillings a day, and whose 

 work is worth only six. Now a labourer, and, for the matter of 

 that, a combination of labourers, may wilfully make their work 

 dear. They may lower the quality or the quantity of their 

 work by sluggishness and carelessness, they may make their 

 labour uncertain because they quarrel with their employer unrea- 

 sonably, they may drive a particular industry actually out of 

 the country by a variety of expedients which they think will 

 heighten their wages, but which ultimately destroy their wages 

 altogether by destroying their employment. Such acts of indus- 

 trial suicide, so to speak, though not very common, have 

 happened. If a man who embarks in any calling finds that this 

 calling is surrounded by extra risks, he will either compensate 

 himself for his risks by charging the public a higher price for 

 the productions which he sells, or he will abandon his calling 

 altogether. 



In all cases, however, it is not so much the excess of popula- 

 tion which is to be dreaded, as its being immovable. Wages 

 vary very much in quantity at places not very far apart, and 

 vary excessively in localities which are distant indeed, but can 

 easily be reached by enterprise. A labourer who is half-starved 

 in England may get abundant wages in every sense of the word 

 in Canada, Australia, or the United States. Ages must pass 

 before the New World is peopled as densely as England is, and in 

 the interval, not to speak of other regions, there is no general, 

 but only a local or even temporary, excess of population. 



The English labourer is kept poor, not because he can find no 

 employment, but because he is slow to move, or unable to do so. 

 A man who lives from hand to mouth has little or no power to 

 change the place of his employment for one in which he will be 

 better paid. If he took care to keep some reserve by him, 

 wliich would be at hand as a means by which he could transfer 

 the labour which he has to sell from a worse to a better market, 

 he could speedily mend his condition. What should we think 

 of a manufacturer who was so heedless that he did not retain 

 funds enough in his possession to pay the carriage of his goods 

 to the place where he could sell them ? Labourers in England, 

 unfortunately, for the most part are in this helpless condition, 

 and therefore are powerless, and obliged to put up with what- 

 ever may be offered them. A man who cannot wait foi his 

 market or seek the best market, always sells at the greatest 

 disadvantage ; and what; is true of goods is true of labour. 



My readers will anticipate, therefore, that the best means 

 perhaps the only means by which the low wages which follow 

 from an excess of labour may be remedied or removed, is by 

 turning the excess into a deficiency. It is easy to illustrate 

 this by an example. 



The rate of agricultural wages is in the southern English 

 counties very low. It is, perhaps, not much lower, it may be 

 even higher, than it was twenty years ago ; but still it is very 

 ill paid. I know no labourer who can do so many things so well 

 as a thoroughly good farm hand can. He frequently knows as 

 much about land, its qualities, how it should be tilled, and what 

 it will bear, as his employer does, and speedily learns the uses 



