The Emancipation of Labour. 501 



ing the price of food. If the seignorial class had possessed any 

 practical control over the latter, the hardships of the peasant 

 might have been alleviated. But the assize of bread and other 

 clumsy expedients were worse than useless, for they gave to 

 the employers of labour the semblance of responsibility with- 

 out its powers. Professor Rogers goes so far as to assert that 

 the English law has never affected to fix the price of food, 

 though sometimes proclamations have pretended to do so, and 

 local authority has occasionally been empowered to publish fair 

 prices.^ Be this as it may, notwithstanding the legislation 

 described when we discussed this subject earlier in this work, 

 abuses of the statutes continued to prevail, and Members of 

 Parliament kept on moving for the better regulation of the 

 assize of bread, whilst writers to the periodicals pointed out 

 various processes by which the Act continued to be evaded."^ 

 The middleman still reaped an illegal harvest by intercepting 

 and appropriating any abnormal profits arising at a time of 

 scarcity, before they found their way into the producer's pocket. 

 Alderman Anderson demonstrated to the House of Commons in 

 1797, that on Mondays, the days on which the returns under the 

 Act were made, it was a common practice to bring to market 

 cargoes of wheat of a superior quality, with a view to enhance 

 the price of flour. On Wednesdays and Fridays, when no re- 

 turn was made, the inferior wheat was bought at a low price 

 for the purpose of mixing with that of Monday.^ Thus the 

 price of flour was from this practice much higher than it ought 

 to have been for the average price of wheat for the three days. 

 It would seem that the English public was in those days of 

 Protection as much at the mercy of the middleman as it is 

 nowadays, when the individuals who intercept the grain on its 

 road from the producer are accountable for nearly two-thirds 

 of its ultimate cost to the consumer."^ The inability of con- 



^ Six Centuries of Work and Wages. T. Eogers, p. 508. 



* " The Assize of Bread Act " was onlj' repealed in 18G7. 

 3 Gentleman's Mag., 1797, March 27. 



* In otlier words, for every sixpennj^-worth of bread eaten hj John 

 Bull in this present year, the miller, the baker, and the individual who 

 lives by what Mr. Gladstone once termed "business enterprise," leave 

 as a profit to the husbandman some 2i(/. only. 



