in Manufactures. 
205 
1831 .] 
With the widest conceivable opening for the employment of new capital, which, 
were wages to remain fixed, would raise the rate ot profits to a very great height, 
this necessary dependence of enrichment on labour must produce the effects of 
counteracting, for the time, the rise of the rate of profits, and the cheapening of 
product ; and of transferring a large share of the increased gains of the capitalists 
to the labouring class, to encourage the more rapid increase of that branch of the 
population, the absence of which is now the main obstacle to the progress of 
wealth. We might, therefore, after obtaining accessions of the power of employing 
capital, witness a fall, in place of a rise, in the rate of the net profits, which 
actually find their way into the purses of the capitalists : nay, many over-sanguine 
speculators might actually impoverish themselves from this cause. But not- 
withstanding the impetuosity and indiscretion of individual adventurers, which 
might lead even to their ruin ; and notwithstanding that the necessity for 
obtaining workmen on their own terms, might more than counterbalance the rise 
in the rate of profits, still it will obviously be to the interest of the class of 
productive capitalists, to continue accumulating and throwing new capital into 
employment; because an annual income will thereby be secured to every sum 
of capital so invested : and as the thought uppermost in the minds of all produc- 
ers, must be, how they can secure an increasing income; it must be some 
powerful obstacle, amounting indeed to nothing less than the certainty of 
subsequent impoverishment, which can check the bringing of new capital daily 
into employment. At any rate, the causes here assigned, are sufficient to prevent, 
in real life, any such appearance as profits in general extravagantly high in their 
rate ; and practically, the only perceptible effect of the opening of new investments 
for capital in manufactures or trade, will be, a rising of profits, somewhat beyond 
their minimum rate, (that rate, I mean, to which they will have a constant 
tendency to fall,) coupled, at the same time, with an increased demand for labour, 
and a general show of bustle and activity. 
We have just now, however, contemplated arise in the wages of labour, from the 
competition of capitalists for workmen ; and as the labouring population, no 
doubt, increased with the increase of their wages, a reaction must presently be 
experienced ; and new labourers pressing into being, the competition will presently 
be on their side for employment. The wages of labour being, since the introduc- 
tion of capital into production, an integral part of the productive outlay, it 
follows, that a fall of wages will produce effects precisely similar to such improved 
application of capital, as, by reducing outlay, altered its proportion to the net 
profits of the capitalists. Another rise in the rate of profits will now be experienc- 
ed, which will, as before, be attended by another extension of employment to 
capital; and this will proceed till profits have again settled down to that rate 
which happens to correspond with the greatest increase of aggregate gains to the 
whole class of capitalists. 
When not only profits, but wages besides, have fallen to that minimum rate, 
below which they cannot permanently remain ; then enrichment will again have 
come up to that limit which physical causes, combined with the present state of 
knowledge in productive arts, inevitably prescribes ; and at this period, as before, 
greater wealth will be in existence, and greater amounts of revenue will be 
distributed through the whole society, and through every class in the society, than 
could ever have been realized at any former period. 
In the case of improvements in agriculture opening the way to a more ex- 
tended investment of capital in that branch of production, we see an immediate 
preventative to a very high rate of profits, in the circumstance of the efficient 
