[200] _Principles of Economics_, 2nd edit., pp. 314, 322.
[203] Evidence given by Mr. T. Birtwistle.
[204] _Op. cit._, p. 82. Babbage, in laying stress on one of the "advantages" of machinery, makes an ingenuous admission of this "forcing" power. "One of the most singular advantages we derive from machinery is the check it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the knavery of human agents." (_Economy of Machinery_, p. 39; cf. also Ure, _Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 30.)
[205] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 590.
[207] For a fuller treatment of this subject, see the next chapter.
[208] Cf. Patten, _The Theory of Dynamic Economics_, chap. xi.
[209] _Uses and Abuses of Money_, p. 111.
[213] A similar difficulty in distinguishing town influences from specific trade influences confronted Dr. Arlidge in his investigation into diseases of employments. "It is a most difficult problem to solve, especially in the case of an industrial town population, how far the diseases met with are town-made and how far trade-made; the former almost always predominates." (_Diseases of Occupation_, p. 33.)
[214] Mulhall, _Dictionary of Statistics_, p. 545.
[215] Cf. Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, vol. i. p. 315.
[216] D.A. Wells, _Contemporary Review_, 1889, p. 392.
[217] Taylor, _Modern Factory System_, p. 435.
[218] Cf. the comparison of conditions of town and country labour in Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, Bk. I., chap. x., part 2.
[219] _Diseases of Occupations_, pp. 25, 26.
[221] Ure, _Philosophy of Manufactures_, chap. i. p. 19.
[222] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, p. 265.
§ 1. _The Economy of Low Wages._ § 2. _Modifications of the Early Doctrine--Sir T. Brassey's Evidence from Heavy Manual Work._ § 3. _Wages, Hours, and Product in Machine-industry._ § 4. _A General Application of the Economy of High Wages and Short Hours inadmissible._ § 5. _Mutual Determination of Conditions of Employment and Productivity._ § 6. _Compressibility of Labour and Intensification of Effort._ § 7. _Effective Consumption dependent upon Spare Energy of the Worker._ § 8. _Growth of Machinery in relation to Standard of Comfort._ § 9. _Economy of High Wages dependent upon Consumption._
§ 1. The theory of a "natural" rate of wages fixed at the bare subsistence-point which was first clearly formulated in the writings of Quesnay and the so-called "physiocratic" school was little more than a rough generalisation of the facts of labour in France. But these facts, summed up in the phrase, "Il ne gagne que sa vie," and elevated to the position of a natural law, implied the general belief that a higher rate of wage would not result in a correspondent increase of the product of labour, that it would not pay an employer to give wages above the point of bare sustenance and reproduction. This dogma of the economy of cheap labour, taught in a slightly modified form by many of the leading English economists of the first half of the nineteenth century, has dominated the thought and indirectly influenced the practice of the business world. It is true that Adam Smith in a well-known passage had given powerful utterance to a different view of the relation between work and wages:--"The liberal reward of labour as it encourages the propagation so it encourages the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives."[225] But the teaching of Ricardo, and the writers who most closely followed him in his conception of the industrial system, leaned heavily in favour of low wages as the sound basis of industrial progress.