regiment of light horse, which so highly distinguished itself during the seven years' war, was principally recruited from among the tailors of the metropolis. But as respects the statement that manufactures weaken the corporeal and martial powers, it is necessary only to call to mind that the great manufacturing and trading towns furnished by far the greater portion of recruits to the army during the late war: for every one will allow that the events of that contest proved, beyond dispute, that whatever other changes may have taken place in the habits of our people, our troops are as much distinguished as ever for capacity to bear fatigue and invincible courage and resolution."

The slightest experience of facts quite reverses Smith's notions of the superiority of agricultural labourers in intellect over artisans; and the reason is obvious. Agricultural labourers are engaged in the same perpetual round of labour, and they mix with but few persons out of their own class, whose ideas and occupations are precisely the same. Artisans work together, and in much greater numbers, and with a much greater variety of employment. They thus are brought into contact with a much greater variety of knowledge and interests, and their intellects are sharpened by the conflict of opinion. They have much greater access to newspapers. As a matter of fact, labourers engaged in subdivision of labour consisting of semi-automatical operations, manifest a higher degree of mental cultivation than others whose occupations are more varied. Hand loom weavers study geometry; shoemakers are proficient in polemics; tailors especially affect politics, while engaged in labour consisting of simple movements, chiefly repetitions of motions, all of which are being superseded by machinery. The machinery itself requires a higher degree of responsible attention by the person directing it, but not all his attention, as assumed by Smith, who has overlooked the psychological fact, which would have become manifest to wider and closer observation, that distinct mental operations may often go on better together than separately. Such labourers in semi-automatical processes, and superintendents, and workers of machinery, often hire persons to read to them during the work, and employers commonly find the work go on the better for the accompaniment of the second train of ideas raised by the reading, as the march of the soldier is improved by the excitement of the imagination created by music. Subdivision of such labour, instead of con

fining the mind to the process, liberates it: instead of depressing the mind, gives room for its expansion, and opens it to the reception of agreeable impressions. With the educated workpeople singing and poetry attach themselves peculiarly to semi-automatical processes. If a man, being compelled to earn his own livelihood, would study, or indulge the imagination, he would seek for the purpose a peculiarly simple subdivision of labour.

On the RATE OF WAGES and the COST OF LABOUR.

60. Ricardo affirms in his dogmatic way that Profits depend exclusively on Wages: that as Wages rise Profits must fall, and vice versa: we have already shewn that this is a plain arithmetical error, and that Wages and Profits may both rise and fall together.

The term Wages, however, is very apt to deceive. Ricardo, indeed, noticed incidentally that there are different qualities of labour; but he alludes to different kinds of labour, such as that of a working jeweller and a common labourer, which adjust themselves in the market. In speaking of the same kind of labour, his doctrine certainly is, that if wages rise, profits must fall; and if wages fall, profits must rise.

This, however, is a most grievous error: and nothing can be more fallacious than to consider daily wages as the measure of the cost of executing work, or as governing Profits; and, as Mr. Brassey says, it is quite possible that work may be more cheaply executed by the same workmen, notwithstanding that their wages have been largely increased.

He gives as instances" At the commencement of the construction of the North Devon Railway the wages of the labourers were 2s. a day. During the progress of the work their wages were increased to 2s. 6d. and 3s. a day. Nevertheless, it was found that the work was executed more cheaply when the men were earning the higher rate of wages than when they were paid the lower rate. Again, in London, in carrying out a part of the Metropolitan Drainage Works in Oxford Street, the wages of the bricklayers were gradually raised from 6s. to 10s. per day: yet it was found that the brickwork was constructed at a cheaper rate per cubic yard after the wages of the workmen had been raised to 10s. than when they were paid at the rate of 6s. a day.”

1 Work and Wages, ch. 3.

In making the Paris and Rouen Railway ten thousand men were employed, of which four thousand were English. The English navvies were paid 5s. a day, while the French were paid 2s. 6d. a day; yet it was found, on comparing the cost of two adjacent cuttings in precisely similar circumstances, that the excavation was made at a lower cost per cubic yard by the English navvies than by the French.

In the same quarry at Bonnières in which Frenchmen, Irishmen, and Englishmen were employed side by side, the Frenchmen received 3 francs, the Irishmen 4, and the Englishmen 6 francs a day. At these different rates the Englishman was found to be the most advantageous workman of the three.1

"Both English and French masons were employed in large numbers on the Alderney breakwater in 1852. The Englishmen earned 5s. 6d. to 6s., and as a general rule they made 1s. a day more than the Frenchmen, whose average earnings did not exceed 4s. a day.

"It has been many times stated in the course of this work that from superior skill or greater energy, the more highly paid workman will in many, perhaps in most, cases turn out a greater amount of work in proportion to the wages he receives. An opportunity occurred some years ago, during the construction of the refreshment room at Basingstoke, for testing this problem with great accuracy. On one side of the station a London bricklayer was employed at 5s. 6d. a day, and on the other two country bricklayers at 3s. 6d. a day. It was found, by measuring the amount of work performed, without the knowledge of the men employed, that the one London bricklayer laid, without undue exertion, more bricks in a day than his two less skilful country fellow labourers.

"On the Grand Trunk Railway a number of French-Canadian labourers were employed. Their wages were s. 6d. a day, while the Englishmen received from 5s. to 6s. a day; but it was found that the English did the greatest amount of work for the money."

The same results are observed in other branches of industry. The shipbuilders of Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Nantes described the collapse of their trade in France, and the impossibility of competing in point of price with the English shipbuilders; and 1 Work and Wages, p. 82.

N

yet the wages of the English workmen were in most cases nearly double that of the French.

"Mr. Redgrave, one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Factories, says that, while the foreigner is under the same conditions, as to the raw material, as the English manufacturer, and his fuel is more expensive, his workpeople do not work with the same vigour and steadiness as Englishmen. Consequently, the same number of operatives, employed upon the same machinery, do not produce the same quantity of yarn as in this country. All the evidence that has come before me,' he says, 'has gone to prove that there is a great preponderance in favour of this country. Comparing the work of a British with a foreign spinner, the average number of persons employed to spindles is-in France, one person to fourteen spindles: in Russia, one to twenty-eight spindles: in Prussia, one to thirty-seven: in Great Britain, one to seventy-four. But I could find many cotton spinning factories in my district, in which mules containing 2,200 spindles are managed by one minder and two assistants.' 'I have been recently told,' he continues, by one who had been an English manager in a factory at Oldenburgh, that though the hours of work were from 5.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, only about the same weight of work was turned off under English overlookers as would be produced in a working day from 6 a.m. 6 p.m. in this country. Under German overlookers the produce was much less. The wages were fifty per cent. less in many cases than in England; but the number of hands, in proportion to machinery, was much larger. In some departments it was in the proportion of five to three. In Russia the inefficiency of the foreign, as compared with the labour of the English operatives, is even more strikingly manifested, for, on a comparison of the wages, supposing the Russian operatives to work only sixty hours a week as they do in England, instead of seventy-five hours a week as they do in Russia, their wages would not be one-fourth the amount earned in England.”

Mr. Wells says " Whereas female labour in the cotton manufacture is paid at from 12s. to 15s. a week in Great Britain; at from 78. 3d. to 9s. 7d. in France, Belgium, and Germany; at from 2s. 4d. to 2s. 11d. in Russia; the one thing which is most dreaded by the continental manufacturers everywhere is British competition. The demand for protection is loudest in France, Austria, and Russia, where the average wages reach their minimum."

So it is said by Jones-" Two Middlesex mowers will mow in a day as much grass as six Russian serfs, and in spite of the dearness of provisions in England and their cheapness in Russia, the mowing of a quantity of hay, which would cost the English farmer half a copeck, will cost the Russian proprietor three or four copecks." The Prussian Councillor of State, Jacobi, is considered to have proved that in Russia, where everything is cheap, the labour of the serf is doubly as expensive as that of the labourer in England. In Austria the labour of a serf is one-third of that of a free hired labourer.

Precisely the same impossibility of determining the actual cost of labour by the nominal rate of wages is as fully shewn by the experience of the shipowner as by that of the manufacturer.

“The wages of shipwrights and the pay of seamen are much more moderate in France than with us. Yet the cost of building ships is ten per cent. greater in France than in England; and the wages of a French crew, in consequence of their greater number, involve an expenditure for manning twenty-five per cent. greater than the corresponding expense in an English ship.

"If, on the other hand, we compare the cost of manning an American ship with the cost of manning an English ship, we shall see how our comparatively cheaper labour makes us more prodigal in the use of it. The average proportion of seamen in an English ship is one man to every fifteen tons; in an American ship it is one man to every twenty-five tons."

We have merely taken these few examples from Mr. Brassey's interesting little work Work and Wages, which contains much which may be useful to all persons who consider these questions.

On Mill's fourth fundamental proposition regarding Capital.

61. We think that it is now the fitting place to discuss a doctrine of Mill's which we reserved in a former chapter.1

Mill lays down four fundamental propositions regarding Capital, of which the first three are as follows:

1. That industry is limited by Capital.

2. That all Capital is the result of saving.

3. That, although saved, and the result of saving, all Capital is nevertheless consumed, i. e., destroyed.

1 Vol. I., ch. 4, § 30.