In Arthur Young's time the highest wages were to be found in Lincolnshire,the East Riding,and,following close upon these,the metropolitan and eastern counties.At first sight the high rate of wages in the first two counties seems to contradict the general law about their relative condition in north and south.
But on investigation we find it to be due to exceptional circumstances.Arguing on the deductive method,we should conjecture a large demand for or a small supply of labour;and,in fact,we find both these influences in operation.The population had actually diminished,in Lincolnshire from 64to 58to the square mile,in the East Riding,from 80to 71;this was partly due to the enclosures and the conversion of arable to pasture,partly to the increase of manufactures in the West Riding.Thus the labourers had been drawn off to the latter at the same time that they were being driven out of the agricultural districts.And for the remaining labourers there was a great demand in public works,such as turnpike-roads and agricultural improvements on a large scale.
But there were many local variations of wages which are far less easy to bring under the ordinary rules of Political Economy,There was often the greatest inequality in the same county.In Lincolnshire,for instance,wages varied from 12s.3d.to 7s.,and even 6s.It was at this very time that Adam Smith,arguing deductively from his primary axiom that men follow their pecuniary interest,enunciated the law that wages tend to an equality in the same neighbourhood and the same occupation.Why then these variations?Adam Smith himself partly supplies the answer.His law pretends to exactness only 'when society is left to the natural course of things.'Now this was impossible when natural tendencies were diverted by legal restrictions on the movement of labour,such as the law of settlement,which resulted in confining every labourer to his own parish.But we must not seek the cause of these irregularities of wages merely in legal restrictions.Apart from disturbing influences such as this,men do not always act in accordance with their pecuniary interest;there are other influences at work affecting their conduct.One of the strongest of these is attachment to locality.It was this influence which partly frustrated the recent efforts of the Labourers'Union to remove the surplus labour of the east and south to the north.Again,there are apathy and ignorance,factors of immense importance in determining the action of the uneducated majority of men.In 1872there were labourers in Devon who had never heard of Lancashire,where they might have been earning double their own wages.Human beings,as Adam Smith says,are 'of all baggage the most difficult to be transported,'though their comparative mobility depends upon the degree of their education,the state of communications,and the industrial conditions of any particular time.The English labourer to-day is far more easy to move than he was a hundred years ago.In a stirring new country like America there is much more mobility of labour than in England.
Turning from the agricultural wage-earners to those engaged in manufactures,we find their condition at this period on the whole much inferior to what it is now,in spite of the widening gulf between capitalist and labourer,the status of the artisan has distinctly improved since Adam Smith's time.His nominal wages have doubled or trebled.A carpenter then earned 2s.6d.a day;he now earns 5s.6d.A cotton weaver then earned 5s.a week,he now earns 20s.,and so on.But it is difficult to compare the condition of the artisan as a whole at the two periods,because so many entirely new classes of workmen have come into existence during the past century;for instance,the engineers,whose Union now includes 50,000men earning from 25s.to 40s.a week.And if wages have on the whole very greatly increased,there were,on the other hand,some obvious advantages which the artisan possessed in those days,but has since lost.For the manufacturing population still lived to a very great extent in the country.The artisan often had his small piece of land,which supplied him with wholesome food and healthy recreation.His wages and employment too were more regular.He was not subject to the uncertainties and knew nothing of the fearful sufferings which his descendants were to endure from commercial fluctuations,especially before the introduction of free trade.
For the whole inner life of industry was,as we have seen,entirely different from what it now is.The relation between the workmen and their employers was much closer,so that in many industries they were not two classes but one.As among the agriculturists the farmer and labourer lived much the same life-for the capitalist farmers as a class were not yet in existence-and ate at the same board,so in manufacturing industries the journeyman was often on his way to become a master.The distribution of wealth was,indeed,in all respects more equal.Landed property,though gradually being concentrated,was still in a far larger number of hands,and even the great landlords possessed nothing like their present riches.They had no vast mineral wealth,or rapidly developing town property.Agreat number of the trading industries,too,were still in the hands of small capitalists.Great trades,like the iron trade,requiring large capital,had hardly come into existence.
