Such are the chief agencies to which we trace the improvement in the position of the labourer during the last forty years.At the beginning of this period Mill insisted on one thing as of paramount importance,namely restriction upon the increase of population,and without this he believed all improvement to be impossible.Yet we find that during this period the rate of increase has not slackened.It is nearly as great now as between 1831 and 1841.It was greater during the last decade than it had been since 1841.On the other hand,there has undoubtedly been an enormous emigration which has lightened the supply of labour.
Three millions and a half of people have emigrated from Great Britain since 1846.
The question which now most deeply concerns us is,Will the same causes operate in the future?Will Free Trade continue to be beneficial?Will our wealth continue to increase and our trade to expand?On this point a decided prediction is of course impossible.Competition in neutral markets is becoming keener and keener,and we may be driven out of some of them,and thus the national aggregate of wealth be lessened.But,on the other hand,we have reason to believe that increased supplies of corn from America and Australia will give an enormous impetus to trade.As in the past so in the future corn is the commodity of most importance to the labourer;and if the supply of corn becomes more constant,trade will be steadier and wages will probably rise.Besides,cheap corn means that all over the world the purchasing power of consumers is increased,and this again will stimulate trade.So that in this respect the labourers'outlook is a hopeful one.As to emigration also,there is no reason to suppose that there will be any check on this relief to the labourer for the next fifty years at least.Again,there is every prospect of co-operation and even productive co-operation making great progress in the future,though I do not think that the latter is likely for some time to be an important factor in improving the status of the workmen.The moral obstacles to cooperative production which I mentioned will disappear but slowly.In certain directions,however,it is likely to develop;I mean in the direction of manufacturing for the great Wholesale Co-operative Societies,because here the market is secured.
Trades-Unions too are likely to expand.
Turning to the moral condition of the workpeople,we find an improvement greater even than their material progress.When we see or read of what goes on in the streets of our great towns,we think badly enough of their morality;but those who have had most experience in manufacturing districts are of opinion that the moral advance,as manifested,for example,in temperance,in orderly behaviour,in personal appearance,in dress,has been very great.For the improvement in the inner life of workshops as early as 1834,take the evidence of Francis Place,a friend of James Mill,before a Committee of the House of Commons in that year.He told the Committee that,when he was a boy,he used to hear songs,such as he could not repeat,sung in respectable shops by respectable people;it was so no longer,and he was at a loss how to account for the change.Similar statements are made by workmen at the present day.Conversation,they say,is bad at times,but opinion is setting more and more against immoral talk.
The number of subjects which interest workpeople is much greater than before,and the discussion of the newspaper is supplanting the old foul language of the workshop.We have here an indirect effect of the extension of the suffrage.Add to this the statistics of drunkenness.In 1855 there were nearly 20,000 persons convicted for drunkenness,in 1880 there were not many more than 11,000.
Again,the relations between workmen and employers are certainly much better.The old life,as described by Owen and Cobbett,of an apprentice in the workshop,or a boarded labourer in the farmhouse,is at first sight most attractive;and the facts told to the Commission of 1806 seem to realise the ideal life of industry.The relations between masters and workmen were then extremely close,but this close relationship had its bad side.There was often great brutality and gross vice.The workman was at his employer's mercy.In Norfolk the farmer used to horsewhip his labouring men,and his wife the women.There existed a state of feudal dependence,which,like all feudalism,had its dark and light sides.The close relationship was distinctly the result of the small system of industry,and hence it was shattered by the power-loom and the steam-engine.When huge factories were established there could no longer be a close tie between the master and his men;the workman hated his employer,and the employer looked on his workmen simply as hands.
From 1800 to 1843 their mutual relations,as was admitted by both parties,were as bad as they could be.There could be no union,said employers,between classes whose interests were different,and farmers,contrary to ancient usage,ruthlessly turned off their men when work was slack.The 'cash nexus'had come in,to protest against which Carlyle wrote his Past and Present;but Carlyle was wrong in supposing that the old conditions of labour could be re-established.Feudalism,though it lingers in a few country places,has virtually disappeared alike in agriculture and in trade.The employer cannot offer and the workman cannot accept the old relations of protection and dependence:for,owing to the modern necessity of the constant movement of labour from place to place and from one employment to another,it has become impossible to form lasting relations,and the essence of the old system lay in the permanency of the workmen's engagements.
