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We all see, that when ships are more numerous than cargoes, freights are low; and, vice versa, that when cargoes are more abundant than ships, freights are high. When ploughs and horses more abound than ploughmen, the latter fix the wages; but when ploughmen are more abundant than ploughs, the owners of the latter determine the distribution of the product. Wealth increasing rapidly, new soils are brought into cultivation, and more ploughmen are required. The demand for ploughs producing a demand for more men to mine the coal and smelt the ore, the iron-master becomes a competitor for the laborer, who obtains a larger proportion of the constantly increasing return to labor. He, in turn, becoming a better purchaser of cloth, the manufacturer becomes a competitor with the iron-master and the farmer for his services. His proportion being again increased, he now requires sugar, and tea, and coffee; and next, the ship-master competes with the manufacturer, the iron-master, and the farmer. With the growth of wealth and population, there is, thus, a constant increase in the demand for mental and physical effort the increased productiveness of which, and the consequently increased facility of accumulating wealth, are followed necessarily, and certainly, by an increase of the laborer's proportion. His wages rising, the proportion of the capitalist falls; yet now the latter accumulates fortune more rapidly than everhis interest, and that of the laborer, being in perfect harmony with each other. Seeking evidence of this, we find it in the constantly increasing amount of the rental of France and England, derived from the appropriation of a constantly decreasing proportion of the product of the land; as well as in the enormous amount of railroad tolls, derived from a charge for transportation that sinks into insignificance, when compared with those of the wagoner and the turnpike owner. The highest evidence of increasing wealth, is to be found in the reduction of the capitalist's proportion; and yet, the cardinal principle of the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrine is found in the assertion, that, with the growth of wealth and population, that proportion must increase.

Nothing is more frequent than references to those "good old times" when the laborer obtained food more readily than at present, yet nothing could be more erroneous. The whole quan

tity consumed in England now, is, at the lowest estimate, sixty

times as great as in the days of Edward III; while the population is but little more than six times greater. Divided equally, the average, per head, would be ten times as great, in quantity making no allowance for difference of quality. In those days of barbarous wassail, the waste among the nobles and their followers was very great. In our day, economy prevails everywhere, and it does so necessarily-the general standard of living rising, in exact accordance with the diminution in the proportion of labor's products given to the proprietor of the land. Increase of wealth tending, therefore, to the production of economy, that, in turn, aids in the increase of wealth-thus facilitating the extension of cultivation over the richer soils. Therefore it is, that the higher the quality of the soils in cultivation, and the larger the amount of production, the greater must be the power of the laborer to provide for his family and himself; and the greater the need for care and economy among those who do not sell their labor, and yet are required to conform to the higher standard that has been established.

Capital being, thus, the great equalizer of conditions, the interests of all are concerned in the adoption of measures required for preventing that waste of it which results from war, or from the absence of prompt demand for the potential energy resulting from its consumption in the form of food. The more instantly the demand for human effort follows the supply, the greater must be the power of accumulation, and the stronger must be the tendency towards diminution in the proportion of the capitalist, and increase in that of the laborer.*

The following table of the results of the two systems, may now be compared by the reader with what is passing before his eyes— having done which, he can select for himself, the one he deems most in accordance with the facts.

That the change which takes place in the mode of distribution, is a direct consequence of the limitation of value to the cost of reproduction, is thus shown by Professor Ferrara, of Turin:—

"The present, resting on the accumulations of the past, acquires a productive force which, otherwise, it could not have. Having made the acquisition, it becomes strengthened for emancipation from the need of further aid. Labor, past and present-capital and labor-meeting each other in the market, the general law of value governs all their negotiations-that law being directly constituted for the emancipation of the present from the tyranny of the past."-Biblioteca dell' Economista, vol. xiii. p. lxix.

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§ 6. The next proposition is, that wealth tends to counteract these laws-preventing the necessity for resorting to less productive soils, by producing improvements in cultivation. This proposition was interpolated into the system, because of the absolute necessity for leaving a place of escape for some of the thousand exceptions to his laws, presenting themselves to the consideration of its author; and its presence there is a direct admission of the unsoundness of his doctrine.

According to Mr. Ricardo, wealth should grow most rapidly when, and where, land is most abundant-when, and where, the best soils alone are cultivated. That his followers think so, is obvious from the fact that they, one and all, attribute the rapid growth of wealth in the United States, to the abundance of land. Improvements of cultivation should, then, be most rapid where land is most abundant; but such has not been the case in any country of the world. So far the reverse has it been, that wealth has grown most slowly in those in which rich and unoccupied soils were most abounding; and for the reason, that there population being most dispersed - the power of association has least existed. It grows, now, most rapidly in those in which resort is being had to the soils rejected in the early periods-that being the precise manner in which improvements in the mode of cultivation are most exhibited. * The plough enables the farmer to go deep into the lower soil, while the spade facilitates his access to the marl—the railroad enabling him to change its place.

* See ante, vol. i. p. 114.

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The same road, too, brings the coal to the lime-thus facilitating the compounding of a new soil, which, according to Mr. Ricardo, should be worse than the old one, and yet, is better. With every step in the extension of cultivation, labor should become less productive the growth of wealth diminishing in its rapidity, with corresponding diminution in the power of effecting further improvements; and yet, there is, with each, an increase in the power of man to command the services of nature.

The new soils are better than the old ones, or they are worse. If the first, then is Mr. Ricardo's theory wholly without foundation. If the second, then must the extension of cultivation be attended with diminished power of accumulation-producing a necessity for applying labor with less and less advantage, and leading inevitably to pauperism, slavery, and crime. The law of nature in relation to the production of food being no more to be arrested than can those in relation to the gravitation of matter, the system-maker who finds himself forced to rely upon such suspensions for the establishment of his theory, thereby furnishes conclusive evidence of his own deficiency in knowledge. All her laws are simple and universally true. That of Mr. Ricardo is complex and universally false. Had it been otherwise, there would have been no necessity for providing escape-valves for troublesome facts.

§ 7. The last proposition is, that every such improvement tends to retard the increase of rent-every obstacle to improvement tending, on the contrary, to accelerate it. The interests of the landlord and the laborer are, therefore, always in opposition to each other.

If men did commence with the cultivation of the most fertile soils, and if, with the progress of population, there did arise a necessity for resorting to those of less fertility, yielding a constantly decreasing return to labor, such must inevitably be the case. The slower the increase in the supply of food, the more rapid must be the increase in the power of the owner of land in cultivation, and the-greater the tendency to poverty and disease among those required to live by labor.* The landlord must take

"How slow soever the increase of population, provided that of capital be still slower [believed by Mr. Mill to be the case], wages will be reduced so low that a portion of the population will regularly die from the consequences of want."- MILL.

a constantly increasing proportion- the laborer becoming his slave, thankful to be allowed to live and work, although compelled to live on acorn-bread. Mr. Ricardo having, here, carried out his doctrine to its legitimate results, those results must, at some future day, be reached his theory being correct. It signifies nothing, to say that the downward progress may be arrested. Man must be always tending in that direction, there to arrive at last, were it a thousand years hence.* The experience of Europe for thousands of years, and that of America for the last three centuries, would lead us to opposite conclusions; yet Mr. Ricardo insists that such is the law. Being so, when is it to begin to become operative? We know of no other of nature's laws thus hung up, in terrorem, over man; none, the action of which is thus suspended, to fall, at some future time, with a force increased, immeasurably, during the period of suspension. Population growing daily, and with great rapidity, the necessity for resorting to less productive soils must be increasing with every hour; yet is man permitted to go on to increase his species, in blind and blissful ignorance of the fact, that his descendants are to suffer all the pangs of hunger, while land-owners are to revel in abundance such as has never yet been known- the one class becoming masters, and the other slaves.

Admitting, now, that cultivation commences always on the poorer soils-thence proceeding to the swamps and river-bottoms the reverse of this would prove to be the case. The quantity of rent would then increase with every improvement, and decline with every obstacle to such improvement-the interests of landlord and laborer being, thus, in perfect harmony with each other. Improvements in cultivation follow, necessarily, from the growth of wealth. The more spades and ploughs, and the better their quality, the larger is the return to human effort, and the greater the rent. The more horses and cattle, the larger is the return to human effort, and the greater the rent. The more steamengines, the easier is the work of drainage, the larger is the return to labor, and the greater the rent. The more mills, the easier is the conversion of the grain into flour, the larger is the

From the operation of fixed and permanent causes, the increasing sterility of the soil is sure, in the long run, to overmatch the improvements that occur in machinery and agriculture, prices experiencing a corresponding rise, and profits a corresponding fall."- MCCULLOCH.

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