them remaining in the Statutes of the State of New York. Laws fixing the period of apprenticeship to the various trades; acts incorporating the members of particular trades, and enabling them to establish by-laws, limiting the number of apprentices that an employer should take; laws prohibiting a person from engaging in more than one department of industry, such as that which in England required the wheels of a carriage to be made by one set of workmen, at one shop, while the body was made by another set at another shop, because the trades of wheelwright and carriage-maker had been erected into quasi monopolies, and their combination in the same person pronounced illegal-will serve as specimens of the kind of legislation to which we refer. It can hardly be necessary to frame an argument for their condemnation; nor can a more conclusive one be found than that of Adam Smith. He says:

"The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in whatever way he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty, both of the workman and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think proper. To judge whether he is fit to be employed, may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers, whose interest it so much concerns.”—. Wealth of Nations, Book I., chap. 10, part 2.

That the interest of the community is to be promoted by everything that tends to insure the greatest industry of the greatest number; and that everything which hinders a man from working at a trade which he likes, and confines him to an employment which he dislikes, tends to cramp and limit his efficiency, are propositions, the soundness of which is, we trust, sufficiently apparent. We fully agree with Adam Smith in his earnest defence of the freedom of labour. To trammel it by voluntary combinations, is equally prejudicial to the general interest as if the same object were effected by legislative interference, and equally condemned by the great body of Economists. Mr. J. S. Mill, however, is reconciled to such com◄ binations, for reasons which we will present in his own language. After stating that, "In several trades the workmen have been able to make it almost impracticable for strangers to obtain admission, either as journeymen or as apprentices, except in limited numbers

and under such restrictions as they choose to impose ;" and protesting against the acts of atrocity sometimes committed by way of personal outrage or intimidation, he declares, in regard to such combinations,

"In so far as they do succeed in keeping up the wages of any trade by limiting its numbers, I look upon them as simply intrenching round a particular spot against the inroads of over-population, and making their wages depend upon their own rate of increase, instead of depending on that of a more reckless and improvident class than themselves. And I should rejoice, if, by trade regulations, or even by Trades-Unions, the employments thus specially protected, could be multiplied to a much greater extent than experience has shown to be practicable. What at first sight seems the injustice of excluding the more numerous class from sharing the gains of a comparatively few, disappears, when we consider that, by being admitted, they would not be made better off for more than a short time; the only permanent effect which their admission would produce, would be to lower the others to their own level. ****** On similar grounds, if there were no other escape from that fatal immigration of Irish, which has done, and is doing so much to degrade the condition of our agricultural, and some classes of our town population, I should see no injustice, and the greatest possible expediency, in checking that destructive inroad by protective laws. But there is a better mode of putting an end to this mischief, namely, by improving the condition of the Irish themselves; and England owes an atonement to Ireland for past injuries, which she ought to suffer almost any inconvenience rather than fail to make good, by using her power in as determined a manner for the elevation of that unfortunate people, as she used it through so many dreary centuries for their abasement and oppression."-Political Economy, vol. 1, page 481.

This passage shows us Malthusianism issuing in a defence of re straints upon the freedom of labour. To limit the number of labourers in any craft is to limit the production of the commodities which it furnishes-to restrict exchanges by restricting the supply of the materials of exchange-to enhance prices by the creation of a monopoly. Free trade and free labour cannot be disjoined. What reply could Mr. Mill make to an American Protectionist who should say, "The same causes which drive Irishmen to England, drive hundreds of thousands of them to the United States annually, who, if they were not here, labouring in our trades, would be in England. Instead of excluding them, we see no injustice, and the greatest possible expediency, in excluding from our markets the fabrics made by an equal number of Englishmen, the introduction of which would produce precisely the same amount of competition with our labour, as would the labourers themselves, if they worked on this side of the Atlantic instead of the other. This is the method by which we propose to prevent the reduction of wages." It would scarcely serve

for an answer, that, by so doing the American would raise the prices of domestic fabrics; for the Protectionist might concede this-which he would not—and yet reply that Mr. Mill deemed this no objection to restrictions upon competition in labour at home. We do not intend to say that such is the argument which an American Protectionist would offer, nor to express an opinion at present in regard to its force. The object is simply to show, into what inconsistencies the necessities of a false system may compel so acute and enlightened a writer as Mr. Mill, and to leave it to the reader to judge whether the doctrines of Malthus and Ricardo conduce to freedom of trade. The answer to Mr. Mill which the reader, who has thus far concurred in our reasoning, would make, is, "That the growth of popu lation tends to raise wages, not to lower them that the source of

the evil is to be found, not in the free operation of the laws of our beneficent Creator, but in efforts to evade or thwart them and the remedy to be sought, by conforming to those laws instead of intrenching against them.

The effect of improvements in machinery upon wages is a problem, which is solved, so far as the permanent results are concerned, by the considerations heretofore presented. Wages steadily rise with every increase in the aid contributed by the natural agents. It is doubtless true, that the immediate and temporary effect upon those whose toil is superseded by inanimate and gratuitous workers, is sometimes distressing. Until we have examined the subject of Exchange, we shall be unprepared to describe the process through which that distress is alleviated, new employment provided for those whom machinery may expel from their old, and the general benefit to community finally apportioned so that a due share of it comes to them. Previous to 1828, when planks were prepared for flooring by manual labour, a skilful and vigorous mechanic could prepare ten or fifteen planks, equal to one hundred feet, in a day, at a cost of $2. Woodworth's planing machine prepares 5000 feet in a day, at an expense of $10, doing the work of fifty men at one-tenth the cost. Fortyfive of the fifty are rendered disposable for other labour. Five are still required, to prepare materials for making the machine, to make it, to get fuel, &c., for running it, to tend it, &c.; for the whole cost of running the machinery may be resolved into the wages of present

labour, or of past labour, which needs renewal. It is evident that the body of purchasers of flooring could as well afford to maintain the forty-five carpenters in idleness, paying them $2 a day, as to dispense with the machine. They have among them $90 per day, their gross savings in the cost of flooring, which is quite likely to be expended in carpentry work; since the diminution of the cost of one considerable item in house-building, enables those to build who were before unable. If not, it is expended in maintaining labour in other departments of industry, to which the superseded carpenters may resort for employment; and then, when they become purchasers of flooring, they share in the common benefit, the saving of nine-tenths in the cost of its preparation. Defective social arrangements may protract the period, in which the adjustment of things to the new circumstances would otherwise be effected. If, for instance, the forty-five men skilled in the use of the plane, the chisel, and the saw, should be shut off from working at making doors, because the door-makers were endowed by the legislature with power to confine such employment to their own apprentices; or, if these were tolerated, in the absence of legislation, in combinations for the same purpose, upon the plea that they were simply "intrenching against the inroads of over-population"; in such case we should find that population had suddenly become excessive by forty-five surplus individuals, without a single additional birth, without a particle of diminution in the means of society to feed and clothe all its members; but, on the contrary, with a positive increase in the potential labour of fortyfive men, who, if they were slaves, would exchange in the market for at least 45,000 bushels of wheat, and as freemen are worth 90,000. If these men should be driven to the Poor-house, the followers of Malthus would accuse their ninety fathers and mothers of over-population; the men themselves might lay the crime at the door of Mr. Woodworth, the father of the planing machine: while we esteem them alike the benefactors of community - the first, in furnishing the State with citizens capable of a thousand things besides shoving a plane - the second, for transferring to wood and iron the toil which formerly consumed human muscle. The only error is in a false dogma, and the mischievous arrangements it helps to perpetuate.

CHAPTER VI.

PROFITS.

We have treated Profits and Wages as the shares of the Capitalist and the Labourer, in the product resulting from their combination. Each, in point of fact, contributes capital. The food of the preceding day, transformed into muscular and nervous fibre in the labourer's body, may be the whole of his part. It is a small one, and is expended in the course of a few hours; that is, is transformed, through the vital mechanism, into force, exerted upon the materials of the greater capitalist, and changing their form or location. It is necessary that it should be restored to him immediately, or his ability to exert force is exhausted; and it must be restored with some addition, bearing the same relation to the little capital that profits do to the greater, or the disposition to labour will fail, though the physical ability may continue. It is seldom, however, restored in kind. The employer of a slave, indeed, supplies him with food, raiment, and shelter; but the free labourer is ordinarily paid in money, which he transforms into materials for his physical renovation, at his own discretion. The money, moreover, from which the wages of a month or a week are paid, is not provided long in advance, but is supplied from day to day, by the sale of the commodities or the services in which the employer deals. The materials also undergo such transformations, as to prevent the direct comparison of their quantity with that of the product. Ore, limestone, coal-the grain, meat, &c., on which the labourer subsists, are virtually fused together, and run out of the furnace in the shape of a mass of iron, whose bulk and weight are many times less than those of the elements whose utilities are incorporated in it. For such reasons, the comparison between the advances of the capitalist and the return, is made, not by their quantities, but by their relative value. In practice, it is the differ ence between the price of the advances and the return, by which the profits are estimated. For the short period usually intervening between the beginning and the end of an industrial enterprise, value