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wretchedness of Ireland, under the system that first annihilated their manufactures, and has since annihilated the nation, so far as regards its position in the community of nations-though scarcely very philosophical. Following out the principle here established, the cause of the large wages of the lawyer, the merchant, the general, and the admiral, must be sought for in the facts, that they live in large houses instead of "mud cottages"- there drinking wine instead of water, and wearing fine clothes instead of going in rags. A better reason for the low wages of the one, and the high wages of the other, might probably be discoverable in the fact, of both being found existing under a system which looks to cheapening labor and raw materials, for the benefit of traders in men and merchandise.

The value of man, like that of all other commodities and things, is measured by the cost of reproduction, and not by that of production. In the days of the Plantagenets, "benefit of clergy" was the privilege of the man whose knowledge of letters enabled him to read. Wealth having largely grown, almost everybody now reads the laborers of the present thus profiting by the accumulations of the past. The more rapid the growth of wealth, and the more perfect the circulation of society, the greater is the tendency towards the production of minds of higher power, with corresponding decline in the value of those which previously had been produced.

The more the prices of labor, and of the rude produce of the land, tend to rise, and the more the prices of finished products tend to fall-the two thus approximating- the smaller will be the space occupied by profits, interest, and rent, and the larger the proportions of the MAN, and of the land he cultivates.*

"We may regard the rate of interest as a sort of level, below which, all labor, all cultivation, all manufactures, and all commerce, cease. It is like a sea spread over a great country, of which the mountain summits rise above the waters-forming fertile and cultivated islands. The sea flowing out, the hill-slopes, and then the plains and valleys, gradually appear-covering themselves with products of every kind. To inundate the land and destroy the cultivation, or to restore to agriculture extensive territories, it is sufficient that the water should rise or fall a single foot. It is the abundance of capital that animates to effort; and the low rate of interest is at once the effect, and the indication of that abundance."-TURGOT: De la Distribution des Richesses, & 89.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

II. Of the Rent of Land.

NIVERSITY
Library.

Of California.

-

§ 1. THUS far, in our examination of the great natural laws to which man and matter are subjected, they have proved equally true, whether considered in relation to the earth itself, or to the axes, canoes, ships, or clothing, into which man converts the materials by which he is surrounded. His course, in all commumunities that increase in wealth and population, is ever onward -passing from the knife of stone to that of steel-from the skin he has torn from an animal's back to a woollen coat. from the canoe to the ship-from the Indian path to the railroadand from the poor lands of the hills and slopes to the fertile soils of the valleys, whose occupation in the earlier day had been prevented by the moisture with which they had been saturated, and the heavy timber with which they had been covered. Wealth is power-the more the richer soils are cultivated, and the more numerous the people who can draw support from a given surface, the greater being the facility of association, and the tendency towards combination for overcoming the yet remaining resistance of nature.

Here, as everywhere, the first step is the most costly and the least productive. At each succeeding stage, less effort is demanded, while the returns to labor as steadily increase. The cost of reproducing instruments, equal in power with those in use, gradually declining, the value of the latter, too, declinesthe early land and the early axe being generally abandoned.*

Rent, too, declines-the owner of land being required to content himself with a diminished proportion of the product as

For the abandonment of the soils first cultivated in various parts of Europe, see ante, vol. i. p. 124.

compensation for its use. Had the owner of the first little farm been asked for permission to cultivate it, his answer would have been: "Obtaining with this as much food in return to the labor of a day, as without it you could have in a week, you can well afford to give me three-fourths of the product of land and labor. This will, it is true, leave you but a small proportion of the things produced, but-your quantity being so much increased. your wages will be one-half greater then than now. You must, therefore, be content."

The contract made, both parties find their powers increased— enabling them to devote both time and mind to the construction of machinery required for effecting further economies of labor. The little farm had cost years of almost ceaseless effort; and yet was capable of yielding only 100 bushels, in return to a given amount of labor devoted to its cultivation. Mental power gradually combining with that which is purely physical, a farm of 200 bushels may now be produced at diminished cost. So, too, with others—the one of 300 being obtained in return for less labor than had, at the first, been given for one of 100; and one of 400 becoming, subsequently, the reward of much less effort. With each successive stage of improvement, the value of man increases, as compared with capital-present labor acquiring power at the expense of past accumulations, and rent diminishing in its proportions, though increasing in its quantity. The first proprietor could compel the laborer to rest content with a fourth of the product of his toil; but, when the second came to measure the power of his accumulations against those of the men around him, he found the relative position of man and matter had greatly changed. His own powers had increased, but so had theirs. He could obtain a farm of 200 bushels a-year at the cost of far less labor than before had been given for one of 100; but so might they. Instead, then, of demanding threefourths, he now exacts but three-fifths-receiving 120, in lieu of the 75 of his predecessor, and leaving to the laborer 80-being more than thrice the quantity at first allowed.

At the third stage, the same phenomena present themselves for consideration, and in yet greater force. A farm capable of yielding 300 bushels being now obtainable at the cost of far less labor than before had been expended in obtaining one of 200, its

owner treats with laborers of greater power-with men who are themselves accumulating capital. Demanding now but half the product, he receives 150-leaving to the laborer 150, where his immediate predecessor had left but 80. Wages have now risen to 150 bushels-greatly facilitating the further increase of capital. Moving with constantly accelerated force, the progress towards the creation of still improved machinery becomes far more rapid than it before had been; and now a farm capable of yielding 400 bushels is obtained at the cost of far less effort, than had been required for producing the one of 300. The cost of reproduction having thus fallen, its owner is forced to content himself with 45 per cent.-taking 180, and leaving to the laborer 220.

At the fifth stage, the proportion of the capitalist falls to twofifths the power of the community to command the services of nature having so much increased, that a farm of 600 bushels may be obtained in return to half the effort that had been required for any of its predecessors. So, too, with the next, yielding 1000 bushels. Wages having grown in a corresponding degree, the laborer, measuring his powers against the labor for which the new farm could be exchanged, finds himself entitled to claim two-thirds-leaving to the owner but a single third, where his early predecessor had claimed and received three-fourths.

In all the distributions thus effected, the capitalist profits by obtaining a constantly increased quantity resulting from a constantly diminished proportion of a constantly augmenting product; but the laborer profits still more largely retaining for himself a constantly increasing proportion of that augmented quantity, as here is shown:

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The power of capital has, thus, little more than quadrupled, while that of labor has increased more than six-and-twenty times. The more rapid the reduction of the capitalist's share, the greater is the tendency towards increase in the proportion of fixed to

floating capital, and to further decrease in the share that can be claimed as rent. With the growth of the power of man over matter, there is, therefore, a steady tendency to decline in the power of man over his fellow-man, and to the establishment of equality among the various portions of the human race. That the weak may find themselves on a level with the strong, and that the woman may take her place by the side of the being who everywhere has been her master, all that is required is that wealth be permitted to grow-that association be allowed to increaseand that individuality be developed, by means of that diversification of employments which is indispensable to rapidity in the circulation, and to the power of further progress.

§ 2. The views thus far given, differ totally from those now commonly received. - those of the Ricardo-Malthusian school. The questions, as to the reason why rent was paid for land, and as to the laws by which its payment was governed, had, for more than a century, occupied the attention of economists, when Mr. Ricardo, in 1817, finally reduced to form ideas which had previously been promulgated by Adam Smith, Dr. Anderson, and others-giving to the world a theory of rent that was almost at once received as true, and has since been treated as the great discovery of the age.

Compensation for the use of land being, in his view, paid for the command of certain "original and indestructible powers of the soil," it tends to increase in its proportions, as, with the growth of population and of wealth, there arises a necessity for resorting to soils of "constantly diminishing fertility," yielding a less and less return to labor-the power of nature over man steadily increasing, and he becoming more and more her slave, and that of his fellow-men. Starting, thus, from a point directly the opposite of that from which we have started, it affords no cause for surprise, that we find him arriving at a distribution directly the reverse of that above submitted for consideration; and equally opposed to all the facts presented by the history of the rise and progress of rent, for all the centuries since the days of Charlemagne. His doctrines, in their simplest form, are contained in the following propositions :

First That, at the commencement of cultivation, population

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