ners within the agricultural class, while there are but 122 dependents to 100 bread-winners within the manufactur ing class. Doubtless, some portion of this relative deficiency in the manufacturing class is due to the larger opportunity for the employment of children productively in mechanical industry; but doubtless, also, a considerable remainder testifies to the superior fecundity of the agricultural population, and the greater vitality of children bred in the country.

Such being the occasion for a frequent readjustment of population within the several occupations, arising from great irregularity of growth in both population and industry, how far is labor able to respond to such economical necessities?

Adam Smith's treatment of this subject constitutes one of the most extraordinary phenomena of economical literature. No man has dwelt more strongly than he on the difficulties which embarrass and delay the movement of laborers from place to place. It is his own phrase that man is "of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported." He saw in his own little island the wages of common, unskilled laborers ranging from eighteen pence to eight pence a day, while in the islands, just a bit smaller, to the west, he saw them lower by from twenty to forty per cent; he saw "a few miles distance," make a difference in the remuneration of the same sort of labor of "a fourth or a fifth part;" he knew that such differences had existed for generations without any adequate movement of labor, new causes continually creating divergence faster than population could close up the intervals; and he exclaimed that a difference of prices which proved insufficient to carry a man to the next parish would be enough to carry the most bulky commodities "from one end of the kingdom, almost from one end of the world, to the other."

1 Report, p. 42.

Yet the same philosopher, a few pages on, treats the differences which appear in the remuneration of the different occupations as either imaginary or else transient. It is thus he writes: "The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employinents of labor and stock must, in the same neighborhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighborhood there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it, in the one case, and so many would desert it, in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments. This, at least, would be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course."1

It would almost seem as though Dr. Smith deemed the obstacles which beset the movement of laborers from place to place, to be physical merely, and, since no physical difficulties stand in the way of a change of occupation by the laborer while remaining in the same place, he saw no important, no note-worthy, obstacles to the free movement of labor from employment to employment. But if the obstacles which beset migration were physical merely, man, instead of being "of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported," would, with his own consent, be the easiest to be transported. It is because the difficulties which beset migration are, after all, mainly moral, that the statement quoted above is true.

Economists writing since Adam Smith's time have generally followed his lead in regarding the obstacles which hinder the movement of laborers within the several branches of industry as of little or no account. Some exceptions appear, but as Prof. Cairnes remarks, it is commonly assumed in treatises of political economy that between occupations, as between localities, in the same

1 Wealth of Nations i, pp. 103-4.

country, the freedom of movement, for labor or for capital, is perfect. In 1874, however, that eminent economist brought forward his theory of "Non-Competing Groups in industry, a contribution of so much importance that I insert his statement substantially entire. The form of Prof. Cairnes' opening is due to the fact that he is replying to a "school of reasoners" of whom Mr. F. D. Longe was, we may assume, the individual most conspicuously in his view at the time, who hold the movement of labor as between occupations to be practically nil.

"Granted, that labor once engaged in a particular occupation is practically committed to that species of occupation, all labor is not thus engaged and committed. A young generation is constantly coming forward, whose capabilities may be regarded as still in disposable form. ... The young persons composing this body, or others interested in their welfare, are eagerly watching the prospects of industry in its several branches, and will not be slow to turn toward the pursuits that promise the largest rewards. . . . On the other hand, while fresh labor is coming on the scene, worn-out labor is passing off; and the departments of industry in which remuneration has from any cause fallen below the average level, ceasing to be recruited, the numbers of those employed in them will quickly decline, until supply is brought within the limits of demand, and remuneration is restored to its just proportions. In this way, then, in the case of labor as in that of capital, the conditions for an effective competition exist, notwithstanding the practical difficulties in the way of transferring labor, once trained to a particu lar occupation, to new pursuits. But as I have already intimated, the conditions are, in this case, realized only in an imperfect manner. . . Each individual laborer can only choose his employment within certain tolerably well-defined limits. These limits are the limits set by the qualifica

Some Leading Principles, etc., p. 362.

tions required for each branch of trade, and the amount of preparation necessary for their acquisition. Take an individual workman whose occupation is still undetermined, he will, according to circumstances, have a narrower or wider field of choice; but in no case will this be co-extensive with the entire range of domestic industry. If he belongs to the class of agricultural laborers, all forms of mere unskilled labor are open to him, but beyond this he is practically shut out from competition. The barrier is his social position and circumstances which render his education defective, while his means are too narrow to allow of his repairing the defect, or of deferring the return upon his industry, till he has qualified himself for a skilled occupation. Mounting a step higher in the industrial scale—to the artisan class, including with them the class of small dealers whose pecuniary position is much upon a par with artisans-here also within certain limits there is complete freedom of choice; but beyond a certain range, practical exclusion. The man who is brought up to be an ordinary carpenter, mason, or smith, may go to any of these callings, or a hundred more, according as his taste prompts, or the prospect of remuneration attracts him; but practically he has no power to compete in those higher departments of skilled labor for which a more elaborate education and larger training are necessary, for example, mechanical engineering. Ascend a step higher still, and we find ourselves again in the presence of similar limitations; we encounter persons competent to take part in any of the higher skilled industries, but practically excluded from the professions.

"It is true indeed that in none of these cases is the exclusion absolute. The limits imposed are not such as may not be overcome by extraordinary energy, self-denial and enterprise;' and by virtue of these qualities indi

1 "The founder of the cotton manufacture was a barber. The inventor of the power loom was a clergyman. A farmer devised the appli

viduals in all classes are escaping every day from the bounds of their original position and forcing their way into the ranks of those who stand above them. All this is no doubt true. But such exceptional phenomena do not affect the substantial truth of our position. What we find, in effect is, not a whole population competing indiscriminately for all occupations, but a series of industrial layers superimposed on one another, within each of which the various candidates for employment possess a real and effective power of selection, while those occupying the several strata are, for all purposes of effective competition, practically isolated from each other.1

The consequences economically of this practical isolation of large industrial groups, must, on the first statement, strike the mind of the reader as very important and far-reaching. If this isolation exists, then there is not a tendency, through the operation of economical causes alone, to the equalization primarily of wages throughout the several groups: and, derivatively, of the prices of the corresponding products of such groups. Prof. Cairnes does not flinch from carrying his theory to its proper consequences. Citing Mr. John S. Mill's law of International Values, he declares that this doctrine is manifestly appli

cation of the screw-propeller. A fancy-goods shopkeeper is one of the most enterprising experimentalists in agriculture. The most remarkable architectural design of our day has been furnished by a gardener. The first person who supplied London with water was a goldsmith. The first extensive maker of English roads was a blind man, bred to no trade. The father of English inland navigation was a duke, and his engineer was a millwright. The first great builder of iron bridges was a stone mason, and the greatest railway engineer commenced his life as a colliery engineer."-Hearn's Plutology, p. 279.

Some Leading Principles, etc., pp. 70-3.

"That doctrine may be thus briefly stated: International values are governed by the reciprocal demand of commercial countries for each other's productions, or more precisely, by the demand of each country for the productions of all other countries as against the demand of all other countries for what it produces... Whatever be the exchang