economy on the part of the really able men of business. It does no man good to have much odds given him; and the inertness of labor has always a mischievous effect even upon the best of the employing class. So far as the increasing demands of the laborer are due to his greater vigilance, activity, and social ambition, we may be pretty sure that these demands will be responded to fully by the entrepreneur. Whether we consider business on its side of enterprise, or on its side of economy, we shall find that it does the manager no harm to be sharply followed up. Where large margins are afforded, there is likely to be much waste; and, on the other hand, no man does his best except when his best is required. "It was an axiom of the late Mr. John Kennedy, who was called the father of the cotton manufacture, that no manufacturing improvements were ever made except on threadbare profits." Mr. Babbage, in his Economy of Manufactures,' has shown that inventions and improvements in the mechanical arts have sometimes been healthfully stimulated by the goadings of industrial distress; and Mr. Chadwick has given an interesting exposition of the manner in which the increasing pressure of competition has served to promote the commercial ventures which have successively widened the market for British manufactures. But surely we need no "modern instances" to establish a principle so old and familiar. The weighty words of Gibbon: "the spirit of monopolists is barren, lazy, and oppressive," apply to all production in just the degree in which competition is defeated or deferred, whether by the force of law, or by the ignorance and inertness of the laboring classes.

Perhaps as good an illustration as could be given of the effects of increased competition in winnowing the employing class of its least efficient members, and stimulating

1 P. 294.

⚫ Statistical Journal, xxviii. 3–5.

the enterprise and the economy of those who survive the process, is afforded by the course of English agriculture since the repeal of the Corn Laws, a measure which the landed interest believed at the time would be absolutely fatal, and which, indeed, would have ruined that interest but for the saving virtue of the forces here invoked. Yet English agriculture never stood on a better foundation than to-day: the gains of the farmer probably were never larger through an equal term of years. The reason is that the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the opening of English markets to the bread-stuffs of the world, put the agricultural interest on its mettle; the farmers found that they must abandon the old clumsy and wasteful ways; break up the old clumsy and wasteful machinery; pay higher wages for better work; breed only from the choicest stock; make improvements in every process of cultivation, from selecting the seed to garnering the grain; find some chance for saving, every day, from harvest round to harvest again, and that, too, without pinching useful expenditures. These things the farmers of England had to do, and consequently did them. The less energetic and thrifty, one by one, dropped out of a contest so severe and unremitting; those who survived studied their business. as never before, scanned their expenses as inen do who have small margin for waste, brought the latest results of chemical and physiological science into their selection of crops and of breeding animals, made a business, and not a drinking bout, of the annual fair, set up agricultural clubs, compared notes among themselves, and read Mr. Caird's letters in the Times.

But, thirdly, a rise of wages due to a quickened competition on the part of the wages class become more intelligent, frugal, and self-assertive, should it proceed so far, after exhausting the two resources already named, as to cut into the profits of the employing class, as a whole, would bring a partial compensation in the increased dig

nity and the heightened intellectual gratification attending the conduct of business and the control of labor, under such a condition. I have said, in a previous chapter, that the pride of directing great operations, and the sense of power in moving masses of men at will, could not, at present at least, be relied upon, primarily or principally, as furnishing the motive to production on the part of the employing class. And yet we know these do enter, in no inconsiderable degree, to make up the remuneration of the entrepreneur. It is true that but a small portion of the human race are much alive to these feelings, but it is also true that the men of the entrepreneur stamp are just those of all in the world to respond to such impulses.1

We have a very pleasant and instructive picture, by Mr. Gould in his report to the British government in 1872, of the relations existing between the employer and the laborer in Switzerland. No country has achieved industrial success under heavier disadvantages. No continental country has developed a higher order of business managers. The Swiss employers maintain themselves against a severe and unremitting competition only by the constant exercise of all the industrial virtues. But the Swiss laborers are politically and socially their equals. The employer has no feeling of degradation in the contact: the laborer no feeling of inferiority. Perfect democracy and universal education have cast out all notions of that sort as between free Switzers. Hence the employers of labor of every class, even such as are wealthy, are found in general among their men, not to be distinguished from

"As, even when relieved from the pressure of necessity, the large-brained Europeans voluntarily enter on enterprises or activities which the savage could not keep up, even to satisfy urgent wants; so their larger brained descendants will, in a still higher degree, find their gratification in careers entailing still greater mental expendi. tures."-H. Spencer, Principles of Biology, II. 520.

them in appearance, and taking hold freely with them at any part of the work, as occasion serves.1

I cannot but believe that, as the working classes advance in individual and mutual intelligence, and push their employers closer with a more searching and vital competition, more and more will the reward of the employer come to consist of the zest of intellectual activity, the joys of creative energy, the honor of directing affairs, and the social distinctions of mastership.

For after all, it must be remembered that the employment of labor is an occupation, as truly as is manual labor itself; and that the body of employers must continue to employ labor, or find other ways and means to live. To assume that employers generally are going to leave business on account of a reduction of profits, would be more sensible if it were shown that they would also leave the world on that account. Not a little of the reasoning in books as to what employers will do, or capitalists will do, or laborers will do, if something happens which they cannot be expected to like, practically assumes that men have a choice whether they will be born into this world or not; and that, once in it, if they are not satisfied, they have at hand one or more eligible spheres into which they can pass, easily and gracefully, with a perfect assurance of welcome; and that indeed they will be quite likely to do so, unless treated with distinguished consideration here.

1 Mr. Gould's Report, p. 346. Mr. Bonar reported in 1870: “In enumerating the highly favorable circumstances in which the Swiss working man is placed, prominence must be given to the immense extension of the principle of democracy, which, whatever may be its defects and dangers from a political point of view, when pushed to extremes, serves in Switzerland, in its economical effects, to advance the cause of the operative, by removing the barriers dividing class from class, and to establish among all grades the bonds of mutual sympathy and good will."-Report, p. 271. Coxe, in his travels in Switzerland during the last century, notes the frank, courteous assumption of absolute equality on the part of the Swiss peasantry.(Pinkerton, V. 657).

Whereas, the most of us, in this world, do, not what we would like, but what we must, or the best we can; and I entertain no manner of doubt that long after profits should be forced down, if that were to happen, below what might be deemed an equitable rate, the superior men of every country, the men of thought, of prudence, and of natural command, would be found directing and animating the movements of industry.