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in England, stated that some years previously, when there was great distress in Cornwall, he had sent an agent to collect laborers, paying him so much for each man recruited, offering minimum wages until the men should become instructed in mining, one half the cost of transportation to be ultimately deducted from their wages. Mr. Palmer deemed that the enterprise had been very prosperous both in his own interest and in that of the laborers. The philanthropic endeavors of Canon Girdlestone in securing the removal of laborers from the crowded districts have also been alluded to. But whether such schemes are undertaken by government, by business enterprise, or by private charity, they are almost sure to be successful, if at all, in some lower degree than where the laborer is furnished with means of his own earning and saving, and undertakes his own removal. In strong contrast with the helpless condition of the agricultural laborers of the south and west, Prof. Rogers notes the independence of the laborers of Cumberland and Westmoreland, of whom it is reported that they "never allow themselves to be destitute of such a sum of money as will enable them to emigrate in case the ordinary rate of wages shows signs of yielding to the pressure for employment."1

On men thus provided, the casualties of production will work small permanent injury. Their reserves enable them to tide over any commercial disaster, and the return of prosperity finds their efficiency unimpaired. If, on the

1 Pol. Econ., pp. 101, 102. The savings-banks statistics bear out this assertion respecting the laboring classes of these counties. By the report of the Penrith Branch of the Carlisle Savings-Bank, it appears that the total amount due to 260 male farm servants was £9259 98. 5d.; to 240 female farm-servants, £7904. 88. 9d. Instances are given of £200, £300, or even £500 having been accumulated by a single person. (Second Report (1869) of the Commission of 1867 on the Employment of Children in Agriculture, p. 141.)

Sir Frederick Eden in his "History of the Poor" has preserved some remarkable instances of considerable accumulations out of earnings. (1. 495. 496, note.)

other hand, the steady decline of industry in their section, under any general or special cause, imposes on them the necessity of migration, they can go at the best time and in the best way. Thus we see that frugality on the part of the working classes goes far to supply that condition on which competition will secure to them absolutely the highest wages which the existing conditions of industry allow. "Wages," says Mr. Mill," are likely to be high where none are compelled by necessity to sell their labor."

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But while frugality is thus a condition of great importance in securing a beneficent distribution of the product of industry, we are compelled to acknowledge that the condition of the wage-laborer is not conducive to the development of this quality. We saw that he must, human nature being what it is, be somewhat less industrious than the person who works on his own account; he is also likely to be less frugal. Take the case of the "peasant proprietor" of land. Is there an hour of the day left, there is always something to be done; the land is ever crying out for labor. Has he a few shillings to spare at the end of the month, there is always something connected with the land which demands its investment. Whether it be work on the growing crop, or the ditching, fencing, and clearing of land, the increase of live stock and implements, or additions to stables and barns, the small farmer has always a good use to which to put every hour of labor and every shilling of money which he can command. After all, it is as Sismondi said: "The true savings-bank is the land."

With the wage-laborer the case is different. He can not reapply any portion of the product of his labor directly to the subject-matter of his labor, for that is not his. If he would put any portion of his wages to a re. productive use, he must seek out some borrower, and the amount he has to lend being small, this borrower must

1 Pol. Econ., i. 442.

? P. 74-7.

be the bank, which will lend the money out, he knows not when, he knows not where. This is a very coldblooded affair compared with the application of earnings to the land by the proprietor thereof, who works over it and lives upon it, who feels that it is all his, and shall be his children's after him. Neither the imagination nor the affections are addressed very powerfully by the savings-bank. There is, besides, some delay involved in a deposit, which, however slight, defeats many a good resolution and brings many a half-consecrated sixpence to the grocery or the bar-room.

I have named in the last word the great foe to frugality in the working classes. Wholly aside from the perversion of instincts, the loss of laboring power, and the actual vice and crime resulting from drunkenness, the waste of wealth shown by the statistics of the consumption of wine, beer, and liquors by the working-classes is appalling.

I had occasion in the preceding chapter to refer to the payment of beer and cider as a part of agricultural wages in England. The amount of money actually received and spent for these and stronger drinks is estimated, on respectable authority, as follows: 1869, £113,464,874; 1871, £118, 906,066; 1873, £140,014,712. The author of this computation proceeds to estimate the cost of the bread consumed annually by the people of England at £2 12s. 6d. per head ; the cost of tea, coffee, sugar, rice, and cocoa consumed, at £1. 108. 9d. per head: making altogether an average expenditure for these articles of £4. 78. 3d., against an expenditure of £4.78. 2d. for alcoholic drinks, on the basis of 1873. At this rate, six years' expenditure would amount to enough to pay the national debt, or to build a house worth £150 for every family in the kingdom. There may be some exaggeration in these estimates; and it is to be considered that the expenditure of the higher classes on this account is more than proportional; yet one can not set the cost of

'The Temperance Reformation and the Christian Church, pp. 112, 113

wines, ales, and liquors consumed by the wage-laboring classes of Great Britain lower than £100,000,000 per annum. Mr. G. R. Porter, in a paper read before the Statistical Society, adopted the estimate that one-half the income of workingmen earning between ten and fifteen shillings a week was spent by them on objects in which other members of the family had no share; while the proportion thus selfishly devoted by higher paid and presumedly more temperate artisans earning from twenty to thirty shillings, not infrequently reached one third.'

Yet, in spite of strong and urgent tendencies to dissipation and extravagance among the manual-labor classes, the statistics of the savings-banks show a steady growth of the principle of frugality, the total deposits in 1873 reaching $312,000,000. The deposits in savings-banks throughout all Europe,' exclusive of Russia and Turkey, are estimated, in a report of M. Normandie to the French National Assembly in 1875, at a total of $1,180,000,000.

'Statistical Journal, xiii. 364.

Mr. Baines states that nineteen-twentieths of the occupants of cottages in Leeds pay their rent weekly, and could not be trusted longer. (Statistical Journal, xxii. 136, 138.) The plan of Monday-morning payments has been widely urged as a simple, practical measure in aid of the laborer's instincts of frugality. French laborers find less difficulty in carrying their earnings past the cabaret.

Mr. Brassey relates that during the construction of the Paris and Rouen Railway, the Frenchmen employed were, at their own request, paid only once a month. (Work and Wages, p. 17.)

Mr. McCulloch in his Commercial Dictionary (p. 478) argues strenuously that the State should refuse to protect small debts, with a view to promote frugality on the part of the working-classes.

2 The fullest body of information relating to banks of saving is to be found in a recent report by Prof. Louis Bodio, the accomplished chief of the Italian Bureau of Statistics. "Casse di Risparmio in Italia, ed all'estero."

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* Russia, however, has her system of savings-banks, numbering sixty-two, with deposits to the amount of four and a half million roubles, in the name of seventy thousand depositors. In contrast with these facts, we find in little Switzerland not less than 353,855 depositors, or one in every seven of the population. In Denmark the proportion is one to eight and a half.

On the Continent of Europe the amount of deposits in savings-banks represents but a fraction of the accumulations of the working classes. The passion of the common people for acquiring land leads to the continuous application of circulating capital to the purchase of this species of property,' while the various classes of credit institutions facilitate the erection of workingmen's houses. If it be asked how the acquisition of real property by the working classes consists with the mobility of labor which is so much to be desired, I answer, one need have no fear that the true mobility of labor will be impaired at all by any form which the savings of the working classes may take; that the virtues which are required for the exercise of frugality, and which the exercise of frugality strengthens, afford the best security for all needed movement of labor at the right time and in the right way; and finally, that the individual acquisition of real property is never likely to become so general as not to leave a considerable portion of the members of every trade without ties to the soil.

It is quite another question how the extensive acquisition of public property by the Swiss communes affects the desired mobility of labor in that country. It would certainly appear at this distance to be inexpedient, as requiring an undue sacrifice on the part of individuals who the conditions of industry seem to invite to other localities.

The statistics of savings-banks in the United States are not to be used with much confidence, for the reason that onerous taxation has in several States driven large amounts of personal property, belonging to persons of means, under the protection of these institutions, which

'In the Canton of Berne, of 500,000 inhabitants, the real propertyholders numbered, in 1868, 88,670. (Report of Mr. Gould on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1871, p. 670.)

"The estimated value of the property held by the Swiss communes between the years 1863 and 1864, independently of the Cantons, may be put down at the large sum of 586,853,077 francs." (Ibid.)

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