farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant,
though they did not employ a single workman,
could generally live a year or two upon the
stocks, which they have already acquired.
Many workmen could not subsist a week, few
could subsist a month, and scarce any a year,
without employment. In the long run, the
workman may be as necessary to his master as
his master is to him; but the necessity is not
so immediate.
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the
combinations of masters, though frequently of
those of workmen. But whoever imagines,
upon this account, that masters rarely combine,
is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.
Masters are always and everywhere in
a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination,
not to raise the wages of labour above
their actual rate. To violate this combination
is everywhere a most unpopular action,
and a sort of reproach to a master among
his neighbors and equals. We seldom, indeed,
hear of this combination, because it is
the usual, and, one may say, the natural state
of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters,
too, sometimes enter into particular combinations
to sink the wages of labour even below
this rate. These are always conducted
with the utmost silence and secrecy till the
moment of execution; and when the workmen
yield, as they sometimes do without resistance,
though severely felt by them, they
are never heard of by other people. Such
combinations, however, are frequently resisted
by a contrary defensive combination of the
workmen, who sometimes, too, without any
provocation of this kind, combine, of their
own accord, to raise the price of their labour.
Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high
price of provisions, sometimes the great profit
which their masters make by their work. But
whether their combinations be offensive or defensive,
they are always abundantly heard of.
In order to bring the point to a speedy decision,
they have always recourse to the loudest
clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking
violence and outrage. They are desperate,
and act with the folly and extravagance of
desperate men, who must either starve, or
frighten their masters into an immediate compliance
with their demands. The masters,
upon these occasions, are just as clamorous
upon the other side, and never cease to call
aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate,
and the rigorous execution of those laws which
have been enacted with so much severity against
the combination of servants, labourers,
and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly,
very seldom derive any advantage from the
violence of those tumultuous combinations,
which, partly from the interposition of the
civil magistrate, partly from the superior steadiness
of the masters, partly from the necessity
which the greater part of the workmen are
under of submitting for the sake of present
subsistence, generally end in nothing but the
punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.
But though, in disputes with their workmen,
masters must generally have the advantage,
there is, however, a certain rate, below
which it seems impossible to reduce, for any
considerable time, the ordinary wages even of
the lowest species of labour.
A man must always live by his work, and
his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain
him. They must even upon most occasions
be somewhat more, otherwise it would
be impossible for him to bring up a family,
and the race of such workmen could not last
beyond the first generation. Mr. Cantillon
seems, upon this account, to suppose that the
lowest species of common labourers must
everywhere earn at least double their own
maintenance, in order that, one with another,
they may be enabled to bring up two children;
the labour of the wife, on account of
her necessary attendance on the children, being
supposed no more than sufficient to provide
for herself. But one half the children
born, it is computed, die before the age of
manhood. The poorest labourers, therefore,
according to this account, must, one with
another, attempt to rear at least four children,
in order that two may have an equal chance
of living to that age. But the necessary
maintenance of four children, it is supposed,
may be nearly equal to that of one man. The
labour of an able-bodied slave, the same
author adds, is computed to be worth double
his maintenance; and that of the meanest labourer,
he thinks, cannot be worth less than
that of an able-bodied slave. Thus far at
least seems certain, that, in order to bring up
a family, the labour of the husband and wife
together must, even in the lowest species of
common labour, be able to earn something
more than what in precisely necessary for their
own maintenance; but in what proportion,
whether in that above-mentioned, or in any
other, I shall not take upon me to determine.
There are certain circumstances, however,
which sometimes give the labourers an advantage,
and enable them to raise their wages
considerably above this rate, evidently the
lowest which is consistent with common humanity.
When in any country the demand for those
who live by wages, labourers, journeymen,
servants of every kind, is continually increasing;
when every year furnishes employment
for a greater number than had been employed
the year before, the workmen have no occasion
to combine in order to raise their wages.
The scarcity of hands occasions a competition
among masters, who bid against one another
in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily
break through the natural combination of master
not to raise wages.
The demand for those who live by wages,
it is evident, cannot increase but in proportion