These failures were caused by over-production, -- that is, by an inadequate market, or the distress of the people.What a pity that machinery cannot also deliver capital from the oppression of consumers! What a misfortune that machines do not buy the fabrics which they weave! The ideal society will be reached when commerce, agriculture, and manufactures can proceed without a man upon earth!
In a Yorkshire parish for nine months the operatives have been working but two days a week.
Machines!
At Geston two factories valued at sixty thousand pounds sterling have been sold for twenty-six thousand.They produced more than they could sell.
Machines!
In 1841 the number of children under thirteen years of age engaged in manufactures diminishes, because children over thirteen take their place.
Machines! The adult workman becomes an apprentice, a child, again: this result was foreseen from the phase of the division of labor, during which we saw the quality of the workman degenerate in the ratio in which industry was perfected.
In his conclusion the journalist makes this reflection: "Since 1836
there has been a retrograde movement in the cotton industry"; -- that is, it no longer keeps up its relation with other industries: another result foreseen from the theory of the proportionality of values.
Today workmen's coalitions and strikes seem to have stopped throughout England, and the economists rightly rejoice over this return to order, - let us say even to common sense.But because laborers henceforth -- at least I cherish the hope -- will not add the misery of their voluntary periods of idleness to the misery which machines force upon them, does it follow that the situation is changed? And if there is no change in the situation, will not the future always be a deplorable copy of the past?
The economists love to rest their minds on pictures of public felicity:
it is by this sign principally that they are to be recognized, and that they estimate each other.Nevertheless there are not lacking among them, on the other hand, moody and sickly imaginations, ever ready to offset accounts of growing prosperity with proofs of persistent poverty.
M.Theodore Fix thus summed up the general situation in December, 1844:
The food supply of nations is no longer exposed to those terrible disturbances caused by scarcities and famines, so frequent up to the beginning of the nineteenth century.The variety of agricultural growths and improvements has abolished this double scourge almost absolutely.The total wheat crop in France in 1791 was estimated at about 133,000,000 bushels, which gave, after deducting seed, 2.855 bushels to each inhabitant.In 1840 the same crop was estimated at 198,590,000 bushels, or 2.860 bushels to each individual, the area of cultivated surface being almost the same as before the Revolution....
The rate of increase of manufactured goods has been at least as high as that of food products; and we are justified in saying that the mass of textile fabrics has more than doubled and perhaps tripled within fifty years.The perfecting of technical processes has led to this result....
Since the beginning of the century the average duration of life has increased by two or three years, -- an undeniable sign of greater comfort, or, if you will, a diminution of poverty.
Within twenty years the amount of indirect revenue, without any burdensome change in legislation, has risen from $40,000,000 francs to 720,000,000, -- a symptom of economic, much more than of fiscal, progress.
On January 1, 1844, the deposit and consignment office owed the savings banks 351,500,000 francs, and Paris figured in this sum for 105,000,000.
Nevertheless the development of the institution has taken place almost wholly within twelve years, and it should be noticed that the 351,500,000
francs now due to the savings banks do not constitute the entire mass of economies effected, since at a given time the capital accumulated is disposed of otherwise....In 1843, out of 320,000 workmen and 80,000 house-servants living in the capital, 90,000 workmen have deposited in the savings banks 2,547,000 francs, and 34,000 house-servants 1,268,000 francs.
All these facts are entirely true, and the inference to be drawn from them in favor of machines is of the exactest, -- namely, that they have indeed given a powerful impetus to the general welfare.But the facts with which we shall supplement them are no less authentic, and the inference to be drawn from these against machines will be no less accurate, -- to wit, that they are a continual cause of pauperism.I appeal to the figures of M.Fix himself.
Out of 320,000 workmen and 80,000 house-servants residing in Paris, there are 230,000 of the former and 46,000 of the latter -- a total of 276,000 -- who do not deposit in the savings banks.No one would dare pretend that these are 276,000 spendthrifts and ne'er-do-weels who expose themselves to misery voluntarily.Now, as among the very ones who make the savings there are to be found poor and inferior persons for whom the savings bank is but a respite from debauchery and misery, we may conclude that, out of all the individuals living by their labor, nearly three-fourths either are imprudent, lazy, and depraved, since they do not deposit in the savings banks, or are too poor to lay up anything.There is no other alternative.
But common sense, to say nothing of charity, permits no wholesale accusation of the laboring class: it is necessary, therefore, to throw the blame back upon our economic system.How is it that M.Fix did not see that his figures accused themselves?
They hope that, in time, all, or almost all, laborers will deposit in the savings banks.Without awaiting the testimony of the future, we may test the foundations of this hope immediately.
