*. as abnormal and demoralizing. The public welfare, therefore, in so far as it was supposed to enable individuals or classes to exercise power or utilize the means of gratifying varied wants, had a very limited meaning, since only the classes who already had economic power and independence were included.

But even in this limited sense, the influence of government in promoting the public-spirited utilization of the new inventions was largely frustrated by forces tending in the direction of an organization of the new system of manufacturing and economic life on the basis of private initiative and private profit-making little restrained by the action of the government. Prominent among the

prevailing forces were the discrediting of the government during a crucial period of the transition by the failure of George III and his ministers in dealing with foreign and colonial affairs and domestic reforms; the acuteness of party and factional conflicts, which focused attention on political issues and maneuvers; inability or unwillingness to adapt the old system of public control of industry to the rapidly changing conditions; and the acceptance by the younger Pitt and his followers of laissez-faire doctrines, in respect to the traditional restraints that had been imposed by the government upon the merchant, the landlord, and the manufacturer. It is important to remember, in connection with the general question of the control of industry as related to working-class welfare, that neither Pitt's government nor any later government for many decades adopted the policy of laissez-faire in respect to the removal of restraints on the working classes. It was Pitt himself, aided largely by the philanthropist Wilberforce (whose mental reactions afford an interesting illustration of upper-class thinking in relation to other groups), who, instead of removing existing restrictions as in the case of employers, set about the forging of new governmental fetters for the

workers in the form of the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800.4

Thus it came about that the government was no longer an effective agency in the control of industry; and, in so far as it retained regulatory functions, these were almost without exception conceived in the spirit of upperclass philosophy, and were intended to restrain the workers but not the owners of lands and ships and factories. It is apparent, therefore, that the laboring classes could not depend on the government, the chief existing agency of social control, but must work out their own salvation. The original question, as to why there was no advance in working-class well-being corresponding to the unparalleled increase in the productivity of labor, assumes the form, therefore, Why did the laboring classes fail to work out their own salvation? Why were they able neither to check the devastating individualism of their employers, nor to put in the place of the abdicated government of the time, so far as the control of industry on their behalf was concerned, an effective influence of their own?

2. The reservoirs of the new industrial labor

The most important phase of the answer to this question is to be found in a study of the sources of industrial labor. The new groups of industrial workers were composed of laborers recruited from the older industries and from the farms of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. “A good many [came] from the agricultural parts,” said an observer who began his career as a textile employee in 1780; "a many from Wales; a many from Ireland and from Scotland. People left other occupations and came

“The contrast in the policies of the government as here suggested is discussed more fully in Hammond, Town Laborer, particularly in chs. 7, 10.

" 5

to spinning for the sake of the high wages. I recollect shoemakers leaving their employ and learning to spin; I recollect tailors; I recollect colliers; but a great many more husbandmen left their employ to learn to spin.” 5 This account by a Bolton cotton spinner is true in a remarkably literal way of the sources of working-class population in most of the newly developing industrial centers. The process by which the cotton, iron, pottery, and more progressive woollen centers tapped these labor reservoirs has already been described. Our present purpose is to examine the reservoirs themselves to discover if possible whether the sources of industrial labor were pure or polluted.

Perhaps the most important question in this connection concerns the income of the workers who furnished recruits for the new industries. As for the farm workers, those in England seem on the whole to have been much better paid than the Irish, the Welsh mountaineers, or the Scotch Highlanders. Arthur Young, who probably was better informed on the subject of English farm wages than any other person, wrote that "the average price of (agricultural] labor in England twenty years ago, when I made my tours [1767-1770), was 7s. 6d. a week, or 1s. 3d. a day.” He was of the opinion, in 1793, that very little change had taken place in nominal wages—a judgment with which thorough students of the subject concur. Young's point of view held at the time his observations were made should not be overlooked in connection with his wage calculations. His belief, repeatedly expressed with characteristic vigor, was to the effect that the workers were generally receiving an income larger than was necessary to support themselves with frugality appropriate to their station in life, and that their wages should be kept as low as possible. A “reasonable” wage

Factories Inquiry Commission, Suppl. Rep. (1834), Pt. I, 169. • See above, p. 95, ff.

he considered much lower than the above estimate of average wages. The scale prevailing about Witney, for instance, in 1767, which he deemed "very reasonable," ranged from 8d. to 10d. a day, during most of the year, with slight additional pay during the busiest season. Young seems to have been in general an honest and dependable if somewhat superficial observer; but his belief that existing wages were too high would naturally incline him to emphasize and criticize the upward rather than the downward variations in making his calculations. In other words, it seems reasonable to assume that the level of wages was not higher than the estimate made by him.?

The bare statement of a wage in terms of money means little without an interpretation in the light of living costs and conditions. The majority of farm workers had in fact been semi-independent producers. The wageearner's income had consisted of several elements in addition to money wages. He could cultivate a plot or strip of ground; he could keep a cow and perhaps a pig and poultry on the common pasture; he could secure fuel in the form of wood from the waste or turf from the common; he could increase his food resources by the gleanings of his wife and children after harvest; and by means of domestic industries, he could even add to his money income. Furthermore, his employer frequently made grants of food and drink, especially during harvest, and sold him wheat and other commodities in small quantities at relatively low prices. There was of course no sudden or universal obliteration of such rights and customs. Thus in Hertfordshire, in 1795, laborers who were employed regularly by the same master were ordinarily allowed 7s. and small beer, and during “the haying month," 9s. and ale. In Staffordshire, wages ran from 1s. to ls. 6d. a day with beer, and in the summer, ls. with meat and drink and "the draft or carriage of a load of coals.” In Devonshire, "wages are one shilling a day, and a quart of cider. In harvest, the wages [are] much the same, with as much cider as they choose to drink." In Huntingdonshire, during harvest, the day laborers were allowed beer "in times of carrying”; and regular workers could grow their own potatoes.8

Supplementary items in the laborer's income had given his money wage a meaning radically different from what it acquired during the second half of the eighteenth century. With the progress of enclosures, of large-scale farming, and of more highly commercialized marketing of farm products, he became increasingly dependent upon his money wage.

The old customs of granting food, drink, and minor articles, and of selling wheat and other commodities directly to the laborer, were disrupted by large-scale, commercialized farming and marketing. "The sources of the market which used to feed him are in a great measure cut off since the system of large farms has been so much