COMBINATIONS AGAINST WAGES.
THE farmers of Hertfordshire have entered into a combination to „ beat down the prices of tradesmen for handicraft work done on, farms—carpentry, harness-making, cartwrights' work, &c. This. , is a dangerous step ; for it not only tends to set other classes against the. agricultural class, by the naked resort to retaliation, but its tendency is to aggravate that excessive beating clown, of prices whichis so questionable an:element in. our economical con- , dition.
Cheapness.is of two kinds, although economists. do not keep the.-; distinction sufficiently in view : one kind happens where, by in.- , genuity or_ the happy combination of circumstances—such .as good . seasons and peculiar aptitudes—the produce. is abundant in pro- portion to the.labour bestowed; the other is where, 'from somet; cause of unhealthiness in-the. labour-market, the labourer is,con, tent to take little in return for his work. In the- one. case, the re, -• turn is measured against the labour; in the other, against the la-. bourer. This is scarcity, though not "dearth" in the etymological sense. Much of our boasted cheapness is. of this false kind. The tailors who appealed to Parliament' through Lord Weide- , grave suffer from it. By the system of middlemen. they are cot.. erced to make a given number of. Army coats—a quantity de- , termined by military wants, not commercial motives—for less.- wages.; the sum subtracted from their wages being partly saved .; to the public expenditure, partly, going into the pockets of ther} contractor, and partly to the middleman. But inasmuch as the4 poor tailors are reduced to the verge of starvation; the real sub-. traction is from their consumption : all the less-that they consurae, is so much -subtraated from the general demand for produce, so that the whole transaction results in a net diminution of produce are) compared to population..
It is the same with the farmers' move against the tradesmen-,-itg tends to diminished production. Such are the. effects of competi tion carried beyond the point where it stimulates endeavour: to that where it purchases endeavour at less than an aliquot shareofri
produce, and makes the individual content with less than is neoes- eary to support him in a highly effective condition for producing, consuming, and living with energy. It tends,to Imtlassdisna.
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