" THE FACTORY SYSTEM " AND " OUR SOCIAL CONDITION."
THERE appears to be a real revival of trade : factories are again working, and not merely to augment accumulated stocks, or press goods down into glutted markets, but they are working to order. Wages too rise—the most important and advantageous sign of all. We breathe again : " the crisis has passed! " Ay, but how soon to return ? The harvest is abundant; foreign countries are not in a paroxysm of exclusive dealing ; ".distress" is mitigated abroad as well as at home. But the causes which produced the late seven years' fit of commercial difficulty, if it is really over, are still ex- tant, though for the time less active. If diminished, a vast"amount
of pauperism remains. Ireland, with its yearly display of nearly two millions and a half of paupers, is unaltered in its condition ; and it therefore continues to be a drain on the general resources and a depositary of destitution. In England, during the crisis, the num- ber of paupers was not far short of a million and a half: how much less is the number now ? In Scotland, pauperism is obscure, but abundant. Altogether, we have usually an army of some three millions or so of paupers kept up, to be swelled by additional levies to four millions or more at the next crisis. During the last " distress," there were too many mills to work : the trouble is over, and already, say some of the provincial papers, more new mills are in process of erection in the neighbourhood of Manchester ! Already! People must be found to work in those mills. Well, they are bred fast enough in the agricultural districts ; and so, at the next crisis, there will be more mills to throw " out of gear," more goods to stuff the markets and prolong the glut, more people to be thrown out of work—more distress and more paupers. " Vogue la galere " Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. What matter, as it is profitable now, if it be disastrous by and by ? The process is quite according to rule ; for competition does it, and competition is the stimulus of industry, and industry the source of all our great- ness. Ariel the sprite could put a girdle round the globe in forty minutes ; and there are single firms who could weave that same girdle in excellent long-cloth, at so much per yard, in—we forget how short a time.
Lancashire can make cloth without limit; and in doing so it in- creases the risks of gluts, of " distress," of pauperism, of starva- tion-riots, and social disorganization. Never mind ; it is no part of the system of competition to consider these things. It is, however, part of the study of the man who desires peace and the welfare of his kind. Is the system of competition, he will ask, so very admira- ble? Its immediate effect seems to be to produce a vast number of useful things ; the next, to call into existence, or at least to crowd together, a vast number of beings to produce those useful things : but as there are not the people to use all the things pro- duced, the crowded artiaans are at times left without food. They find themselves in the midst of incalculable heaps of cotton-shirting, prints, best common knives and forks, nails, adzes, hats, snuffers and snuffer-trays, and other most excellent articles, so good, and so cheap, and so plentiful, that it is a marvel : but where is the bread? Mere Free-traders make light of the difficulty : they say, that if the Corn-laws be repealed there will be an exchange for this hard- ware and these piece-goods. But then, more factories would be built—they have begun already ; and more hard-ware and piece- goods would be produced. Can the naked African, and the naked new Russian, and other naked husbandmen, learn to grow corn so fast as Lancashire and Yorkshire can make more of their wares ? It is no part of the manufacturer to consider the question. It is only his business to know whether he can make a profitable invest- ment—whether, by any combination of capital and men, (he calls men and women by the abstract term " labour,") he can realize so much per cent ; and he will never ask whether it might not be advisable to check and control that stimulating influence of com- petition.
Meanwhile, we have recurrent periods of popular pauperism and gluts—the pauperism of capital. Those are two great facts staring one in the face. Repeal of the Corn-laws might bring relief—very likely ; but would it impose limits on the working of the causes of evil ? Some have gone further, and proposed altogether to aban- don the competitive system to which those causes belong. In England, Omni and others have suggested community of property. In France, FOURIER has propounded the less impracticable-looking scheme combination of property and labour with the maintenance of existing individual rights. Both sects, however, have overlooked the necessity of fitting communities reared through generations to one system for adopting its opposite. They might as well advise the inhabitants of the two hemispheres to " move " next Christmas, and exchange habitations, countries, customs, laws, religions, and habits of mind. Waiving all other difficulties, men must be taught no longer by falsehood to be traitors to each other, no longer by anger enemies, before they can make common home. The process may be easier than is generally supposed, but is it even begun ? And perhaps when the time comes for making all the world a congeries of domestic circles, mature wisdom may show the necessity of pro- ceeding in a manner very different from that devised either by Mr. OWEN or even M. FOURIER.
But because we cannot make a short cut to the social millen- nium, English or French, are all ameliorations and palliatives to be neglected ? Surely not. The very mooting of such questions as those discussed by the Socialists and Fourierists helps to fami- liarize the topic : the two monstrous facts, increasing pauperism and increasing means of over-production, rivet attention ; and in writing, in debate, in conversation, it is well to keep in view first principles, whose neglect visits us with these evils, and desirable ends, which, though not of immediate attainment, yet, like the inaccessible star in heaven, are a guide. It has been, in considerations of the sort, almost the unqualified habit of the Eng- lish mind to encourage industry exclusively—nothing but industry. Ue have the fruits—industry, nothing but industry—not even its wages or its profit—not even its subsistence. Some begin, in one way and another, to doubt that policy. It is a wholesome scepti- cism, worth further search. If the English people were not such hard workers—not so " industrious "—this over-production would not have been. Perhaps if in times not of crisis and destitution, the English people were taught other things besides industry,— frugal habits, to obtain more enjoyment out of their resources, instead of merely acquiring more money—the enjoyment of leisure, instead of working for ever till they have made more than can be sold,—perhaps then a salutary counterpoise to com- petition might be found. Other antagonist influences might be de- vised: there are many who begin to think of these things ; and in truth they cannot better employ their faculties. No sign of the times is more portentous, and more deserving of deep, honest, and diligent thought, than that perpetual alternation of more pau- perism and more factories, and again more pauperism. It is called "our increasing power and greatness" : it may be the manufacture of social revolution and national ruin.
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