ment, which at the time had been thought good and beneficial, yet these laws cannot be put in execution without great grief and burthen to the poor labourers and servants, chiefly because "the wages limited are too small and not answerable to this time, on account of the great advancement in prices." 1

Adam Smith points out, that the law, which obliges masters to pay their workmen in money and not in goods, was just and equitable. These "truck" acts may be traced far back,2 and at the present time their application is still more thorough and extensive. The act of 1831 is the basis of the modern English system. Truck (from the French troc) primarily signifies barter of commodities, but when used in connection with labour, refers to the payment, or part payment, of wages in goods. These goods may be (a) those actually produced by the labourer, or (b) those articles that are necessary, or supposed to be necessary, for his consumption. Both forms have been proved historically to be liable to great abuses. It is on record, to take an example of the first method, that the agricultural labourers of the cider-producing counties, in England, received from 20 to 50 per cent of their wages in cider. On the second plan, the workmen were compelled to spend their wages at stores conducted for the profit of the masters. The quality of goods was inferior, the prices were high, and the management was inconvenient to the purchasers. There was no need for advertising or for a large staff of attendants, and there were no bad debts, as the wages could be kept back. It is interesting to contrast these masters' stores with those managed on co-operative principles. In both we have

1 Nicholls, Vol. I., p. 157.

2 For examples previous to this century, see Leoni Levi, British Commerce, 1st ed., p. 180. There is an excellent examination of the truck system in Walker's Wages Question, Ch. XVIII. For a brief summary of the English Laws on the subject, see Smith's Mercantile Law, 10th ed., Vol. I., p. 525.

3 Mr. Spender, quoted by Walker, p. 327.

savings and economies, absence of credit and a certain amount of inconvenience, but in the latter the sum gained in this way goes to increase wages indirectly instead of profits directly.

It is to be observed, however, that in some cases truck may be advantageous, especially in agriculture, and the truck acts do not generally apply to that industry. The allowance of a certain amount of farm produce, or the right to keep a certain amount of stock, or to use so much land, may be worth to the labourer more than its money value. rents "1 were

The abuses connected with "frame analogous to those of the truck system. The workmen were obliged to hire these frames from the masters, and the rates charged (A.D. 1779) sometimes amounted to 86 per cent interest. The practice is first noticed in 1745, and in 1779 a bill was introduced for preventing the abuses connected with it, but it was thrown out. The Truck Act of 1831, although making it illegal for the employer to set off goods supplied to the labourers against his wages, makes no such prohibition of payments for frame rents and the like, and the stoppage of wages for frame rents was not abolished till 1874.

§ 6. The Factory Acts. The long series of acts (from 1802 to 1891) relative to the conditions of work in factories and workshops deserve special attention. The abuses which they were designed to remedy can only be adequately realised by a reference to the detailed accounts

1 For a detailed account, see Brentano, op. cit., p. 119; Walker, p. 333, where the reports of the Commission of 1844 and the Committee of 1855 are quoted. At the latter date, frames earned 24 per cent profit after paying all expenses and interest on the capital. The following passage is from the maiden speech of Lord Byron in the House of Lords (1812), in the debate on the frame-breakers' riots: "I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula; I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never under the most despotic of infidel governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return in the very heart of a Christian country."— Moore's Life of Byron, Vol. II., p. 126.

furnished by a mass of official reports. The lurid picture drawn by Marx 2 is in some respects exaggerated; all the masters were not utterly bad, and all the evils cannot be traced to the system of work. Wages were in many cases relatively high. At the same time, some of the evils were so great that exaggeration seems impossible.3

The accounts of the employment of children, especially the parish apprentices, are in many cases revolting; their hours were often as long as cruel punishments could exact; their labours were only limited by the necessity of obtaining a minimum of time for sleep and nourishment; their food was the food of pigs; the common decencies of life were ignored; diseases abounded, but none were considered ill if threats or blows could make them work; the very race became dwarfed and stunted; the system was in effect unmitigated slavery.1

As early as 1802, Sir Robert Peel 5 brought in and passed a bill to limit the hours of labour in woollen and cotton mills, and generally to regulate the conditions of labour

1 An excellent account — temperate and impartial — of the Factory System, by an able contemporary observer, is Artisans and Machinery, by Dr. Gaskell (1836). He gives examples of the contradictory nature of the evidence.

2 Capital, Parts III. and V. The picture of facts must be separated from the peculiar and, in my opinion, utterly erroneous theory of value given in Capital.

3 Compare the Reign of Law (Ch. VII.), by the Duke of Argyll, in general an ardent individualist. See also Cooke Taylor's Modern Factory System (Ch. VI.); von Plener's History of the Factory Legislation; Threading my Way, by R. D. Owen.

Compare, for details, the narrative of Robert Blencoe, quoted by Mr. Cooke Taylor, op. cit., p. 189. The apprentices actually stole the food of the pigs, until the pigs became too cunning for them; they sometimes worked sixteen hours on end without food or rest; girls suspected of running away had irons riveted on their ankles, reaching by long links and rings to their hips, and in these they were compelled to walk to and from the mill, and to sleep.

The son of "parsley" Peel and the father of the Free Trader. He was himself an excellent master, beloved by his work-people, and is described as being to cotton-printing what Arkwright was to cottonspinning.

of children. The working hours were not to exceed twelve, three hours were to be allowed for meals, instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic was to be provided, the rooms were to be washed and ventilated, and there were other beneficial provisions. The act, however, remained a dead letter, as no adequate means were adopted to see that the provisions were carried out. From similar causes the acts of 1819 and 1820, passed under the same auspices, also failed. It was not till 1832 that the legislation became effective under the leadership of Lord Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley) and Mr. Sadler.1 Since that time the principles adopted have been extended to all kinds of employments, and men and women as well as children have benefited by the legislative restriction of the "quantity of labour" involved in their work. At present, in the United Kingdom, there is hardly any industry that is not subject to special or general regulations in favour of the workers. Mines and bake-houses, shipping and agriculture, as much as factories in the popular sense of the term, have felt the power of the law. Compulsory and free education, with penalties on those who deprive children of their opportunities, may be regarded as the latest development of the ineffective clause in Peel's Act of 1802.

§ 7. The Poor Laws. An examination of the long series of English Poor Laws is, perhaps, the most instructive and interesting example of the application of the historical method to economic problems. One great advantage of that method is, that it is a substitute for experiment, and nearly every conceivable plan of dealing with the poor has been tried in England at different times. That the poor never cease out of the land, and that the destruction of the poor is their poverty, were commonplaces in the wisdom of the ancients, and are being re-discovered by the present, as by every previous, generation. From the nature of the case, the condition of the poor 1 Fielden's Curse of the Factory System appeared in 1836.

from age to age does not differ so much as that of the higher classes, so that the presumption is that, if a certain mode of treatment failed once, when fairly tried, it will always fail. The history of the English Poor Laws is, however, not merely a list of hap-hazard experiments, but is a remarkable instance of the growth and development of principles. All that I can attempt in the present section of this work is a re-statement of these principles, so far as they bear on the problems in hand, namely, the influence of legislation on the relations of employers and employed, and on the conditions of labour and the real reward for toil.1

The history of the English Poor Laws may be divided into four periods,2 according to the objects aimed at by the government. It may be observed, once for all, that in the development of any social institution,3 we must not expect that accentuation of principles which seems so natural a priori. The four periods are, no doubt, marked respectively with peculiar characteristics, but in the earlier periods we have later ideas present, though not predominant. From the earliest times, we find the poor divided into two great classes; namely, the poor in very deed, who, from various causes, were unable to earn a liveli hood, and the able-bodied "sturdy rogues and vagabonds," who preferred idleness, diversified with crime, to regular work. In the first period, up to the great act of Eliza

1 The literature of the subject is very extensive. The State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden (3 vols., 4to, 1797), is "the grand storehouse of information respecting the labouring classes of England."- McCulloch, Literature of Political Economy. The History of the English Poor Law, by Sir George Nicholls, 2 vols., 1854, is impartial and valuable, especially when compared with the same writer's histories of the Scotch and Irish Poor Laws. The History of Vagrants and Vagrancy, by C. R. Turner, is very full and interesting. Useful popular résumés are to be found in Fowle's Poor Law (English Citizen series: Macmillan) and Mackay's English Poor. Every one should read for himself the Poor Law Commissioners' First Report of 1834 (re-printed 1885).

2 Nicholls, Vol. I., p. 8.

8 Cf. Stubbs' Constitutional History, Preface.