day, or some other contrivance was adopted which was supposed to make idleness neither amusing nor profitable. Next there was the allowance system. By this plan, those in receipt of the average wages of the district received in addition from the parish so much on account of their children, or according to the price of bread. The idea was to raise wages to some supposed fair standard of comfort. By the roundsman system the occupiers of property were to employ applicants for relief at wages. fixed by the parish, the employer being paid out of the poor rate all he advanced beyond a certain sum. In one case recorded, a labourer received 2d. a day from his employer, and the rest from the parish. Sometimes the parish attempted directly the employment of labour. This was the principle of the act of Elizabeth, by which relief was to be given to none but the impotent except for work. But this mode of relief was practically the most unusual,1 and when adopted was open to grave abuses. In some parishes it was found that the paupers had the notion that it was their right to be paid at a higher rate than independent labourers, and the right was recognised. In one place, whilst by hard work the independent labourer could earn 128. a week, the pauper, for nominal work, obtained 168.2

Lastly, there was the labour rate system, by which people were bound to employ and pay so many labourers, according to their property, or some other scale of assessment, whether they required the labour or not.3 The general conclusion of the report is, that "Out-door relief to the able-bodied contains in itself the elements of an almost indefinite extension, of an extension, in short, which may ultimately absorb the whole fund out of which it arises. The shame of application is soon blunted and destroyed; there is no test of real necessity, and there is scope for

1 Report, p. 23.

2 Report, p. 25.

8 Out-door relief to the impotent, it was found, was subject to much less abuse, and may be passed over.

endless robbery." One case is quoted which has become a classical example. In Charlsbury, the expense of maintaining the poor became so great, that the land-owners gave up their rents, the farmers their tenancies, and the clergymen his glebe and tithes. The whole of the value of the land was swallowed up, and the rector advised that the land should be divided amongst the able-bodied paupers, and hoped that in two years, with the assistance of rates in aid from other parishes, the whole of the poor would be able and willing to support themselves, the aged and impotent excepted. In many other instances the poor rates had absorbed more than half of the rental, and were increasing rapidly.

But the effects of the system, even whilst funds were forthcoming, were the reverse of beneficial. Take first the case of the employers of labour.2 In agriculture, the farmers felt the evil at once and directly; for, as the labourer felt that his wages depended not on the value of his labour, but on the number of his children, he had no incentive to industry, and the tendency was for skill, honesty, diligence, and other good qualities to wear out, and their places to be taken by the opposite vices. The report states that the labourers became, not merely unfit for services, but positively hostile to the farmers. There was never a better example of the truth that cheap labour is dear labour. The employer lost far more in efficiency than he gained by the rates in aid of wages.

In the manufacturing industries the effects were different. The use of machinery made it possible to ensure the requisite efficiency by supervision, especially, as large numbers of children were employed, and payment was often by piece-work. In this case, then, a manufactory worked by paupers could turn out goods cheaper than its rivals, and the result was to injure independent employers;

1 Report, p. 40. The rates had risen, with a stationary population, from £10 in 1801 to £367 in 1832.

2 Report, pp. 42, 43.

and it is said that whole branches of manufactures followed the course not of commerce but of pauperism.1

But the severest sufferers were those for whose benefit the system was supposed to be introduced and perpetuated, namely, the labourers and their families.2 In the first place, those who were not relieved the independent labourers suffered by want of employment and reduction of wages. The paupers had the first claim, and if a man had made any savings he was often unable to obtain work. This, then, was the greatest encouragement to reckless extravagance and improvidence. Secondly, those who were relieved soon became hopelessly degraded. Although the independent labourers earned less, their mode of life was in every case "strikingly distinguishable" from that of the pauper. The degradation that actually followed from the out-door relief system was intensified and extended by the bastardy laws which, in the language of the report, were "pre-eminently unwise." The ostensible objects were to diminish the crime, and when it occurred, to indemnify the parish; but, both in their provisions and their administration, the laws were so curiously perverse, that the result was a high premium on unchastity, perjury, and extortion, and to quadruple the expense to the parish directly, and indirectly to augment it still more.3

As the immediate consequence of this Report, the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed (1834). This act dominates the fourth period, which is now apparently threatened with a speedy termination. "The act is avowedly based on the principle, that no one should be suffered to perish, through the want of what is necessary for sustaining life; but, at the same time, that if he be supported at the expense of the public, he must be content to receive such support on the terms deemed most consistent with the public welfare." 5 The objects aimed at may be

2 Report, pp. 54, 55.

1 Report, p. 49. 3 Report, pp. 99–107. For summary, see Nicholls, Vol. II., p. 289. 5 Nicholls, Vol. II., p. 286.

most appropriately described in the language of an orthodox economist, who was one of the principal framers of the measure: "First, to raise the labouring classes, that is to say, the bulk of the community from the idleness, improvidence, and degradation into which the maladministration of the laws for their relief has thrown them; and secondly, to immediately arrest the progress, and ultimately to diminish the amount of the pressure on the owners of lands and houses." Accordingly, the leading principles of the new law was to make the position of the pauper less eligible than that of the independent labourer. The best proof that these objects have been fairly realised is to be found in the fact, that the evils which the act was intended to remedy have been forgotten, and that an increase of expenditure on all kinds of out-door relief is now being strongly advocated. This also is my apology for the length of this section.

§ 8. Combinations. Adam Smith, in a well-known passage, has observed that, "masters are always and every

where in a sort of tacit but constant and uniform combination not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate."2 At the time he wrote, open combinations of masters were permitted, but combinations of workmen. were prohibited, and the penalties were soon after (1810) to be made more stringent. The prevention by law of labour combinations is of early origin, and Brentano's hypothesis, that combination is always the refuge of the weak against oppression, just as competition is the delight of the strong, is natural and suggestive, and receives from history abundant illustration, though not enough to establish an inductive proof. The outbreaks of slaves in antiquity, especially the great servile wars in the Roman provinces and the peasant revolts in the middle ages, as, for example, the rebellion of Wat Tyler in England (1381), and the Jacquerie in France (1358) are instances on a

1 Senior, who next to Malthus is the best abused of the old school. 2 Bk. I., Ch. VIII.

large scale of combinations of the weak against the strong. But the pregnant criticism of Rogers should be remembered: "The forces of society always make easy work of the outbreak, which despair sometimes instigates; the Jacquerie in France, the Peasants' War in Germany, were desperate efforts, ferocious reprisals but futile struggles."1 Labour combinations, however, which take the form of armies, are exceptional and can only arise under exceptional conditions; they may serve to illustrate a principle; but the light is too strong for application to the ordinary relation of employer and employed. But, in the strictest sense of the term, combinations of labourers were soon resorted to, and at once provoked the hostility of the legislature and its counsellors, the masters. Thus, in the reign of Edward VI. an act (1548) 2 recites, that labourers and artificers have made confederacies and sworn mutual oaths, not only not to meddle with one another's work, but also to appoint how much work they should do in a day, and what hours and times they shall work; and accordingly, such combinations are declared illegal, and penalties similar to those applied to sturdy rogues are imposed, ascending from a fine, by way of the pillory, to the loss of both ears and infamy, "his dispositions and oath not to be credited at all times afterwards." Down to 1824 combinations 3 were treated in the same spirit; it was not till the Trades Union Act of 1871 that the principles of the old legislation were abandoned, and some vestiges of their former operation remained till the Employers and Workmen Act of 1875.

As at present constituted, Trade Unions are "voluntary associations of workmen for mutual assistance and protection, and securing generally the most favourable conditions

1 Six Centuries, p. 271. See, however, Cunningham, Vol. I., p. 359, note, on the difference between the cases.

2 Nicholls, Vol. I., p. 137.

8 The History of the Combination Law is well treated by G. Howell: Conflicts of Labour and Capital, Ch. II.