The Principles of Political Economy
by John Stuart Mill

Book 2

Chapter 13

The Remedies for Low Wages Further Considered

    1. By what means, then, is poverty to be contended against?
How is the evil of low wages to be remedied? If the expedients
usually recommended for the purpose are not adapted to it, can no
others be thought of? Is the problem incapable of solution? Can
political economy do nothing, but only object to everything, and
demonstrate that nothing can be done?
    If this were so, political economy might have a needful, but
would have a melancholy, and a thankless task. If the bulk of the
human race are always to remain as at present, slaves to toil in
which they have no interest, and therefore feel no interest --
drudging from early morning till late at night for bare
necessaries, and with all the intellectual and moral deficiencies
which that implies -- without resources either in mind or
feelings -- untaught, for they cannot be better taught than fed;
selfish, for all their thoughts are required for themselves;
without interests or sentiments as citizens and members of
society, and with a sense of injustice rankling in their minds,
equally for what they have not, and for what others have; I know
not what there is which should make a person with any capacity of
reason, concern himself about the destinies of the human race.
There would be no wisdom for any one but in extracting from life,
with Epicurean indifference, as much personal satisfaction to
himself and those with whom he sympathies, as it can yield
without injury to any one, and letting the unmeaning bustle of
so-called civilized existence roll by unheeded. But there is no
ground for such a view of human affairs. Poverty, like most
social evils, exists because men follow their brute instincts
without due consideration. But society is possible, precisely
because man is not necessarily a brute. Civilization in every one
of its aspects is a struggle against the animal instincts. Over
some even of the strongest of them, it has shown itself capable
of acquiring abundant control. It has artificialized large
portions of mankind to such an extent, that of many of their most
natural inclinations they have scarcely a vestige or a
remembrance left. If it has not brought the instinct of
population under as much restraint as is needful, we must
remember that it has never seriously tried. What efforts it has
made, have mostly been in the contrary direction. Religion,
morality, and statesmanship have vied with one another in
incitements to marriage, and to the multiplication of the
species, so it be but in wedlock. Religion has not even yet
discontinued its encouragements. The Roman Catholic clergy (of
any other clergy it is unnecessary to speak, since no other have
any considerable influence over the poorer classes) everywhere
think it their duty to promote marriage, in order to prevent
fornication. There is still in many minds a strong religious
prejudice against the true doctrine. The rich, provided the
consequences do not touch themselves, think it impugns the wisdom
of Providence to suppose that misery can result from the
operation of a natural propensity.. the poor think that "God
never sends mouths but he sends meat." No one would guess from
the language of either, that man had any voice or choice in the
matter. So complete is the confusion of ideas on the whole
subject; owing in a great degree to the mystery in which it is
shrouded by a spurious delicacy, which prefer that right and
wrong should be mismeasured and confounded on one of the subjects
most momentous to human welfare, rather than that the subject be
freely spoken of and discussed. People are little aware of the
cost to mankind of this scrupulosity of speech. The diseases of
society can, no more than corporal maladies, he prevented or
cured without being spoken about in plain language. All
experience shows that the mass of mankind never judge of moral
questions for themselves, never see anything to be right or wrong
until they have been frequently told it; and who tells them that
they have any duties in the matter in question, while they keep
within matrimonial limits? Who meets with the smallest
condemnation, or rather, who does not meet with sympathy and
benevolence, for any amount of evil which he may have brought
upon himself and those dependent on him, by this species of
incontinence? While a man who is intemperate in drink, is
discountenanced and despised by all who profess to be moral
people, it is one of the chief grounds made use of in appeals to
the benevolent, that the applicant has a large family and is
unable to maintain them.(1*)
    One cannot wonder that silence on this great department of
human duty should produce unconsciousness of moral obligations,
when it produces oblivion of physical facts. That it is possible
to delay marriage, and to live in abstinence while unmarried,
most people are willing to, allow. but when persons are once
married, the idea, in this country, never seems to enter any
one's mind that having or not having a family, or the number of
which it shall consist, is amenable to their own control. One
would image that children were rained down upon married people,
direct from heaven, without their being art or part in the
matter; that it was really, as the common phrases have it, God's
will, and not their own, which decided the numbers of their
offspring. Let us see what is a Continental philosopher's opinion
on this point; a man among the most benevolent of his time, and
the happiness of whose married life has been celebrated.
    "Lorsque des prejuges dangereux," says Sismondi,(2*) "ne sont
point accredites, lorsqu'une morale contraire à nos vrais devoirs
envers les autres et surtout envers les creatures qui nous
doivent la vie, n'est point enseignee au nom de l'autorite la
plus sacree, aucun homme sage ne se marie avant de se trouver
dans une condition qui lui donne un moyen assure de vivre; aucun
père de famille n'a plus d'enfans qu'il n'en peut convenablement
elever. Ce dernier compte à bon droit que ses enfans devront se
contenter du sort dans lequel il a vecu; aussi doit-il desirer
que la generation naissante represente exactement celle qui s'en
va; qu'un fils et une fille arrives à l'âge nubile remplacent son
père et sa mère; que les enfans de ses enfans le remplacent à son
tour avec sa femme; que sa fille trouve dans une autre maison
precisement le sort qu'il donnera à la fille d'une autre maison
dans la sienne, et que le revenu qui suffisait aux pères suffise
aux enfans." In a count increasing in wealth, some increase of
numbers would be admissible, but that is a question of detail,
not of principle. "Une fois que cette famille est formee, la
justice et l'humanite exigent qu'il s'impose la même contrainte à
laquelle se soumettent les celibataires. Lorsqu'on voit combien
est petit, en tout pays, le nombre des enfans naturels, on doit
reconnaître que cette contrainte est suffisamment efficace. Dans
un pays où la population ne peut pas s'accroître, ou du moins
dans lequel son progrès doit être si lent qu'il soit à peine
perceptible, quand il n'y a point de places nouvelles pour de
nouveaux etablissemens, un père qui a huit enfans doit compter,
ou que six de ses enfans mourront en bas âge, ou que trois de ses
contemporains et trois de ses contemporaines, et dans la
generation suivante, trois de ses fils et trois de ses filles, ne
se marieront pas à cause de lui."

    2. Those who think it hopeless that the labouring classes
should be induced to practise a sufficient degree of prudence in
regard to the increase of their families, because they have
hitherto stopt short of that point, show an inability to estimate
the ordinary principles of human action. Nothing more would
probably be necessary to secure that result, than an opinion
generally diffused that it was desirable. As a moral principle,
such an opinion has never yet existed in any country: it is
curious that it does not so exist in countries in which, from the
spontaneous operation of individual forethought, population is,
comparatively speaking, efficiently repressed. What is practised
as prudence is still not recognised as duty. the talkers and
writers are mostly on the other side, even in France, where a
sentimental horror of Malthus is almost as rife as in this
country. Many causes may be assigned, besides the modern date of
the doctrine, for its not having yet gained possession of the
general mind. Its truth has, in some respects, been its
detriment. One may be permitted to doubt whether, except among
the poor themselves (for whose prejudices on this subject there
is no difficulty in accounting) there has ever yet been, in any
class of society, a sincere and earnest desire that wages should
be high. There has been plenty of desire to keep down the
poor-rate; but, that done, people have been very willing that the
working classes should be ill off. Nearly all who are not
labourers themselves, are employers of labour, and are not sorry
to get the commodity cheap. It is a fact, that even Boards of
Guardians, who are supposed to be official apostles of
anti-population doctrines, will seldom hear patiently of anything
which they are pleased to designate as Malthusianism. Boards of
Guardians in rural districts, principally consist of farmers, and
farmers, it is well known, in general dislike even allotments, as
making the labourers "too independent." From the gentry, who are
in less immediate contact and collision of interest with the
labourers, better things might be expected, and the gentry of
England are usually charitable. But charitable people have human
infirmities, and would, very often, be secretly not a little
dissatisfied if no one needed their charity: it is from them one
oftenest hears the base doctrine, that God has decreed there
shall always be poor. When one adds to this, that nearly every
person who has had in him any active spring of exertion for a
social object, has had some favourite reform to effect which he
thought the admission of this great principle would throw into
the shade; has had corn laws to repeal, or taxation to reduce, or
small notes to issue, or the charter to carry, or the church to
revive or abolish, or the aristocracy to pull down, and looked
upon every one as an enemy who thought anything important except
his object; it is scarcely wonderful that since the population
doctrine was first promulgated, nine-tenths of the talk has
always been against it, and the remaining tenth only audible at
intervals; and that it has not yet penetrated far among those who
might be expected to be the least willing recipients of it, the
labourers themselves.
    But let us try to imagine what would happen if the idea
became general among the labouring class, that the competition of
too great numbers was the special cause of their poverty; so that
every labourer looked (with Sismondi) upon every other who had
more than the number of children which the circumstances of
society allowed to each, as doing him a wrong -- as filling up
the place which he was entitled to share. Any one who supposes
that this state of opinion would not have a great effect on
conduct, must be profoundly ignorant of human nature; can never
have considered how large a portion of the motives which induce
the generality of men to take care even of their own interest, is
derived from regard for opinion -- from the expectation of being
disliked or despised for not doing it. In the particular case in
question, it is not too much to say that over-indulgence is as
much caused by the stimulus of opinion as by the mere animal
propensity; since opinion universally, and especially among the
most uneducated classes, has connected ideas of spirit and power
with the strength of the instinct, and of inferiority with its
moderation or absence; a perversion of sentiment caused by its
being the means, and the stamp, of a dominion exercised over
other human being. The effect would be great of merely removing
this factitious stimulus; and when once opinion shall have turned
itself into an adverse direction, a revolution will soon take
place in this department of human conduct. We are often told that
the most thorough perception of the dependence of wages on
population will not influence the conduct of a labouring man,
because it is not the children he himself can have that will
produce any effect in generally depressing the labour market.
True: and it is also true, that one soldier's running away will
not lose the battle; accordingly it is not that consideration
which keeps each soldier in his rank: it is the disgrace which
naturally and inevitably attends on conduct by any one
individual, which if pursued by a majority, everybody can see
would be fatal. Men are seldom found to brave the general opinion
of their class, unless supported either by some principle higher
than regard for opinion, or by some strong body of opinion
elsewhere.
    It must be borne in mind also, that the opinion here in
question, as soon as it attained any prevalence, would have
powerful auxiliaries in the great majority of women. It is seldom
by the choice of the wife that families are too numerous; on her
devolves (along with all the physical suffering and at least a
full share of the privations) the whole of the intolerable
domestic drudgery resulting from the excess. To be relieved from
it would be hailed as a blessing by multitudes of women who now
never venture to urge such a claim, but who would urge it, if
supported by the moral feelings of the community. Among the
barbarisms which law and morals have not yet ceased to sanction,
the most disgusting surely is, that any human being should be
permitted to consider himself as having a right to the person of
another.
    If the opinion were once generally established among the
labouring class that their welfare required a due regulation of
the numbers of families, the respectable and well-conducted of
the body would conform to the prescription, and only those would
exempt themselves from it, who were in the habit of making light
of social obligations generally; and there would be then an
evident justification for converting the moral obligation against
bringing children into the world who are a burthen to the
community, into a legal one; just as in many other cases of the
progress of opinion, the law ends by enforcing against
recalcitrant minorities, obligations which to be useful must be
general, and which, from a sense of their utility, a large
majority have voluntarily consented to take upon themselves.
There would be no need, however, of legal sanctions, if women
were admitted, as on all other grounds they have the clearest
title to be, to the same rights of citizenship with men. Let them
cease to be confined by custom to one physical function as their
means of living and their source of influence, and they would
have for the first time an equal voice with men in what concerns
that function: and of all the improvements in reserve for mankind
which it is now possible to foresee, none might be expected to be
so fertile as this in almost every kind of moral and social
benefit.
    It remains to consider what chance there is that opinions and
feelings, grounded on the law of the dependence of wages on
population, will arise among the labouring classes; and by what
means such opinions and feelings can be called forth. Before
considering the grounds of hope on this subject, a hope which
many persons, no doubt, will be ready, without consideration, to
pronounce chimerical, I will remark, that unless a satisfactory
answer can be made to these two questions, the industrial system
prevailing in this country, and regarded by many writers as the
ne plus ultra of civilization -- the dependence of the whole
labouring class of the community on the wages of hired labour, is
irrevocably condemned. The question we are considering is,
whether, of this state of things, overpopulation and a degraded
condition of the labouring class are the inevitable consequence.
If a prudent regulation of population be not reconcilable with
the system of hired labour, the system is a nuisance, and the
grand object of economical statesmanship should be (by whatever
arrangements of property, and alterations in the modes of
applying industry), to bring the labouring people under the
influence of stronger and more obvious inducements to this kind
of prudence, than the relation of workmen and employers can
afford.
    But there exists no such incompatibility. The causes of
poverty are not so obvious at first sight to a population of
hired labourers, as they are to one of proprietors, or as they
would be to a socialist community. They are, however, in no way
mysterious. The dependence of wages on the number of the
competitors for employment, is so far from hard of comprehension,
or unintelligible to the labouring classes, that by great bodies
of them it is already recognised and habitually acted on. It is
familiar to all Trades Unions: every successful combination to
keep up wages, owes its success to contrivances for restricting
the number of the competitors; all skilled trades are anxious to
keep down their own numbers, and many impose, or endeavour to
impose, as a condition upon employers, that they shall not take
more than a prescribed number of apprentices. There is, of
course, a great difference between limiting their numbers by
excluding other people, and doing the same thing by a restraint
imposed on themselves: but the one as much as the other shows a
clear perception of the relation between their numbers and their
remuneration. The principle is understood in its application to
any one employment, but not to the general mass of employment.
For this there are several reasons: first, the operation of
causes is more easily and distinctly seen in the more
circumscribed field; secondly, skilled artizans are a more
intelligent class than, ordinary manual labourers: and the habit
of concert, and of passing in review their general condition as a
trade, keeps up a better understanding of their collective
interests: thirdly and lastly, they are the most provident,
because they are the best off, and have the most to preserve.
What, however, is clearly perceived and admitted in particular
instances, it cannot be hopeless to see understood and
acknowledged as a general truth. Its recognition, at least in
theory, seems a thing which must necessarily and immediately come
to pass, when the minds of the labouring classes become capable
of taking any rational view of their own aggregate condition. Of
this the great majority of them have until now been incapable,
either from the uncultivated state of their intelligence, or from
poverty, which leaving them neither the fear of worse, nor the
smallest hope of better, makes them careless of the consequences
of their actions, and without thought for the future.

    3. For the purpose therefore of altering the habits of the
labouring people, there is need of a twofold action, directed
simultaneously upon their intelligence and their poverty. An
effective national education of the children of the labouring
class, is the first thing needful: and, coincidently with this, a
system of measures which shall (as the Revolution did in France )
extinguish extreme poverty for one whole generation.
    This is not the place for discussing, even in the most
general manner, either the principles or the machinery of
national education. But it is to be hoped that opinion on the
subject is advancing, and that an education of mere words would
not now be deemed sufficient, slow as our progress is towards
providing anything better even for the classes to whom society
professes to give the very best education it can devise. Without
entering into disputable points, it may be asserted without
scruple, that the aim of all intellectual training for the mass
of the people, should be to cultivate common sense; to qualify
them for forming a sound practical judgment of the circumstances
by which they are surrounded. Whatever, in the intellectual
department, can be superadded to this, is chiefly ornamental;
while this is the indispensable groundwork on which education
must rest. Let this object be acknowledged and kept in view as
the thing to be first aimed at, and there will be little
difficulty in deciding either what to teach, or in what manner to
teach it.
    An education directed to diffuse good sense among the people,
with such knowledge as would qualify them to judge of the
tendencies of their actions, would be certain, even without any
direct inculcation, to raise up a public opinion by which
intemperance and improvidence of every kind would be held
discreditable, and the improvidence which overstocks the labour
market would be severely condemned, as an offence against the
common weal. But though the sufficiency of such a state of
opinion, supposing it formed, to keep the increase of population
within proper limits, cannot, I think, be doubted; yet, for the
formation of the opinion, it would not do to trust to education
alone. Education is not compatible with extreme poverty. It is
impossible effectually to teach an indigent population. And it is
difficult to make those feel the value of comfort who have never
enjoyed it, or those appreciate the wretchedness of a precarious
subsistence, who have been made reckless by always living from
hand to mouth. Individuals often struggle upwards into a
condition of ease; but the utmost that can be expected from a
whole people is to maintain themselves in it; and improvement in
the habits and requirements of the mass of unskilled
day-labourers will be difficult and tardy, unless means can be
contrived of raising the entire body to a state of tolerable
comfort, and maintaining them in it until a new generation grows
up.
    Towards effecting this object there are two resources
available, without wrong to any one, without any of the
liabilities of mischief attendant on voluntary or legal charity,
and not only without weakening, but on the contrary
strengthening, every incentive to industry, and every motive to
forethought.

    4. The first is, a great national measure of colonization. I
mean, a grant of public money, sufficient to remove at once, and
establish in the colonies, a considerable fraction of the
youthful agricultural population. By giving the preference, as
Mr. Wakefield proposes, to young couples, or when these cannot be
obtained, to families with children nearly grown up, the
expenditure would be made to go the farthest possible towards
accomplishing the end, while the colonies would be supplied with
the greatest amount of what is there in deficiency and here in
superfluity, present and prospective labour. It has been shown by
others, and the grounds of the opinion will be exhibited in a
subsequent part of the present work, that colonization on an
adequate scale might be so conducted as to cost the country
nothing, or nothing that would not be certainly repaid; and that
the funds required, even by way of advance, would not be drawn
from the capital employed in maintaining labour, but from that
surplus which cannot find employment at such profit as
constitutes an adequate remuneration for the abstinence of the
possessor, and which is therefore sent abroad for investment, or
wasted at home in reckless speculations. That portion of the
income of the country which is habitually ineffective for any
purpose of benefit to the labouring class, would bear any draught
which it could be necessary to make on it for the amount of
emigration which is here in view.
    The second resource would he, to devote all common land,
hereafter brought into cultivation, to raising a class of small
proprietors. It has long enough been the practice to take these
lands from public use for the mere purpose of adding to the
domains of the rich. It is time that what is left of them should
be retained as an estate sacred to the benefit of the poor. The
machinery for administering it already exists, having been
created by the General Inclosure Act. What I would propose
(though, I confess, with small hope of its being soon adopted)
is, that in all future cases in which common land is permitted to
be enclosed, such portion should first be sold or assigned as is
sufficient to compensate the owners of manorial or common rights,
and that the remainder should be divided into sections of five
acres or thereabouts, to be conferred in absolute property on
individuals of the labouring class who would reclaim and bring
them into cultivation by their own labour. The preference should
he given to such labourers, and there are many of them, as had
saved enough to maintain them until their first crop was got in,
or whose character was such as to induce some responsible person
to advance to them the requisite amount on their personal
security. The tools, the manure, and in some cases the
subsistence also might be supplied by the parish, or by the
state; interest for the advance, at the rate yielded by the
public funds, being laid on as a perpetual quit-rent, with power
to the peasant to redeem it at any time for a moderate number of
years' purchase. These little landed estates might, if it were
thought necessary, be made indivisible by law; though, if the
plan worked in the manner designed, I should not apprehend any
objectionable degree of subdivision. In case of intestacy, and in
default of amicable arrangement among the heirs, they might be
bought by government at their value, and recanted to some other
labourer who would give security for the price. The desire to
possess one of these small properties would probably become, as
on the Continent, an inducement to prudence and economy pervading
the whole labouring population; and that great desideratum among
a people of hired labourers would be provided, an intermediate
class between them and their employers; affording them the double
advantage, of an object for their hopes, and, as there would be
good reason to anticipate, an example for their imitation.
    It would, however, be of little avail that either or both of
these measures of relief should be adopted, unless on such a
scale, as would enable the whole body of hired labourers
remaining on the soil to obtain not merely employment, but a
large addition to the present wages -- such an addition as would
enable them to live and bring up their children in a degree of
comfort and independence to which they have hitherto been
strangers. When the object is to raise the permanent condition of
a people, small means do not merely produce small effects, they
produce no effect at all. Unless comfort can be made as habitual
to a whole generation as indigence is now, nothing is
accomplished; and feeble half-measures do but fritter away
resources, far better reserved until the improvement of public
opinion and of education shall raise up politicians who will not
think that merely because a scheme promises much, the part of
statesmanship is to have nothing to do with it.

    I have left the preceding paragraphs as they were written,
since they remain true in principle, though it is no longer
urgent to apply these specific recommendations to the present
state of this country. The extraordinary cheapening of the means
of transport, which is one of the great scientific achievements
of the age, and the knowledge which nearly all classes of the
people have now acquired, or are in the way of acquiring, of the
condition of the labour market in remote parts of the world, have
opened up a spontaneous emigration from these islands to the new
countries beyond the ocean, which does not tend to diminish, but
to increase; and which, without any national measure of
systematic colonization, may prove sufficient to effect a
material rise of wages in Great Britain, as it has already done
in Ireland, and to maintain that rise unimpaired for one or more
generations. Emigration, instead of an occasional vent, is
becoming a steady outlet for superfluous numbers; and this new
fact in modern history, together with the flush of prosperity
occasioned by free trade, have canted to this overcrowded country
a temporary breathing-time, capable of being employed in
accomplishing those moral and intellectual improvements in all
classes of the people, the very poorest included, which would
render improbable any relapse into the over-peopled state.
Whether this golden opportunity will be properly used, depends on
the wisdom of our councils; and whatever depends on that, is
always in a high degree precarious. The grounds of hope are, that
there has been no time in our history when mental progress has
depended so little on governments, and so much on the general
disposition of the people; none in which the spirit of
improvement has extended to so many branches of human affairs at
once, nor in which all kinds of suggestions tending to the public
good in every department, from the humblest physical to the
highest moral or intellectual, were heard with so little
prejudice, and had so good a chance of becoming known and being
fairly considered.

NOTES:

1. Little improvement can be expected in morality until the
producing large families is regarded with the same feelings as
drunkenness or any other physical excess. But while the
aristocracy and clergy are foremost to set the example of this
kind of incontinence, what can be expected from the poor?

2. Nouveaux Principes, liv, ch. 5.