CHAPTER V. QUALITY OF LABOUR.-INDIA.-FRANCE.-ENGLAND. THE UNITED STATES. In the following inquiry into the quality of labour in the several nations to which we have referred, we shall endeavour to state the quantity of commodities usually produced by a given amount of labour, and particularly the quantity of silver received as wages. In the prosecution of it our object will be to determine the average quality of the whole labour of the several countries, and not to ascertain that in which improvement is carried by individuals to the highest point. The average quality of labour applied to cultivation in the Lowlands of Scotland, is higher than that of England, yet in the latter horticulture is carried to a higher degree of perfection than in the former. The one excels in raising wheat, but the other excels in raising melons and pines. The quality of labour applied to the production of porcelain, in France, is higher than in England, yet the average quality of manufacturing labour is higher in England than in France. Laplace, and Remusat, and Cuvier, have not their equals in the United States, where the average education of the people is much higher than in France. Under the circumstances described as existing in INDIA, capital could not accumulate, and the aids to labour are consequently of the worst kind. The steam engine, with its wonderful productive power, has scarcely been introduced, and the manufacturers are unable, with their unassisted exertions, to compete with those of Europe or the United States. We cannot better show the limited extent to which labour is aided by capital, than by giving the following passage from Mr. Rickards's work.* "Of all the effects, too, resulting from this destructive system, there is none more obvious than its preventing the possibility of accumulating capital, through which alone can the agriculture of the country be improved. At present the stock of a Ryot consists of a plough, not capable of cutting deep furrows, and only intended to scratch the sur Vol. II. p. 196. face of the soil, with two or three pairs of half-starved oxen. This, a sickle used for a scythe, and a small spade or hoe for weeding, constitute almost his only implements for husbandry. Fagots of loose sticks, bound together, serve for a harrow. Carts are little used in a country where there are no roads, or none but bad ones. Corn, when reaped, is heaped in a careless pile in the open air, to wait the Ryot's leisure for threshing, which is performed, not by manual labour, but by the simple operation of cattle-treading it out of the ear. A Ryot has no barns for stacking or storing grain, which is preserved, when required, in jars of unbaked earth, or baskets made of twigs or grass. The cattle are mostly fed in the jungle, or common waste land adjoining his farm, and buffaloes, thus supported, generally supply him with milk. Horses are altogether disused in husbandry. The fields have no enclosures. Crops on the ground are guarded from the depredations of birds and wild beasts by watchmen, for whose security a temporary stage is erected, scarcely worth a shilling. Irrigation is performed by means of reservoirs, intended to retain the water periodically falling from the heavens, and of dams constructed or placed in convenient situations. In some places water is raised from wells, either by cattle or by hand. A rotation of crops on which so much stress is laid in Europe, is unknown in India. A course extending beyond the year, is never thought of by Indian Ryots. Different articles are often grown together in the same field, in which the object always is to obtain the utmost possible produce, without the least regard to the impoverishment of the soil. The dung of cattle is carefully collected for fuel, after being dried in the sun, and never used for manure. cake is used for manure in sugar cane plantations, and for some other articles; but corn-fields are generally left to their own natural fertility, and often worked to exhaustion without compunction. In some situations near the sea, decayed fish is used as a manure for rice-grounds ; but is seldom permitted where authority can be interposed, as the stench of it is intolerable. In a country like India, where the heat of the climate is great, the construction of tanks or wells, for the purpose of irrigation, is one of the most useful purposes to which agricultural capital can be applied. Wells and tanks are sometimes constructed or repaired by the labour or industry of the Ryots, but most commonly at the expense of government. It has been remarked that where Zemindars have been able to accumulate gains, they never apply them to the improvement of lands subject to public revenue. Where Zemindars have been known to construct works of the above description, they are merely designed to increase the fertility of lands held free. But generally speaking, so entire is the want of capital in India, as well in arts and manufactures as in agriculture, that every mechanic and artisan not only conducts the whole process of his arts, from the formation of his tools to the sale of his production, but, where hus Oil bandry is so simple a process, turns cultivator for the support of himself and family. He thus divides his time and labour, between the loom and the plough; thereby multiplying occupations fatal to the improvement of either. In this universal state of poverty, manufacturers always require advances of money to enable them to make up the article in demand; whilst Ryots have frequently been known, some. times for anticipated payments, and sometimes for their own expenses, to borrow money on the security of growing crops, at 3, 4, and 5 per cent. per mensem. No fact is perhaps better established in political economy than that industry cannot, in any of its branches, be promoted without capital. Capital is the result of saving from annual profits. Here there can be none. A dense, or rather redundant population occasions in India, as in Ireland, a competition for land; because in a nation of paupers, land is indispensable as a means of existence. It is therefore at times greedily sought for in India, notwithstanding the exorbitance of the revenue chargeable thereupon, for the same reason that small portions of land in Ireland are occupied under payment of exorbitant rents to landlords; and this extension of cultivation in India is often mistaken for an increase of prosperity, when, in fact, it is but the further spreading of pauperism and want. Hence the acquisition of capital in India, by the cultivators of the soil, is absolutely impossible. Either the revenue absorbs the whole produce of industry, except what is indispensable to preserve the workers of the hive from absolute starvation; or it is engrossed by a Zemindar, or farmer, who will not re-apply his gains to the improvement of lands within the tax gatherer's grasp. In this view of proceedings, cffects are presented to our notice deserving the most serious consideration. It is clear that, wherever the wants of government, real or imaginary, may call for increased supplies, recourse will be had to the "improvement," or extension of an impost already almost intolerable. It is in fact the only available recourse. Universal poverty leaves no other. Measures will therefore be multiplied for assessing wastes; for resuming rent-free lands; for invalidating former alienations; for disputing rights which had been allowed to lie dormant for half a century; for increasing the aggregate receipts from lands already taxed, or supposed to be taxed at 50 per cent. of the gross produce; in short, for the most harassing, and vexatious interference with private property, and the pursuits of private industry. Every improvement or extension of agriculture is thus sure to be followed, sooner or later, by the graspings of the tax gatherer. Industry, therefore, will be effectually checked, or only prosecuted where the demands of government may chance, through bribery, fraud, or concealment to be eluded. Or if the necessities of human life, or increased population, should occasion agriculture to be extended to waste lands, to be thereafter taxed at the 'just amount of the public dues,' what is it but the further spread of pauperism and wretchedness." The introduction of British capital has been prevented, and British subjects could only hold property clandestinely. They would not invest capital in a country from which, with or without offence, they were liable to be banished without notice.* The following statement from Col. Sykes, shows the manner in which labour is employed in agriculture, and shows also the relations between the capitalist and the labourer, in India, to be precisely the same as existed in England five hundred years since. At that time, wages were paid either in money, or in corn at 16d. per bushel, at the option of the employer. When the latter was abundant, and worth less than 16d. he paid in kind, but when it was scarce and high, he paid in money, with which the labourer could not purchase what was necessary for his subsistence. Whenever production is small, the capitalist has it in his power to take a large proportion, but as machinery is improved and production is increased, he takes a constantly decreasing one, leaving the labourer a constantly increasing proportion. "Labourers in India are seldom paid in money, except when grain is dear, a custom obviously injurious to the labourers. Wages in India are very low. When paid in money, three rupees, (rather less than six shillings,) is the usual monthly pay of a labourer in agriculture, without food, clothes, lodging, or other advantages. The cause of the low rate of wages of labourers in India, appears to be the small quantity of useful work they do. The author states, that when in the Poona collectorate, on the 16th of February, 1829, he overtook twelve or fourteen men and women with bundles of wheat in the straw on their heads. On inquiry, he found that they had been employed as labourers in pulling up a field of wheat. Their wages had been five sheaves for every hundred gathered: two or three of the men had got five sheaves each, the majority only four, and none of the women more than three. Five sheaves, they said, would yield about an imperial gallon of wheat, and would sell for about three pence half penny sterling." The quality of handicraft-labour may be judged from the fact that, while the lowest European carpenter can earn, in Calcutta, 6s. per day, and the Chinese 2s., the wages of Hindoo carpenters, at the same place, cannot be estimated above 6d.§ * The whole number of Europeans, in India, not connected with the Company, in 1828, was 2016.-Companion to Newspaper, Vol. I. p. 38. † See Vol. I. p. 61. Fifth Report of British Association, p. 118. § Martin's Colonies, Vol. I. p. 341. VOL. II.-17. The system of Metairie is supposed still to prevail over one half of FRANCE. It is thus described by M. Destutt Tracy:† * "When the soil is still more ungrateful, or when by the effect of different circumstances the small rural proprietors are rare, the great proprietors of land have not this resource of forming small farms; they would not be worth the trouble of working them, and there would be no body applying for them. They adopt then another plan: They form what are commonly called domains or half shares (metairies); and they frequently attach thereto as much or more land than is contained in the great farms, particularly if they do not disdain to take into ac count the waste lands, which commonly are not rare in these places, and which are not entirely without utility, since they are employed for pasture, and even now and then are sown with corn, to give rest to the fields more habitually cultivated. These metairies, as we have seen, are sufficiently large as to extent, and very small as to product; that is to say they require great pains and yield little profit. Accordingly, none can be found having funds who are willing to occupy them, and to bring to them domestics, moveables, teams, and herds. They will not incur such expenses to gain nothing. It is as much as these metairies would be worth, were they abandoned for nothing, without demand of any rent. The proprietor is himself then obliged to stock them with beasts, utensils, and every thing necessary for working them; and to establish thereon a family of peasants, who have nothing but their hands; and with whom he commonly agrees, instead of giving them wages, to yield them half of the product as a recompense for their pains. Thence they are called metayers, workers on half shares. "If the land is too bad, this half of the produce is manifestly insufficient to subsist, even miserably, the number of men necessary to work it. They quickly run in debt, and are necessarily turned away. Yet others are always found to replace them, because these are always wretched people, who know not what to do. Even those go elsewhere, often to experience the same fortune. I know some of these metairies which, in the memory of man, have never supported their labourers on the half of their fruits. If the metairie is somewhat better, the half sharers vegetate better or worse; and sometimes even make some small savings, but never enough to raise them to the state of real undertakers. However, in those times and cantons in which the country people are somewhat less miserable, we find in this class of men some individuals who have some small matter in advance; as for example, so much as will nourish them during a year in expectation of the first crop, and who prefer taking a metairie on lease, at a fixed rent, rather than to divide the produce of it. They hope by very hard labour to derive a little more profit from it. These are in general more active, * Jones on the Distribution of Wealth, p. 96. + Treatise on Political Economy, Chapter IV. p. 52. American edition. |