Speenhamland, 1795 [ 83 ]
earners themselves, even though this meant depriving them of their
legal claim to subsistence. The "right to live" had proved a death trap
to them.
The paradox was merely apparent. Allegedly, Speenhamland
meant that the Poor Law was to be administered liberally—actually, it
was turned into the opposite of its original intent. Under Elizabethan
Law the poor were forced to work at whatever wages they could get and
only those who could obtain no work were entitled to relief; relief in
aid of wages was neither intended nor given. Under the Speenhamland
Law a man was relieved even if he was in employment, as long as his
wages amounted to less than the family income granted to him by the
scale. Hence, no laborer had any financial interest in satisfying his em-
ployer, his income being the same whatever wages he earned; this was
different only in case standard wages, i.e., the wages actually paid, ex-
ceeded the scale, an occurrence which was not the rule in the country-
side since the employer could obtain labor at almost any wages; how-
ever little he paid, the subsidy from the rates brought the workers'
income up to scale. Within a few years the productivity of labor began
to sink to that of pauper labor, thus providing an added reason for em-
ployers not to raise wages above the scale. For once the intensity of la-
bor, the care and efficiency with which it was performed, dropped be-
low a definite level, it became indistinguishable from "boondoggling"
or the semblance of work maintained for the sake of appearances.
Though in principle work was still enforced, in practice outdoor relief
became general and even when relief was administered in the poor-
house, the enforced occupation of the inmates now hardly deserved
the name of work. This amounted to the abandonment of Tudor legis-
lation not for the sake of less but of more paternalism. The extension
of outdoor relief, the introduction of aid-in-wages supplemented by
separate allowances for wife and children, each item rising and falling
with the bread price, meant a dramatic reentry in regard to labor of
that same regulative principle that was being rapidly eliminated in re-
gard to industrial life as a whole.
No measure was ever more universally popular.* Parents were free
of the care of their children, and children were no more dependent
upon parents; employers could reduce wages at will and laborers were
safe from hunger whether they were busy or slack; humanitarians ap-
* Meredith, H. O., Outlines of the Economic History of England, 1908.
[ 84 ] The Great Transformation
plauded the measure as an act of mercy even though not of justice, and
the selfish gladly consoled themselves with the thought that though it
was merciful at least it was not liberal; and even ratepayers were slow
to realize what would happen to the rates under a system which pro-
claimed the "right to live" whether a man earned a living wage or not.
In the long run the result was ghastly. Although it took some time
till the self-respect of the common man sank to the low point where he
preferred poor relief to wages, his wages which were subsidized from
public funds were bound eventually to be bottomless, and to force
him upon the rates. Little by little the people of the countryside were
pauperized; the adage "once on the rates, always on the rates" was a
true saying. But for the protracted effects of the allowance system, it
would be impossible to explain the human and social degradation of
early capitalism.
The Speenhamland episode revealed to the people of the leading
country of the century the true nature of the social adventure on
which they were embarking. Neither the rulers nor the ruled ever for-
got the lessons of that fool's paradise; if the Reform Bill of 1832 and the
Poor Law Amendment of 1834 were commonly regarded as the start-
ing point of modern capitalism, it was because they put an end to the
rule of the benevolent landlord and his allowance system. The attempt
to create a capitalistic order without a labor market had failed disas-
trously. The laws governing such an order had asserted themselves and
manifested their radical antagonism to the principle of paternalism.
The rigor of these laws had become apparent and their violation had
been cruelly visited upon those who had disobeyed them.
Under Speenhamland, society was rent by two opposing influ-
ences: the one emanating from paternalism and protecting labor from
the dangers of the market system; the other organizing the elements of
production, including land, under a market system, and thus divest-
ing the common people of their former status, compelling them to
gain a living by offering their labor for sale, while at the same time de-
priving their labor of its market value. A new class of employers was
being created, but no corresponding class of employees could consti-
tute itself. A new gigantic wave of enclosures was mobilizing the land
and producing a rural proletariat, while the "maladministration of
the Poor Law" precluded them from gaining a living by their labor. No
wonder that the contemporaries were appalled at the seeming contra-
diction of an almost miraculous increase in production accompanied
Speenhamland, 1795 [ 85 ]
by a near starvation of the masses. By 1834 there was a general convic-
tion—with many thinking people a passionately held conviction—
that anything was preferable to the continuance of Speenhamland.
Either machines had to be demolished, as the Luddites had tried to do,
or a regular labor market had to be created. Thus was mankind forced
into the paths of a Utopian experiment.
This is not the place to expatiate upon the economics of Speenham-
land; there will be occasion for that later on. On the face of it the "right
to live" should have stopped wage labor altogether. Standard wages
should have gradually dropped to zero, thus putting the actual wage
bill wholly on the parish, a procedure which would have made the ab-
surdity of the arrangement manifest. But this was an essentially pre-
capitalistic age, when the common people were still traditionally
minded, and far from being directed in their behavior by monetary
motives alone. The majority of the countryfolk, whether lifeholders
or simple laborers, preferred any kind of existence to the status of a
pauper, even if it was not deliberately burdened by irksome or igno-
minious disabilities, as subsequently happened. If laborers had been
free to combine for the furtherance of their interests, the allowance
system might, of course, have had a contrary effect on standard wages:
for trade union action would have been greatly helped by the relief of
the unemployed implied in so liberal an administration of the Poor
Law. It might be inferred that the paternalistic intervention of Speen-
hamland called forth the Anti-Combination Laws, a further interven-
tion, but for which Speenhamland might have had the effect of raising
wages instead of depressing them as it actually did. In conjunction
with the Anti-Combination Laws, which were not revoked for another
quarter century, Speenhamland led to the ironic result that the finan-
cially implemented "right to live" eventually ruined the people whom
it was ostensibly designed to succor.
To later generations nothing could have been more patent than the
mutual incompatibility of institutions like the wage system and the
"right to live," or, in other words, than the impossibility of a function-
ing capitalistic order as long as wages were from public funds. But the
contemporaries did not comprehend the order for which they were
preparing the way. Only when a grave deterioration of the productive
capacity of the masses resulted—a veritable national calamity which
was obstructing the progress of machine civilization—did the neces-
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