Speenhamland, 1795 [ 89 ]
universe; but how was this new reality, society, to be translated into
terms of everyday life? As guides to practice the moral principles of
harmony and conflict were strained to the utmost, and forced into a
pattern of all but complete contradiction. Harmony was inherent in
economy, it was said, the interests of the individual and the commu-
nity being ultimately identical—but such harmonious self-regulation
required that the individual should respect economic law even if it
happened to destroy him. Conflict, also, seemed inherent in economy,
whether as competition of individuals or as struggle of classes—but
such conflict, again, might turn out to be only the vehicle of a deeper
harmony immanent in present, or perhaps future, society.
Pauperism, political economy, and the discovery of society were
closely interwoven. Pauperism fixed attention on the incomprehensi-
ble fact that poverty seemed to go with plenty. Yet this was only the
first of the baffling paradoxes with which industrial society was to con-
front modern man. He had entered his new abode through the door of
economics, and this adventitious circumstance invested the age with
its materialist aura. To Ricardo and Malthus nothing seemed more
real than material goods. The laws of the market meant for them the
limit of human possibilities. Godwin believed in unlimited possibili-
ties and hence had to deny the laws of the market. That human possi-
bilities were limited, not by the laws of the market, but by those of soci-
ety itself was a recognition reserved to Owen who alone discerned
behind the veil of market economy the emergent reality: society. How-
ever, his vision was lost again for a century.
Meanwhile, it was in relation to the problem of poverty that people
began to explore the meaning of life in a complex society. The intro-
duction of political economy into the realm of the universal happened
under two opposite perspectives, that of progress and perfectibility on
the one hand, determinism and damnation on the other; its transla-
tion into practice also was achieved in two opposite ways, through the
principle of harmony and self-regulation on the one hand, competi-
tion and conflict on the other. Economic liberalism and the class con-
cept were preformed in these contradictions. With the finality of an el-
emental event, a new set of ideas entered our consciousness.
C H A P T E R E I G H T
Antecedents and Consequences
T
he Speenhamland system was originally no more than a make-
shift. Yet few institutions have shaped the fate of a whole civiliza-
tion more decisively than this, although it had to be discarded before
the new era could begin. It was the typical product of a time of transi-
tion and deserves the attention of any student of human affairs today.
Under the mercantile system the labor organization of England
rested on the Poor Law and the Statute of Artificers. Poor law, as ap-
plied to the laws of 1536 to 1601, is admittedly a misnomer; actually
these laws, and subsequent amendments, formed half of the labor
code of England; the other half consisted of the Statute of Artificers of
1563. The latter dealt with the employed; the Poor Law, with what we
would call the unemployed and unemployable (apart from the aged
and children). To these measures were added later, as we saw, the Act
of Settlement of 1662 concerning the legal abode of the people which
restricted their mobility to the utmost. (The neat distinction between
employed, unemployed, and unemployable is, of course, anachronis-
tic since it implies the existence of a modern wage system which was
absent for another 250 years or so; we use these terms for the sake of
simplicity in this very broad presentation.)
Labor organization, according to the Statute of Artificers, rested
on three pillars: enforcement of labor, seven years' apprenticeship, and
yearly wage assessment by public officials. The law—this should be
emphasized—applied to agricultural laborers as much as to artisans
and was enforced in rural districts as well as in towns. For about eighty
years the Statute was strictly executed; later the apprenticeship clauses
fell partly into desuetude, being restricted to the traditional crafts; to
the new industries like cotton they simply did not apply; yearly wage
assessments based on the cost of living, also were in abeyance in a large
part of the country after the Restoration (1660). Formally, the wage
[ 9 0 ]
Antecedents and Consequences [ 91 ]
clause of the Statute was repealed only in 1813, the apprenticeship
clause in 1814. However, in many respects the apprenticeship rule sur-
vived the Statute; it is still the general practice in the skilled trades in
England. The enforcement of labor in the countryside was discon-
tinued little by little. Still it can be said that for the two and a half cen-
turies in question the Statute of Artificers laid down the outlines of a
national organization of labor based on the principles of regulation
and paternalism.
The Statute of Artificers was thus supplemented by the Poor Laws,
a most confusing term in modern ears, to which "poor" and "pauper"
sound much alike. Actually, the gentlemen of England judged all per-
sons poor who did not command an income sufficient to keep them in
leisure. "Poor" was thus practically synonymous with "common peo-
ple," and the common people comprised all but the landed classes
(hardly any successful merchant failed to acquire landed property).
Hence the term "poor" meant all people who were in need and all the
people, if and when they were in need. This, of course, included pau-
pers, but not them alone. The aged, the infirm, the orphans had to be
taken care of in a society which claimed that within its confines there
was a place for every Christian. But over and above, there were the
able-bodied poor, whom we would call the unemployed, on the as-
sumption that they could earn their living by manual work if only they
could find employment. Beggary was severely punished; vagrancy, in
case of repetition, was a capital offense. The Poor Law of 1601 decreed
that the able-bodied poor should be put to work so as to earn their
keep, which the parish was to supply; the burden of relief was squarely
put on the parish, which was empowered to raise the necessary sums
by local taxes or rates. These were to be levied upon all householders
and tenants, rich and nonrich alike, according to the rental of the land
or houses they occupied.
The Statute of Artificers and the Poor Law together provided what
might be called a Code of Labor. However, the Poor Law was adminis-
tered locally. Every parish—a tiny unit—had its own provisions for
setting the able-bodied to work; for maintaining a poorhouse; for ap-
prenticing orphans and destitute children; for caring for the aged and
the infirm; for the burial of paupers; and every parish had its own scale
of rates. This sounds grander than it sometimes was. Many parishes
had no poorhouses; a great many more had no reasonable provisions
for the useful occupation of the able-bodied; there was an endless vari-
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