[ 92 ] The Great Transformation
ety of ways in which the sluggardliness of the local ratepayers, the in-
difference of the overseers of the poor, the callousness of the interests
centering on pauperism vitiated the working of the law. Still, by and
large, the nearly sixteen thousand Poor Law authorities of the country
managed to keep the social fabric of village life unbroken and un-
damaged.
Yet under a national system of labor, the local organization of un-
employment and poor relief was a patent anomaly. The greater the va-
riety of local provisions for the poor, the greater the danger to the well-
kept parish that it would be swamped by the professional pauper. After
the Restoration the Act of Settlement and Removal was passed to pro-
tect the "better" parishes from the influx of paupers. More than a
century later, Adam Smith inveighed against this act because it im-
mobilized the people, and thus prevented them from finding useful
employment as it prevented the capitalist from finding employees.
Only with the goodwill of the local magistrate and the parish authori-
ties could a man stay in any other but his home parish; everywhere else
he was liable to expulsion even though in good standing and em-
ployed. The legal status of the people was therefore that of freedom
and equality subject to incisive limitations. They were equal before the
law and free as to their persons. But they were not free to choose their
occupations or those of their children; they were not free to settle
where they pleased; and they were forced to labor. The two great Eliza-
bethan Statutes and the Act of Settlement together were a charter of
liberty to the common people as well as a seal of their disabilities.
The Industrial Revolution was well on the way, when in 1795, under
the pressure of the needs of industry, the Act of 1662 was partially re-
pealed, parish serfdom was abolished, and the physical mobility of the
laborer was restored. A labor market could now be established on a na-
tional scale. But in the very same year, as we know, a practice of Poor
Law administration was introduced which meant the reversal of the
Elizabethan principle of enforced labor. Speenhamland ensured the
"right to live"; grants in aid-of-wages were made general; family allow-
ances were superadded; and all this was to be given in outdoor relief,
i.e., without committing the recipient to the workhouse. Although the
scale of relief was exiguous, it was enough for bare subsistence. This
was a return to regulationism and paternalism with a vengeance just
as, it would seem, the steam engine was clamoring for freedom and the
machines were crying out for human hands. Yet the Speenhamland
Antecedents and Consequences [ 93 ]
Law coincided in time with the withdrawal of the Act of Settlement.
The contradiction was patent; the Act of Settlement was being re-
pealed because the Industrial Revolution demanded a national supply
of laborers who would offer to work for wages, while Speenhamland
proclaimed the principle that no man need fear to starve and that the
parish would keep him and his family, however little he earned. There
was stark contradiction between the two industrial policies; what else
but a social enormity could be expected from their simultaneous con-
tinued application?
But the generation of Speenhamland was unconscious of what was
on its way. On the eve of the greatest industrial revolution in history,
no signs and portents were forthcoming. Capitalism arrived unan-
nounced. No one had forecast the development of a machine industry;
it came as a complete surprise. For some time England had been actu-
ally expecting a permanent recession of foreign trade when the dam
burst, and the old world was swept away in one indomitable surge to-
ward a planetary economy.
However, not until the 1850s could anybody have said so with as-
surance. The key to the comprehension of the Speenhamland magis-
trates' recommendation lay in their ignorance of the wider implica-
tions of the development they were facing. In the retrospect it may
seem as if they had not only attempted the impossible but had done
so by means the inner contradictions of which should have been ap-
parent to them. Actually, they were successful in achieving their aim
of protecting the village against dislocation, while the effects of their
policy were all the more disastrous in other, unforeseen directions.
Speenhamland policy was the outcome of a definite phase in the devel-
opment of a market for labor power and should be understood in the
light of the views taken of that situation by those in the position to
shape policy. From this angle the allowance system will appear as a de-
vice contrived by squirearchy to meet a situation in which physical
mobility could no longer be denied to labor, while the squire wished
to avoid such unsettlement of local conditions, including higher
wages, as was involved in the acceptance of a free national labor
market.
The dynamic of Speenhamland was thus rooted in the circum-
stances of its origin. The rise in rural pauperism was the first symptom
of the impending upheaval. Yet nobody seemed to have thought so at
the time. The connection between rural poverty and the impact of
[ 94 ] The Great Transformation
world trade was anything but obvious. Contemporaries had no reason
to link the number of the village poor with the development of com-
merce in the Seven Seas. The inexplicable increase in the number of
the poor was almost generally put down to the method of Poor Law
administration, and not without some good cause. Actually, beneath
the surface, the ominous growth of rural pauperism was directly
linked with the trend of general economic history. But this connec-
tion was still hardly perceptible. Scores of writers probed into the
channels by which the poor trickled into the village, and the number
as well as the variety of reasons adduced for their appearance was
amazing. And yet only a few contemporary writers pointed to those
symptoms of the dislocation which we are used to connect with the In-
dustrial Revolution. Up to 1785 the English public was unaware of any
major change in economic life, except for a fitful increase of trade and
the growth of pauperism.
Where do the poor come from? was the question raised by a bevy
of pamphlets which grew thicker with the advancing century. The
causes of pauperism and the means of combating it could hardly be ex-
pected to be kept apart in a literature which was inspired by the con-
viction that if only the most apparent evils of pauperism could be
sufficiently alleviated it would cease to exist altogether. On one point
there appears to have been general agreement, namely, on the great va-
riety of causes that accounted for the fact of the increase. Among them
were scarcity of grain; too high agricultural wages, causing high food
prices; too low agricultural wages; too high urban wages; irregularity
of urban employment; disappearance of the yeomanry; ineptitude of
the urban worker for rural occupations; reluctance of the farmers to
pay higher wages; the landlords' fear that rents would have to be re-
duced if higher wages were paid; failure of the workhouse to compete
with machinery; want of domestic economy; incommodious habita-
tions; bigoted diets; drug habits. Some writers blamed a new type of
large sheep; others, horses which should be replaced by oxen; still oth-
ers urged the keeping of fewer dogs. Some writers believed that the
poor should eat less, or no, bread, while others thought that even feed-
ing on the "best bread should not be charged against them." Tea im-
paired the health of many poor, it was thought, while "home-brewed
beer" would restore it; those who felt most strongly on this score in-
sisted that tea was no better than the cheapest dram. Forty years later
Harriet Martineau still believed in preaching the advantages of drop-
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