The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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A.D. 1776 —1830. were most demoral- 38g 766 LAISSEZ FAIRE incentive to immorality’. But the most patent evils arose from the fact that this scheme tended to render the inefficient pauper comfortable, at the expense of the good workman who really tried bard to earn his own living. The whole system must have had the effect of diminishing the rates of wages’, and forcing men to depend upon assistance in one form or an- other from the rates. It was essential, if the rural population were to be rescued from dull acceptance of a miserable de- pendence?, that the system should be fundamentally changed. In probing the existing evils, and devising possible remedies, several of the economic experts of the day did excellent service. Under any circumstances it would have been difficult to transform the system, but the task was rendered specially hard, since there were so many persons who had come to be directly interested in the maintenance of abuses and were opposed to any reform‘ Some interesting L Aschrott, The English Poor Law System, p. 80. } “The practice of paying the wages of manufacturers out of the rates is strongly illustrated in the case of Collurmpton, at a short distance from Tiverton, where the weaving of serge and cloth is carried on by two manufacturers...one of ‘hese manufacturers however receives at present regular annual payments from the parishes in the neighbourhood to employ their paupers, the sums paid being less than the cost of their support by the parishes...the first effect of such s measure was to increase the number of persons unemployed at Collumpton and consequently to reduce wages” (Reports, ete. 1834, xxvii. 43). This was not » solitary case. “A manufactory worked by paupers is a rival with which one paying ordinary wages of course cannot compete, and in this way a Macclesfield manufacturer may find himself under-sold and ruined in consequence of mal- administration of the Poor Laws in Essex.” Ib. 43. Similar evidence comes from Leicestershire. * From the practice of parish officers, where trade is perhaps suffering under temporary depression, soliciting work for the number of men on heir hands from the various manufacturers (at any price), and making up the remainder necessary for the support of their families out of the poor rate, good irade becomes in a great measure annihilated. Stocks become too abundant, and when a demand revives the markets are not cleared before a check is again experienced, the same practice is renewed by the parish officers, and thus the wily manufacturer produces his goods, to the great emolument of himself, half at the cost of the agricultural interest.” Ib. 43. 8 See above, p. 720. + There was no end to the ramifications of the mischief in these pauperised parishes; many of the workhouses, which had once existed, had fallen into decay; and there was a great deal of perfectly safe business to be done in providing for the requirements of the paupers and obtaining payment from the parish. ‘The owner of cottage property,” said Mr Nassau Senior, “found in the parish a liberal and solvent tenant, and the petty shop-keeper and publican attended the Vestry to vote allowances to his customers and debtors. The rental of a pauperised parish was, like the revenue of the Sultan of Turkey, a prey of which every administrator aoped to get a share.” (Edinburgh Review, Vol. LXXIV. p. 23.)

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