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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EMIGRATION AND THE COLONIES 855 would be stimulated to greater exertions by the sense of 40,175 freedom ; but the West Indian negro, at all events, preferred ’ to be idle and poor’, rather than to exert himself even for comparatively high wages. The whole management of the estates was disorganised; and though the planters strove vigorously to manage their business on new lines, the effort was very severe and many of them were ruined in the attempt. When the hope of continued protection was with- The long drawn, and they were exposed to the competition® of the Sugar i slave-grown sugar on neighbouring islands, their condition dustry ho became desperate. Slave labour was less expensive than free els labour in this particular case, and the sugar growing in Cuba and Brazil received an immense stimulus; as & consequence the traffic from Africa, which we had done so much to put down, revived anew and eluded the efforts we made to check it. In more recent times the islands have also suffered from the State-aided production of beet-root sugar on the Continent; so that the emancipation of the slaves may be regarded as marking the beginning of the decline of that great sugar industry which was so highly prized in the eighteenth century. The question of the treatment of coloured races did not come into prominence in connection with Canada, partly because the Hudson’s Bay Company appears to have 1 On a corresponding condition in Ireland compare Ricardo, Letters to Malthus, 138, 139. The pleasure of pure idleness is seldom sufficiently recognised by modern economists in working out the calculus of measurable motives. It was perhaps overrated in the eighteenth century. « Mankind in general are naturally inclined to ease and indolence; and nothing but absolute necessity will enforce labour and industry. * * * Those who have closely attended to the disposition and conduct of a manufacturing populace have always found that to labour less, and not cheaper, has been the consequence of a low price of provisions.” Essay on Trade, pp. 15, 14. In spite of the operation of this principle the standard of comfort throughout the country generally seems to have risen during the eighteenth century. Arthur Young frequently calls attention to the increase of tea-drinking, and wheat-flour was again replacing rye (Farmer's Letters, 197 and 983; C. Smith, Three Tracts, 79). Another writer in 1777 treats butter as a new luxury among cottagers, Essay on Tea, Sugar, White Bread and Butter (Brit. Mus. 8275. aaa. 10). There is much interesting evidence as to the actual standard of living of the labourers in different counties in Davies, Case of Labourers (1795). See also J. W., Considerations (1767), for the estimated budget of a clerk on £50 a year. 2 8 and 9 Vict. c, 63. The preferential sugar duties were finally withdrawn in 1874.

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