The Sun.
London, England, 1846-05-28 00:00:00

THE TURN-OUT OF TRADES.

The labourer and the capitalist, in the most logical
sense, represent the same thing. The property of either
is identical ; and: the terms by which it is known, ac-
cording as it is possessed by the one or the other, are
convertible. What is capital, but the labour of yester-
day ? and what is labour, but the capital of to day ? It
is capital that pays for labour, and it is labour that gives
profit to capital. Of all worldly things, the labourer
should reverence capital, help to accumulate it,
and strain every nerve to increase its profits. Money is
capital, and capital is money. The labourers' wages are
thus paid by capital. The more capital there is in com-
parison to the supply of labour, the higher must wages
become—the greater the supply of labour in proportion
to capital, the less will labour be remunerated :
and, therefore, where there is less money than
there are men, money will be of the greater value,
and men of the lesser. Hence, in all poor countries
labour is cheap, and in rich countries dear. In Ireland,
where men are more abundant than money, wages fall
to 6d. ; in England, where there is more money than
men, they rise to 2s. 6d. ; in America, where there is
more land than ploughmen, they reach 4s. What unre
deemed blockheads, then, must those men be who, in
their stupid cant, think they serve the cause of the work-
ing men by emptying the vocabulary of Billingsgate
upon that class of the community by whose enterprise,
skill, and activity, wages are found for labour ; or who,
with tongue set in cheek, and knowing wink, endeavour,
in inflated bombast, to inflame ignorance to madness
against the only hand that can help it, at the bidding
of a Stanhope, the signal of the Morning Post, or the
bribe of Bentinck, or the foolometry of Bond-street.
If all capital were exhausted in wages, where would
there be employment for the next generation of la-
bourers ? To melt all profit down to wages is less an
injury to the employer, than a robbery of the industry
of our posterity, in order to pamper the labourers of
the existing generation. The sooner capital is ex.
hausted, the earlier must employment cease—the more
profit labour produces, the greater is the temptation to
embark capital in the extension of employment, and the
higher consequently must wages become. It is equally
evident that the higher profits and wages are, or, in
other words, the dearer the commodity is which is
produced, the less it will be bought, the demand will
fall off, and with it, of course, both wages and pro-
fits. It is a self-adjusting process, requiring neither
combinations amongst masters, nor strikes amongst
men. If wages encroach on profits, capital ceases
to employ labour, and wages fall—if profits encroach on
wages, more capital is tempted to embark in the trade,
the demand for labour increases, wages rise, and the
balance is re-adjusted. In the silk manufacture, which
is protected by a duty of 30 per cent., neither profits
nor wages are higher than in the cotton trade, which is
unprotected—the monopoly only tempted more capital
to compete with that already embarked, and induced
more weavers to eater the trade. Even the corn-laws
have done nothing for present profits in land. As rents
rose, capital sought investment in the soil, until three
per cent. has become the average profit of landholding.
Let us not be misunderstood. Our labours in the cause
of the repeal of the combination laws, are better
guarantees of our sympathy with the working classes,
than any mere hollow professions or empty asseve-
rations. As to the perfect moral and social
right of labour to strike for more wages, there
cannot be two opinions among sane men. The bakers
strike against the public for a rise in the price of bread
—the farmers at Mark-lane carry back their wheat, or
" hold" it, if the price does not suit, which is just a
turn-out against the millers for a rise in grain. The
tallow, or tea, or sugar merchants, refuse to sell, and
strike for a rise in the gains on their respective specula-
tions ; and the working man, a merchant of industry,
who takes his skill, his ten fingers, his labour to
market, instead of bread, or wheat, or tallow, or sugar,
is of course quite entitled to bring those home again if
the price does not please him, and strike for a rise in the
profits of labour, as other merchants turn out for
a rise in the profits of capital. But, as public
instructors and guardians of popular rights, bound
to do equal justice betwixt masters and men, and much
more, to protect the weak and peaceable against the
violent and the powerful, we must, once for all, declare
our inextinguishable detestation of all monopoly, whe-
ther of labour or of profit—of all tyranny or dictation,
whether of masters and men against et.ch other, or,
worse still, of men against men—of all invasions of the
perfect liberty of every subject of the State, whether
capitalist or operative, to " do what he likes with his
own." By effecting the repeal of all protective duties en
domestic production, the class of capitalists have mani-
fated a spirit of justice worthy of all imitation ;
and by the abrogation of all the privileges of mu-
nicipal corporations, and throwing open every
branch of trade, commerce, and manufacture, to
every subject of the realm, instead of confining their
pursuit exclusively to guild brethren and freemen of
chartered companies, the middle classes have done all
that was possible to recognise the commercial equalities
of citizenship. Can this be fairly said of the class of
operative artizans ? Have they thrown open their re-
spective crafts to the equal competition of their fellow-
countrymen ? Have they abandoned their pretensions
to a monopoly of labour ? We have seen notices posted
upon many factories, prohibiting any man from seeking
work from the master, without previous liberty from the
hands to do so. To say nothing of their dictation to-
wards the employer, what is this but a deprivation of
the right of their fellow workman to dispose of his
labour in competition with their own ? In nearly every
trade the journeymen pass stringent rules, to prohibit
masters from taking more than a certain limited number
of apprentices. But if agricultural labourers earn only
14d. a day, and the hatter, or carpenter, or bricklayer,
or tailor, can get ss. for the latter to say to the
former, " We shan't admit you into our trade, or permit
your sons to be taught as apprentices to it," is to commit
a double wrong, by preventing a'peasant from improving
it his own or children's condition, and by rendering
im-
practicable for, agriculture to relieve itself of that glut of
labour which reduces its wages below the means of sub-
sistence. We speak, as we have always spoken, without
either fear or favour. 'We have waged an exterminating
privileges
warfare with the exclusive
f of corporations,f
the tricks of trade, the iniquitiesorats. I
protectedt is
nowma nut amce-
tures, and the monopoly of lando c
that we should also remind those who have not yet
cleared their minds of the prejudices of the protective
system, and of the stupid crotchets and inflated nonsense
I of mouthing, itinerant patriots, that of all oppression the
most cruel, and of all dictation the most intolerable, is that
which is practised, not by the poor against the rich, but by
the poor against the oor. What right has one poor man to
say to another that s poorer, " You shall not bo suffered
to ask leave to work?" or one class to tell another, " You
shall not be permitted to learn the mysteries of our craft,
because we claim the privilege of keeping the employ-
ment it affords entirely to ourselves?" Bow shall those
denounce masters, who go from factory to factory, for-
cibly to prevent the hands from any longer following
their avocations ; march up the lines of railway to pro-
hibit labourers from earning their bread, under penalty
meet importatiQue Qf
of the meat dreadful imprecations,