The Sun.
London, England, 1850-11-21 00:00:00

All parsons begin to find that " money is very scarce."
indus-
trious, The failure first of the small, but prudent and
shopkeeper follows, then that of the great and
powerful merchant. Panic, confus.on,and ruin now
pervade the country, till . the Chancellor of the
Er-
ohequer sits down and writes a letrer authorizing the
Bank to increase the circulation of the country by an
issue of notes, and the panic is at an end.. The panic
is at an end, but years must elapse before the ruined
families, the demoralised operatives, the merchant re-
duced in the scale of society, and the farmer driven
from house and home, can be placed in their former
position.—(Hear, hear, and cheers.) Now all this
has been and will be again the Case. The manufac-
turers are now well off, but let gold be withdrawn
from the Bank, and its issues contracted, and ruin
must again overtake them. I do not know that.the
effects of a contraction of the currency can be ex..
plained in a more practical and impressive manner
than was done by Mr. Cobden, before the Parlia-
mentary Committee on banks of issue, in 1840. This
was his statement
I could adduce a fact derived from my own expe-
rience that would illustrate the heavy losses to which
manufacturers were exposed in their operations by those
fluctuations (in 1837) in the value of money.
"lam a calico printer; I purchase the cloth, which
is my raw material, in the market; and have usually in
warehouse three or four months' supply of material. I
must necessarily proceed in my operations, whatever
change there may be—whether a rise or a fall in the
market. I employ 600 hands, and those hands must be
employed. I have fixed machinery and capital, which
mast also be kept going; and therefore, whatever the
prospect of a rise or fall iu prices may be, lam con-
stantly obliged to be purchasing the material, and con-
tracting for the material on which I operate. In 1837 I
lost by my stock In hand 20,0001., as compared with the.
stock-taking in 1835, 1836, and 1838; the average of
those three years, when compared with 1837, shows that
I lost 20,0001. by my business in 1837, and what I wish
to add is, that the whole of this loss arose from the de-
preciation in the value of my stock.
" My business was as prosperow; we stood as high
as printers as we did previously; our business since
that has been good, and there was no other cause for
the losses I then sustained, but the depreciation of the
value of the articles in warehouse in my hands. What
I wish particularly to show is, the defenceless condi-
tion in which we manufacturers are placed, and bow
completely we are at the mercy of these unnatural fluc-
tuations. Although I was aware that the losses were
corning, it was impossible I could do otherwise than
proceed onward—with the certainty of suffering a loss
on the stock; to stop the work of 600 hands, and to fail
to supply our customers would have been altogether
ruinous; that is a fact drawn from my own experience.
I wish to point to another example of a most striking
kind, showing the effect of these fluctuations on mer-
chants. I hold in my hand a list of 36 articles, which
were imported in 1837, by the hones of Butterworth and
Brookes, of Manchester, a house very well known; Mr.
Brookes, is now Borough-reeve of Manchester. Here is
a list of 36 articles imported in the year 1837, in the re-
gular way of business, and opposite to each article thsr is
the rate of loss upon it as itarrived, and as it was sold. The
average loss is 37} per cent. on those 36 articles, and
they were imported from Canton, Trieste, Bombay,
Bahia, Alexandria, Lima, and in fact all the interme-
diate places almost. This, I presume, is a fair guide, to
show the losses which other merchaats incurred on si-
milar articles."
It was probably the having suffered so severely
from the effects of a contracted currency that induced
Mr. Cobden to make such energetic and persevering
efforts for the repeal of the corn-laws, and thus Sir
Robert Peel's Bills were the cause of the agitation
which was directed against the protective duties en
the produce of the agriculturist. But having re-
garded the general effects of a contraction of the
currency, let us, to make it plainer, take a particular
case. A B produces in a year 10.000 articles, which
he sells at 5, each, his profit on them being, we will
say, ls. each, and his whole profit, therefore, 5001. a
year. Let the articles be reduced in price one-tenth,
that is, let his commodities be sold for 45.. 6d. each,
his profit then is reduced to 6d. on each article, and
his annual income to 2501. Now, he may be told
that the price of other things is reduced, as the farmer
is now told, and that therefore he is as well off as he
was before. Bat though he now gets for 4501. as
many articles of consumption as he before got for
5001., he loses 251/. by the sale of his productions ;
and he therefore gains 50/. by the reduction in price
and loses 2501. I say nothing about his taxes, rent,
and other fixed payments, which probably remain the
same, and are to be paid out of dimini-hed profits.
Now see how the effect of a reduction of prices acts
upon the farmer. I have here a table headed "Corn,
Taxation, and Rent," compiled by the writers at Bir-
mingham, who, under the signature of Gemini, have
long scientifically and disinterestedly laboured to dif-
fuse a knowledge of the question of the currency. By
this it appears that the taxes in 1815, the most expensive
year of the war, were 72,210,5121., and the average price
of wheat being 655. 7d. a quarter, the quantity of
corn necessary to pay the taxes was 22,020,994 quar-
ters, while the taxes in 1849 being 52,951,749/., and
the average price of wheat 445. 3d. a quarter, the
quantity necessary to pay the taxes would be
23,932,993 quarters, or more than in 1815. And
taking the rent of 200 acres of land at 30a. an acre,
as estimated in quarters of wheat in the year 1815, it
would take, at 655. 7d. a quarter, 91 quarters 4 bushels
to pay the rent, while for the same farm in 1849, with
wheat at 443. 3d. a quarter, it would require 135
quarters 4 bushels. With these facts before him can
any farmer doubt that the money laws affect him as
well as the laws about corn ?—(flear, hear.) But, I
say, that not only the farmer, 'but, every industrious
producer must be injuriously aff,:cted by this low
scale of prices. It is quite true that the manufac-
turing interest at present is comparatively prosperous,
for though the profits of the manufacturer are lower,
the wages of the skilled workman are not proportion-
ably reduced, and he gets the advantage of cheap
food. It frequently happens that after a period of
great depression in the manufacturing districts, the
number of skilled workmen being reduced and no
new hands having learned the trade, the supply of
skilled labour when trade revives being limited, a
high rate of wages is paid. But as the market be-
comes supplied with fresh labourers, if the profits
of the master remain small, it is impossible that
wages should continue high. With a contracted cir-
culating medium there must be a forced cheapness
of commodities, and labour toils in vain to overtake
this forced cheapness. For let the producer work
harder and make twice as many things, still, if the
quantity of money be not increased the price must
suffer a further decline, and though he works harder
he gets no more profit. in this way the producer
is forced, by competition between man and his fellow-
man, to give more of the produce of his industry for the
same monied price, and by this forced cheapness
the labourer is ground down to the point of starva-
tion. I have read with much interest the excellent
articles which have appeared in the Morning Chronicle,
under the head of " Labour and the Poor," of which
it may truly be said, that they contain more import-
ant and authentic information on the condition of the
labouring classes of this country than all the Parlia-
mentary reports upon the subject which have ap-
peared. In a speech recently made at a meeting by
Mr. U. Mayhew, the writer of the letters on the state
of the metropolitan districts, after saying that " the
mania for cheapness" lay at the root of all the evils of
the system, he said that " there was now a general
desire prevalent to possess things at a cheap rate,
without regard to the manner in which they might
have been come by ;" and, after alluding to the
" scenes of misery and horror " at this moment in
existence, he declared that he had not yet arrived at
the remedy. Now Mr. Cobden, and those who act
with him, appear to think that the remedy is to be
found by getting the raw material cheap, by satisfying
cheap labour by means of cheap bread, and by sup-
plying the consumer with everything cheap. But
the people of this country can, I think, never prosper
under this system. For, however cheap the raw ma•
terial may be, and however cheap labour may be,
competition will overtake them both. More goods
must be supplied for the same money, and the result
will be that, without a sufficiency of the circulating
medium, the profits of the manufacturer will be kept
down to the lowest possible point, and the poor ope-
rative, who has nothing but his labour to sell, will
yearly become less able to exchange that labour for a
sufficiency of the necessaries of life.—(Hear, hear,
and cheers.) In this dreadful contest between capi-
tal and labour, which we have seen going on in this
country for the last thirty years, the great capitalist,
by laying in a large stock of the raw material in a
time of panic, at a ruinously low price, may obtain much
wealth, but the poor man must suffer most severely.
And this is the way in which a peaceable and indus-
trious population are transformed into Chartists and
Socialists. For, as Mr. Wolverley Attwood has elo-
quently said, " Human nature has but a limited
hapacity of endurance; there are bounds to the suffer-
ings which instinctive aubmission; and the hope of a
better
to bear
wiailslilprevail on the human frame and
mind
diaappaintelceth. These.. bounds passed, and
that hope a
tacit
lie spirt casts off. the habitual
restraints which
renders almost
itn an
.order of
things long established
amt uor
of
, and
.i
become at once opposed to the whol:sysstne
arrangement."—(Hear, hear.) What appears t"cla
the remedy for all this has been repeatedly pointed
out. out. It consists in the establishment of such a cur-
rency medium as may be capable of expansion with
the increase of population, and the increase of com-
modities produced by that population for sale. With
gold, at its market price, a safe and adequate cur-
rency might without difficulty be provided. An ob-
jection was recently made to my attributing to Mr.
John Taylor the plan for a national or taxation
money. I have not the pleasure of being acquainted
with Mr. Banister, the gentleman who makes this ob-
jection, but am happy to know that we have so able a
supporter of the cause, who has long studied the
question. In a pamphlet, published in 1847, he says,
still
i the writer's opinion for many years has .been, and
s, that the Government should issue' paper, and
which paper should be taken for taxation," &e. Mr.
Banister is not, I believe, acquainted with Mr. Jolla,