If not, then the population itself is enclosed. Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly protagonist of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol , was fond of the phrase surplus population , which he used to describe his neighbors. The term became popular in 1834, when English manufacturers proposed to the Poor Law Commissioners that they send the surplus population of the agricultural districts to the north, so that the manufacturers would absorb and use it up. This strategy, arising from enclosure, resulted in the abuses that created communism. Karl Marx, the political economist who was communism s chief theorist, and Charles Dickens were contemporaries.
Enclosure cheapens both life and labor.
Marx observed that, although the Americans has invented a stone-breaking machine for clearing boulders from agricultural land, the English did not make use of it because of the ready availability of cheap labor. In England, Marx wrote, women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labor required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation. By 1863, the massive emigration of factory workers to the frontiers of America had become Britain s saving stroke of luck, at least for the workers. Some 6 million, a quarter of England s population, left those shores in a span of 25 years. Wages in the old country soared.