The Condition of the Working Classes

We have already seen, in various preceding chapters, that the condition of the labourers deteriorated from the time of Elizabeth onwards, but in the middle of the eighteenth century it had been materially improved owing to the increase of wealth from the new agriculture and to the general growth of foreign trade. But then came the great Continental wars and the Industrial Revolution, and it is a sad but significant fact that, although the total wealth of the nation was vastly increased at the end of last century and the beginning of this, little of that wealth came into the hands of the labourers, but went almost entirely into the hands of the great landlords and new capitalist manufacturers, or was spent in the enormous expenses of foreign war. ¹ We saw, too, that the labourer felt far more severely than any one else the burden of this war, for taxes had been imposed on almost every article of consumption, ² while at the same time the price of wheat had risen enormously. ³ Moreover, labour was now more than ever dependent on capital, and the individual labourer was thoroughly under the heel of his employer. This was due to the new conditions of labour, both in agriculture and manufactures, that arose after the Industrial and Agricultural Revolution, and to the extinction of bye-industries. ⁴ The workman was now practically compelled to take what his employer offered him, either in the factory or the farm; for, as a mill-hand, he had nothing to fall back upon except the work offered at the mill, while for the agricultural labourer the increase of enclosures, both of the common fields and the waste, had deprived him of the resources which he formerly possessed. ¹ Few labourers had now a plot of ground to cultivate, or any rights to a common where they could get fuel for themselves and pasture for their cattle. The Assessment of Wages by the justices had indeed become inoperative, for it seems to have practically died out in the south of England at the close of the seventeenth century, and in the north at the beginning of the eighteenth. ² But the low rates of pay which had been fixed thereby had become almost traditional, ³ and from a variety of causes, already alluded to, pauperism was growing with alarming rapidity. Moreover, it was impossible for the labourer to improve his position by agitating for higher wages, for all combination in the form now known as Trades Unions was suppressed, and his condition sank to the lowest depin of poverty and degradation.