Progress In Relation To Standards Of Life

¹ The true key-note of economic progress is the development of new activities rather than of new wants.

What is the connection between changes in the manner of living and the rate of earnings?

How far is either the cause of the other, and how far as the effect?

The “standard of life” is here taken to mean the standard of activities adjusted to wants.

A rise in the standard of life implies an increase of intelligence and energy and self-respect.

This leads to:

• more care and judgment in expenditure
• an avoidance of:
  • food and drink that gratify the appetite but afford no strength
  • ways of living that are unwholesome physically and morally.

A rise in the standard of life for the whole population will much increase:

• the national dividend, and
• the share of it which accrues to each grade and to each trade.

A rise in the standard of life for any one trade or grade will raise their efficiency and therefore their own real wages.

It will increase the national dividend a little. It will enable others to obtain their assistance at a cost somewhat less in proportion to its efficiency.

But many writers have spoken of the influence exerted on wages by a rise, not in the standard of life, but in that of comfort;—a term that may suggest a mere increase of artificial wants, among which perhaps the grosser wants may predominate.

Every broad improvement in the standard of comfort is likely to bring with it a better manner of living, and to open the way to new and higher activities; while people who have hitherto had neither the necessaries nor the decencies of life, can hardly fail to get some increase of vitality and energy from an increase of comfort, however gross and material the view which they may take of it.

Thus a rise in the standard of comfort will probably involve some rise in the standard of life; and, in so far as this is the case, it tends to increase the national dividend and to improve the condition of the people.

Some writers however of our own and of earlier times have gone further than this, and have implied that a mere increase of wants tends to raise wages. But the only direct effect of an increase of wants is to make people more miserable than before. And if we put aside its possible indirect effect in increasing activities, and otherwise raising the standard of life, it can raise wages only by diminishing the supply of labour. It will be well to go into this matter more closely.

² If population increased in high geometrical progression uninterruptedly for many generations together in a country which could not import food easily, then the total produce of labour and capital, working on the resources provided by nature, would barely cover the cost of rearing and training each generation as it came: this would be true even if we supposed that nearly the whole of the national dividend went to labour, scarcely any share being allotted to capitalist or landowner153.

If the allowance fell below that level, the rate of increase of the population must necessarily shrink; unless indeed the expenses of their nurture and rearing were curtailed, with a resulting lowering of efficiency, and therefore of the national dividend, and therefore of earnings.

But in fact the check to the rapid growth of population would probably come earlier, because the population at large would not be likely to limit its consumption to bare necessaries: some part of the family income would almost certainly be spent on gratifications which contributed but little to the maintenance of life and efficiency.

That is to say, the maintenance of a standard of comfort, raised more or less above that which was necessary for life and efficiency, would necessarily involve a check to the growth of population at a rather earlier stage than would have been reached if family expenditure had been directed on the same principles as is the expenditure on the nurture and training of horses or slaves. This analogy reaches further.

Three necessaries for full efficiency—hope, freedom and change154 —cannot easily be brought within the slave’s reach. But as a rule the shrewd slave-owner goes to some trouble and expense to promote rough musical and other entertainments, on the same principle that he provides medicines: for experience shows that melancholy in a slave is as wasteful as disease, or as cinders that clog the furnace of a boiler.

Now if the standard of comfort of the slaves were to rise in such a way that neither punishment nor the fear of death would make them work unless provided with expensive comforts and even luxuries, they would get those comforts and luxuries; or else they would disappear, in the same way as would a breed of horses that did not earn their keep. And if it were true that the real wages of labour were forced down chiefly by the difficulty of obtaining food, as was in fact the case in England a hundred years ago; then indeed the working classes might relieve themselves from the pressure of Diminishing Return by reducing their numbers.

But they cannot do so now, because there is no such pressure.

The opening of England’s ports, in 1846, was one among many causes of the development of railways connecting the vast agricultural lands of North and South America and Australia with the sea. Wheat grown under the most advantageous circumstances is brought to the English working man in sufficient quantities for his family at a total cost equal to but a small part of his wages.

An increase in numbers gives many new opportunities for increased efficiency of labour and capital working together to meet men’s wants; and thus may raise wages in one direction as much as it lowers them in another; provided only the stock of capital required for the new developments increases fast enough. Of course the Englishman is not unaffected by the law of diminishing return: he cannot earn his food with as little labour as if he were near spacious virgin prairies. But its cost to him, being now governed mainly by the supplies which come from new countries, would not be greatly affected either by an increase or by a diminution in the population of this country.

If he can make his labour more efficient in producing things which can be exchanged for imported food, then he will get his food at less real cost to himself, whether the population of England grows fast or not.

When the wheat-fields of the world are worked at their full power (or even earlier, if the free entry of food into England’s ports should ever be obstructed), then indeed an increase of her population may lower wages, or at all events check the rise that would otherwise have come from the continued improvement in the arts of production: and, in such a case a rise in the standard of comfort may raise wages merely by stinting the growth of numbers.

But, while the present good fortune of abundant imported food attends on the English people, a rise in their standard of comfort could not increase their wages, merely by its action on their numbers. And further if it were obtained by measures which forced down the rate of profits on capital even further below the level, which can be got in countries which have a greater power of absorbing capital than England has, it might both check accumulation in England, and hasten the exportation of capital: and in that case wages in England would fall both absolutely, and relatively to the rest of the world.

If on the other hand a rise in the standard of comfort went together with a great increase in efficiency; then—whether it were accompanied by an increase in numbers or not—it would enlarge the national dividend relatively to population, and establish a rise of real wages on an enduring basis. Thus a diminution by one-tenth of the number of workers, each doing as much work as before, would not materially raise wages; and therefore a diminution by one-tenth in the amount of work done by each, the number remaining unchanged, would lower wages in general by one-tenth.

This argument is of course consistent with the belief that a compact group of workers can for a time raise their wages at the expense of the rest of the community by making their labour scarce.

But such strategy seldom succeeds for more than a short time. However strong the anti-social obstacles which they erect against those who would like a share of their gains, interlopers find their way in; some over the obstacles, some under them, and some through them. Meanwhile invention is set on foot to obtain in some other way, or from some other place, things of the production of which the compact group thought to have a partial monopoly: and, what is even more dangerous to them, new things are invented and brought into general use, which satisfy nearly the same wants, and yet make no use of their labour. Thus after a while those, who have striven to make a shrewd use of monopoly, are apt to find their numbers swollen rather than reduced, while the total demand for their labour has shrunk: in that case their wages fall heavily.

§ 3. The relations between industrial efficiency and the hours of labour are complex. If the strain is very great, a man is apt to be so tired by long work that he is seldom at his best, and is often much below it or even idling. As a general, though not universal rule, his work is more intense when paid by piece, than when paid by time; and, in so far as this is the case, short hours are specially suitable to industries in which piece- work prevails155 .

When the hours, the nature of the work done, the physical conditions under which it is done, and the method by which it is remunerated, are such as to cause great wear-and- tear of body or mind or both, and to lead to a low standard of living; when there has been a want of that leisure, rest and repose, which are among the necessaries for efficiency; then the labour has been extravagant from the point of view of society at large, just as it would be extravagant on the part of the individual capitalist to keep his horses or slaves overworked or underfed. In such a case a moderate diminution of the hours of labour would diminish the national dividend only temporarily: for as soon as the improved standard of life had had time to exert its full effect on the efficiency of the workers, their increased energy, intelligence and force of character would enable them to do as much as before in less time; and thus, even from the point of view of material production, there would be no ultimate loss, any more than there would be in sending a sick worker into hospital to get his strength renovated. The coming generation is interested in the rescue of men, and still more in that of women, from excessive work; at least as much as it is in the handing down to it of a good stock of material wealth.

This argument assumes that the new rest and leisure raise the standard of life. And such a result is almost certain to follow in the extreme cases of overwork which we have been now considering; for in them a mere lessening of tension is a necessary condition for taking the first step upwards. The lowest grade of honest workers seldom work very hard. But they have little stamina; and many of them are so overstrained that they might probably, after a time, do as much in a shorter day as they now do in a long one156 .

Again there are some branches of industry which at present turn to account expensive plant during nine or ten hours a day; and in which the gradual introduction of two shifts of eight hours, or even less, would be a gain. The change would need to be introduced gradually; for there is not enough skilled labour in existence to allow such a plan to be adopted at once in all the workshops and factories for which it is suited. But some kinds of machinery, when worn out or antiquated, might be replaced on a smaller scale; and, on the other hand, much new machinery that cannot be profitably introduced for a ten hours’ day, would be introduced for a sixteen hours’ day; and when once introduced it would be improved on. Thus the arts of production would progress more rapidly; the national dividend would increase; working men would be able to earn higher wages without checking the growth of capital, or tempting it to migrate to countries where wages are lower: and all classes of society would reap benefit from the change.

The importance of this consideration is more apparent every year, since the growing expensiveness of machinery, and the quickness with which it is rendered obsolete, are constantly increasing the wastefulness of keeping the untiring iron and steel resting in idleness during sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. In any country, such a change would increase the net produce, and therefore the wages of each worker; because much less than before would have to be deducted from his total output on account of charges for machinery, plant, factory-rent, etc. But Anglo-Saxon artisans, unsurpassed in accuracy of touch, and surpassing all in sustained energy, would more than any others increase their net produce, if they would keep their machinery going at its full speed for sixteen hours a day, even though they themselves worked only eight157 .

This particular plea for a reduction of the hours of labour applies only to those trades which use, or can use, expensive plant; and that in many cases, as for instance in some mines and some branches of railway work, the system of shifts is already applied so as to keep the plant almost constantly at work.

There remain therefore many trades in which a reduction of the hours of labour would certainly lessen the output in the immediate present, and would not certainly bring about at all quickly any such increase of efficiency as would raise the average work done per head up to the old level. In such cases the change would diminish the national dividend; and the greater part of the resulting material loss would fall on the workers whose hours of labour were diminished. It is true that in some trades a scarcity of labour would raise its price for a good long while at the expense of the rest of the community. But as a rule a rise in the real price of labour would cause a diminished demand for the product, partly through the increased use of substitutes; and would also cause an inrush of new labour from less favoured trades.