Note 163-5 — Chapter III

Thus the unheard of long series of excellent harvests in England, between 1715 and 1765, contributed very largely to this favorable transformation. Day wages expressed in wheat, between 1660 and 1719, amounted on an average to only about 2/3 of a peck; between 1720 and 1750, to an entire peck. In the fifteenth century, a similar series of good harvests contributed very much to the flourishing condition of the "yeomanry." Under Henry VII., workmen earned from two to three times as much corn as they did a century later. And so in France, the great Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, by setting free a vast quantity of hitherto bound-up force, enhanced the productiveness of the entire economy of the nation, and made the division of the national income more nearly equal. There is an essential connection here between the rapidity of the transition and the facts, that the habits of consumption of the working class received a powerful impulse, and that population increased much less rapidly than the national income. Compare John Stuart Mill, Principles, II, ch. 11, 2. In our own days again, English workmen had a splendid opportunity to raise their standard of life. Emigration to Australia, etc. preponderated over the natural increase of population to such an extent that, in 1852, for instance, only 217,000 more human beings were born in England and Wales than died, and 368,000 emigrated. At the same time, exports increased: in 1849, they were £63,000,000; in 1850 £71,000,000; about the end of 1853, something like £90,000,000.

This golden opportunity was used by the English laboring classes to both largely multiply marriages and to enhance the rate of wages. The number of marriages contracted in England yearly, from 1843 to 1847, was 136,200; from 1853 to 1857, 159,000. The number of births annually, from 1843 to 1847, was 544,800; from 1853 to 1857, 640,400. And wages, in a number of industries, rose, between 1839 and 1859, from about 18 to 24 per cent. (Quarterly Review, July, 1860, 86), while the prices of most of the necessaries of life declined. That, in the same time, the condition of English laborers was elevated, both intellectually and morally, is proved by many facts cited in Jones' and Ludlow's work on the social and political condition of the laboring classes in England. In Germany, the recent establishment of peace on a firm footing and the French war contributions have given the country an impulse which might be taken advantage of by the laboring class with the happiest results if they would accustom themselves to more worthy wants and at the same time preserve their accustomed industry.