Note 35 — Chapter I

In an able pamphlet dated 1681, entitled The Trade of England Revived, it is stated that “we cannot make our English cloth so cheap as they do in other countries, because of the strange idleness and stubbornness of our poor,” who insist on excessive wages. But the author attributes this state of things, not to the existence of combinations, of which he seems never to have heard, but to the Poor Law and the prevalence of almsgiving.