of resistance, and makes them mere slaves of the landed proprietors and the farmers.[1] Thus the minimum of wages becomes a law of Nature to them. On the other hand, the land, in spite of its constant “relative surplus-population,” is at the same time under-populated. This is seen, not only locally at the points where the efflux of men to towns, mines, railroad-making, &c., is most marked. It is to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at those frequently recurring times when English agriculture, so careful and intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or temporary needs of the cultivation of the soil.[2] Hence we find in the official documents contradictory complaints from the same places of deficiency and excess of labour simultaneously. The temporary or local want of labour brings about no rise in wages, but a forcing of the women and children into the fields, and exploitation at an age constantly lowered. As soon as the exploitation of the
- ↑ “The heaven-born employment of the hind gives dignity even to this position. He is not a slave, but a soldier of peace, and deserves his place in married men’s quarters to be provided by the landlord, who has claimed a power of enforced labour similar to that the country demands of the soldier. He no more receives market price for his work than does the soldier. Like the soldier he is caught young, ignorant, knowing only his own trade, and his own locality. Early marriage and the operation of the various laws of settlement affect the one as enlistment and the Mutiny Act affect the other.” (Dr. Hunter, l. c., p. 182.) Sometimes an exceptionally soft-hearted landlord relents at the solitude he has created. “It is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one’s country,” said Lord Leicester, when complimented on the completion of Hookham. “I look around and not a house is to be seen but mine. I am the giant of Giant Castle, and have eat up all my neighbours.”
- ↑ A similar movement is seen during the last ten years in France; in proportion as capitalist production there takes possession of agriculture, it drives the “surplus” agricultural population into the towns. Here also we find deterioration in the housing and other conditions at the source of the surplus-popuiation. On the special “prolétariat foncier,” to which this system of parcelling out the land has given rise, see, among others, the work of Colins, already quoted, and Karl Marx “Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte.” 2nd edition, Hamburg, 1869, pp. 56, &c. In 1846, the town population in France was represented by 24.42, the agricultural by 75.58; in 1861, the town by 28.86, the agricultural by 71.4 per cent. During the last 5 years, the diminution of the agricultural percentage of the population has been yet more marked. As early as 1846, Pierre Dupont in his “Ouvriers” sang:
Mal vétus, logés dans des trons,
Sons les combles, dans les décombres,
Nous vivons avec les hiboux
Et les Jarrons, amis des ombres.
