Part 19

6. We are given to understand that the miners of South Wales insist on economics written by sound labour men. We therefore offer them a few suggestions for a history of the currency in the nineteenth century from the worker's point of view.

i. In 1800 London relied for small coin on private enterprise. Every week the Jews' boys collected from the shopkeepers their bad shillings, buying them at a heavy discount, with serviceable copper coin forged in Birmingham (vide Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, 1800, Chapter VII). The resumption of cash payments in 1819 was injurious; for owing to the shortage of small coin, the wage-earners were paid in bulk with large notes, which they had to split at the nearest public-house. The Truck Act of 1831 prohibited wage-payments in notes on Banks more than 15 miles distant, but said nothing about cheques--an oversight which the capitalists repeated in their Bank Act of 1844.

ii. The general dissatisfaction with the state of the currency led to attempts to dispense with coin. About 1830 Labour Exchanges were opened in London for the exchange of goods against time notes, representing one or more hours of labour. The originator was Robert Owen, and the failure of the Exchanges was probably due to the fact that Owen was at heart a capitalist. The National Equitable Labour Exchange at one time was doing a business of over 20,000 hours per week, but very shortly after this, the President (Owen) had to report a serious deficiency of hours, many thousands having been mislaid or stolen. The Exchange in consequence had to close its doors.

iii. In the 'forties the centre of interest is the Midlands, and the period may be termed the Staffordshire or beer period. The currency was very popular and highly liquid, but it was issued to excess and difficult to store. More solid surrogates were therefore tried. A Bilston pawnbroker said that he had in pawn numerous batches of flour, which the men's wives had brought from the Truck Shops and turned into money, in order to pay their house-rents. Flour, however, was not so hard as a Prescot watch.

iv. We come next to the Welsh or Tobacco period, when the currency was easily transferable, but liable to deterioration.

v. Finally, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the world of labour attained to a cash basis, and there was no Cobbett to denounce the resumption.

We shall not be guilty of serious exaggeration if we preface our history with the motto:

'In the nineteenth century the Trade Unions and the Trade Unions alone made the nominal earnings of the working man a cash reality.'

3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION

1. The student of Dicey's Law and Opinion in England is invited to distinguish three periods:

i. The period of old Toryism or legislative quiescence (1800-38).

ii. The period of Benthamism or individualism (1825-70).

iii. The period of collectivism (1865-1900).

Bentham lived during the first period and his name is rightly given to the second period.

The student, therefore, comes to wonder if there is anything which is not Benthamism. Benthamism, he says to himself, stands for individualism. How then can the period of Benthamism include the humanitarian legislation which begins with the first Factory Act of 1802 and broadens out during the middle of the century into the elaborate code regulating from then onwards the conditions of employment in workshops, factories, and mines? How can a monster beget an angel?

We may perhaps throw light on this difficulty by suggesting that the social trend from 1825-70 cannot be compressed into a single word. Individualism may suffice to define the dominant legal trend, but it conceals the influence exerted on the legislature from without and from below by the action of voluntary associations. The period of voluntary association coincides with and overlaps the period of individualism.

2. What Bentham was to individualism, Robert Owen was to voluntary association. Bentham himself was an admirer of Owen and supported his philanthropy, but, as expressions of a social attitude, Benthamism and Owenism were poles asunder. The contrast between the two is admirably displayed in the evidence given before the Factory Committee of 1816 by two representatives of the employing class, Josiah Wedgwood of pottery fame and Robert Owen himself.

'In the state of society,' said Wedgwood, 'in which there is evidently a progressive movement, it is much better to leave things as they are than to attempt to amend the general state of things in detail. The only safe way of securing the comfort of any people is to leave them at liberty to make the best use of their time, and to allow them to appropriate their earnings in such way as they think fit.'

Robert Owen thought otherwise. In a couple of answers he exposed the fallacy of enlightened self-interest. They seem obvious enough to-day, but in 1816 they were the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He was asked whether he believed that 'there is that want of affection and feeling on the part of parents, that would induce them to exact from their children more labour than they could perform without injury to their health;' and he replied:

'I do not imagine that there is the smallest difference between the general affection of the lower order of the people, except with regard to that which may be produced by the different circumstances in which they are placed.'

Another question was: 'Do you conceive that it is not injurious to the manufacturer to hazard, by overwork, the health of the people so employed?' He replied:

'If those persons were purchased by the manufacturers I should say decisively, yes; but as they are not purchased by the manufacturer and the country must bear all the loss of their strength and their energy{;} it does not appear, at first sight, to be the interest of the manufacturer to do so.'

Owen had grasped the meaning of social responsibility, and he devoted his life to social service. But he was too wayward to observe the conventions of society, and passed beyond the social pale. The factory reformer became the Socialist. Whether his disciples comprehended his philosophy we may doubt, but he understood better than any one else their instinct for association, and he gratified it.

It is not contended that Owen was responsible for all the associative effort of his generation; for with political and religious associations he had no sympathy. But the spirit which infected him infected others after him, rousing them to associate now for this, and now for that social or religious or political purpose.

3. We may divide associations for social purposes into two classes.

To the first class belong associations formed to secure the abolition of some abuse. These naturally disappear when their object is attained.

For example, there was the Anti-slavery Campaign in which Joseph Sturge and other Quakers played so prominent a part. By an organized crusade of political education the Abolitionists induced an originally hostile Parliament to emancipate the West Indian negroes in 1833, and to shorten the period of semi-servile apprenticeship in 1838. Yorkshire was the home of the Short Time Committees, which organized the campaign against White Slavery at home. The Ten Hours Movement caused the Ten Hours Bill to become the law of the land. From Lancashire came the Anti-Corn Law League, whose story is told in another chapter.

The second class of association was the association for economic betterment--the Friendly Society, the Co-operative Society, the Trade Union. Conceived in enthusiasm and self-inspired, these associations asked only of the State a legal framework in which to develop, but they did not win it without struggle and delay.