A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Money
Some estimate of the value of labour.
19th Century John Ramsay McCulloch (ed.) English- It may be reasonably allowed, that a labouring man ought to earn at least, twice as much as will maintain himself in ordinary food and cloathing; that he may be enabled to breed up children, pay rent for a small dwelling, find himself in necessary utensils, &c. So much at least the labourer must be allowed, that the community may be perpetuated: And as the world goes, there is no likelihood that the lowest kind of labourers will be allowed more than a bare subsistence; if they will not be content with that, there will be others ready to step into their places; and less, as above observed, cannot be given them. And hence the quantity of land that goes to maintain a labourer, becomes his hire; and this hire again becomes the value of the land; the expences of manuring and tilling it, being also included. There is a difference in the proportion of the value of an acre of land to a given quantity of labour, all over the world; and this ariseth, not only from the different goodness of the land, but also from the different ways of living of the peasants in different places. For, where labour is very cheap, that is, where the labourers live very poorly, land will be also cheap; as the poor, from their numbers, are the principal consumers of the grosser products of the earth. So that every where, I think, the price of land is influenced by the price of labour; that is, by the quality of food and raiment consumed by the labourers; for of some sort, they must have a sufficient quantity: It seems then to be no good policy in the rich to deal too hardly with the poor; besides, that such treatment must needs greatly check arts and industry, discourage matrimony among the lower class, and inspire them with thoughts of quitting their homes, in hopes of bettering their state elsewhere. But the benevolence here hinted at, is to be tempered with discretion: The children of the poor should be brought up and inured, as early as may be, to some useful labour; and be taught with due care, the great principles of religion and morality. But all are not agreed that reading and writing, are qualifications necessary for the obtaining of those ends; some think, that these accomplishments are useful only in higher stations; and that to instruct at a public expence the youth of the lower class in reading, writing, &c. is a kind of intrusion upon the class next above them; that these qualifications, instead of being advantageous to the poor who possess them, serve only to render their state more irksome, and to inspire them with notions subversive of society. There must be labourers; and that most useful class of men should be duly cherished and taken care of: But books and pens will not alleviate the weight of the spade, or at all contribute to dry the sweat off the labourer’s brow.