★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
Letter XIII. Means of extracting Labour.
he gives, he should work more: for more work that most intelligent
trevellers finds always done in lean years, than in plentifull ones
the earnings of one day affording, in the latter case, a fund for the
extravagance of the next. But this is not all. His master may
fleece him, if he pleases, at both ends. After sharing in his profits
he may again take a profit upon his expence. He would probably
choose to employ both expedients together. The tax upon earnings,
if it stood alone, might possibly appear liable to be evaded in some
degree, and be frustrated, in some cases, be a confederacy between
the workmen and their employers out of doors: the tax upon expenditure,
by their frugality, supposing that virtue to take root in such
a soil or in some instances, perhaps, by their generosity to their friend
without doors. The tax upon earnings would probably not be laid
on in an open way, upon any others than the good hands: whose traffic
must be carried on, with or without his intervention, between them and
this out-of-doors-employers. In the trades which he though prop
to set up of himself for his capable hands, his promising hands, and
his drones, the tax might be levied in more covert way, by the lowering
of the price paid by him, in comparison of the free prices, given out of
doors for similar work. Where he is sure of his men, as well with regard
to their disposition to spend, as with regard to their inability
to collude, the tax upon expenditure, without any tax upon profits, open o
covert, would be the least discouraging: it would be the least discouraging for
|
Identifier: | JB/550/181/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 550.
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
550 |
|||
|
181 |
|||
|
002 |
|||