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and diligence of any ordinary journeyman at large who is paid by
the day and not by the piece. If a man won't work, nothing he has he to do
from morning to night, but eat his bad bread and drink his water, without
a soul to speak to. If he will work, his time is occupied, and he has his meat
and his beer, or whatever else his earnings may afford him, and not
a stroke does he strike but he gets something which he would not have
got otherwise. This encouragement is necessary to his doing his utmost
but more than this is not necessary. It is necessary every exertion he
makes should be sure of its reward: but it is not necessary that such reward should be so great,
or anything near so great, as he might have had, had he worked
elsewhere. His confinement, which is his punishment, preventing his carrying
the work to another market, subjects him to a monopoly, which
the Contractor his master, like any other monopolist makes of course
as much of as he can. The workman lives in a poor country when
wages are low: but in a poor country, a man who is paid according to his
work will exert himself at least as much as in a rich one. According to
Mr Arthur Young, and the very cogent evidence he gives, he should work
more: for more work that most intelligent of travelers finds always
done in dear years, than in plentifull ones: in the plentiful year, the earnings of one day
in the better year, 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 his earnings, if it stood alone, might possibly appear liable to be traded
in some degree, and be frustrated in some cases, by a confederacy between the
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:) in some
instances, perhaps, by their generosity to their friends without doors. The tax
upon earnings would not be laid on, in an open way, upon any other than
the good hands, whose traffic must be carried on, with or without his
intervention, between them and their out-of-door-employers. In the trades which
he thought proper to set up of himself for his capable hands, his promising hands, and his drones,
the tax might be levied in a more covert way, by the lowness 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 or covert would be the
least discouraging: for the present, as the earnings would sound greater
to their ears; and with a view to the future, as they would thereby
see, I mean such of them as had any hopes of releasement, what their
earnings might, at that happy period, be expected to amount to, in
reality as well as in name.
Letter 14th
The circumstance touched upon at the close of my last letter suggest another
advantage, and that
not an inconsiderable
one, which
you will find more
particularly, if not
exclusively, connected
with the Contract
plan. The turning
of the prisoners'
The turning their labour into its most profitable
channel being proposed in a former letter left free, depending upon the
joint choice of the two only parties interested in pushing the
advantage to the utmost, would afford a resource, and that I should
conceive a sure one, for the subsistence of the prisoners after the
expiration of their terms. No trade that could be carried on in this state
of thralldom, but could be carried on, with at least equal advantage, in a
state of liberty. Both parties would probably find their account in continuing
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Identifier: | JB/550/221/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 550.
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