DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0398
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
veyers of goods under a Commission, which possesses very energetic
powers of discipline. The State in the United Kingdom is quite
willing enough to act when combination against the presumed
interests of the public is proved to exist ; it declines to act, or is
indifferent to the action, when it believes, as it generally believes
with reason, that the expedient adopted carries its own remedy
with it. At the same time, I am entirely persuaded that if the
practice, of which we have seen a few experiments lately, and of
which more are threatened, became general, and was believed to
be mischievous, that Parliament would not hesitate to intervene.
The natural check to excessive and ruinous competition is the
likelihood that the weaker combatants in the struggle will succumb,
that in a rough way the survival of the fittest will be the result,
and that the industry will ultimately right itself. Anybody who
studies the history of manufacture and trade will find that com-
petition has been effectually operative against classes of workers
and against localities. For example, hand-loom weaving has been
practically extirpated by machinery, wood-cutting machines have
greatly curtailed the work of the joiner, machines for the manu-
facture of nails and screws, and, as far as I can judge of a recent
case, chains, have extinguished the trade of the nail smith, the
hand screw-maker, and the chain maker. It is idle to think that
the successes of mechanical science have been a universal gain to
all sections of the community. Every invention which shortens
labour in the aggregate, impoverishes labour in detail, and it is
foolish and impertinent to dwell exclusively on the optimist side
of industrial progress. The palliative is that it comes slowly, that
if the change is made, it takes a generation before it becomes
universal, always provided that no unfair action is taken. Thus,
for example, the Nottingham Frame-breakers Act (52 Geo. III.
cap. 16, 1812), inflicting the penalty of death on this offence,
apart from the atrocity of the penalties, was an outrageous act
of injustice. The legislature, under the Quarter Sessions Assess-
ment Act, had driven the wages of workmen forcibly down to
starvation point, and was now inflicting the punishment of death
on those who refused to take starvation patiently.
So, again, industry under domestic competition may be trans-
ferred from one locality to another. In early days the county of
veyers of goods under a Commission, which possesses very energetic
powers of discipline. The State in the United Kingdom is quite
willing enough to act when combination against the presumed
interests of the public is proved to exist ; it declines to act, or is
indifferent to the action, when it believes, as it generally believes
with reason, that the expedient adopted carries its own remedy
with it. At the same time, I am entirely persuaded that if the
practice, of which we have seen a few experiments lately, and of
which more are threatened, became general, and was believed to
be mischievous, that Parliament would not hesitate to intervene.
The natural check to excessive and ruinous competition is the
likelihood that the weaker combatants in the struggle will succumb,
that in a rough way the survival of the fittest will be the result,
and that the industry will ultimately right itself. Anybody who
studies the history of manufacture and trade will find that com-
petition has been effectually operative against classes of workers
and against localities. For example, hand-loom weaving has been
practically extirpated by machinery, wood-cutting machines have
greatly curtailed the work of the joiner, machines for the manu-
facture of nails and screws, and, as far as I can judge of a recent
case, chains, have extinguished the trade of the nail smith, the
hand screw-maker, and the chain maker. It is idle to think that
the successes of mechanical science have been a universal gain to
all sections of the community. Every invention which shortens
labour in the aggregate, impoverishes labour in detail, and it is
foolish and impertinent to dwell exclusively on the optimist side
of industrial progress. The palliative is that it comes slowly, that
if the change is made, it takes a generation before it becomes
universal, always provided that no unfair action is taken. Thus,
for example, the Nottingham Frame-breakers Act (52 Geo. III.
cap. 16, 1812), inflicting the penalty of death on this offence,
apart from the atrocity of the penalties, was an outrageous act
of injustice. The legislature, under the Quarter Sessions Assess-
ment Act, had driven the wages of workmen forcibly down to
starvation point, and was now inflicting the punishment of death
on those who refused to take starvation patiently.
So, again, industry under domestic competition may be trans-
ferred from one locality to another. In early days the county of