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repair is profit to the manufacturer , or the cost of paying a ship ' s crew and keeping a ship in repair , is profit t > the > hip-owner . The labourer has a machine call' d hi > body , which is hiss siok in trade—without food , clothes , and other necessaries , that machine ¦ w ill not work , but stop working and die . What it costs him to keep his body in working order is no more profit to him than the keep of a horse is . If you pay him no more than will keep that body in order , you make him work as much without remuneration as your steam-engine does . And any system whichlike the wages system , beats him down to
, the lowest upon which he can exist , is robbing him . A « long as any farthing of profit accrues to the farmer fioni hs labour , V at farmer has . obbtd him of his share of that profit . There was a contract between t « o men to ex . cute a joint work . The farmer found capit-I , the ) a » ourer found phjsical strength . Both << f them contributed over labour a certain quamity cif skill and reason . When the contract is completed , the farmer hss subsisted dm ing the time , and over and above gamed profits . The labourer has subsisted also , and over and above gained nothing . The farmer has , therefore , robbed his share of the The profit
the labourer of profits . may be very small , but there is some ; therefore he ought to have had a share of it . It is no use to say it is the labourer ' s own fault , or rather the fault of his class—that his wages depend upon himselfbecause they depend upon the competing numbers in the labour market ; and , therefore , if they choose to multiply recklessly , they must take the consequences of their own multiplication . Upon my word , gentlemen and ladies , when I hear an argument like that in a Christian country , I wonder what is become of our consciences . Grant that they have done wrong in multiplying recklessly , as it is calledthen take the argument out of the vapid wordy cant
in which it is the fashion to clothe it , and translate it into plain honest English , and what does it mean ? It means this : ' Ay , ye poor miserable fools , we have you now—when you were fewer , we could not take advantage of you ; but now we have found out the secret of making your numbers your weakness and not your strength—you have been fools enough to increase , and multiply , and replenish the earth , and we will take advantage of your folly—you have given way to your animal passions , and now your felfindulgence shall be your loss and our gain . You shall compete against each other , the father against the son , and the child against the grown man , you shall be mutual enemies—hindrances in each other's
-way—snatchers of the bread out of each other s mouths—you shall be envious and wretched , starving for aught we care , for you have been fools enoiigli to multiply , and the laws of a just God , and a world for which the Son of God died , allow us , Christian employers , to make our profit out of your lolly , and to visit your ignorance remorselessly upon your own heads—you have put yourselves into our power , and now , by the sacred laws of competition , avc will make you smart bitterly for your own weakness . ' There it is , gentlemen and ladies , in plain English . " Again : —
" And , therefore , first I ask , Avhat ought to bo the purpose of agriculture ? Is it just and right that the first object should be , to produce the greatest possible quantity , and its second , to reproduce cupital by giving a profit to the producer ; or is the opposite alternative just and right ? Are the farmers' profits the first question , the value of what he grows the eecond ? Looked at in . the trade spirit , which considers capital as the only true wealth , and forgets that health , decency , morality , independence ,
freedom , the totality of manhood , in short , are far more valuable wealth than capital ; because without them capital is not only not enjoyable , but not even attain able . Looked at in this spirit , I say , the farmers' profits lire the first object of agriculture ; and if they fall below those in other businesses , avc have a right to tell the farmer , as some are telling him . now—Withdraw your capital from agriculture , and invest it where it will he more profitable ; con tract the margin of cultivation , and throw poor lands out of tillage ; for you will be paid better by
cultivating less . " Hut , if we look at the question from the side of right and justice , we shall feel , 1 think , very differently- We sliiill feel that the land in God ' s gift , and that we are hound to cultivate ; it , mm long ; ih we can do it , without an absolute loss Nay , we shiill feel that sometimeH it may he right and just , to cultivate it at , a present Ins- * , trusting in God , and in the laws of H ' is eiuth , to repay us hereafter . " Or , if "Joss" afflict uh so terribly , and " profit , " be « o indispensable , let us relinquish the land to others who will cultivate iL Food , not profit , being the primary requisite of man , is also the primary requisite of national prosperity . This is a truism . Yet ifc _ J a _ jinceNsantly disregarded . Men talk about iHfyB ^ tcfip rii v of " manufactures" l > ecauHe ^ fy in notion dim ' eult to extricaBF / fme ' ll ^^ w ' fflo ^ ver , are clear enough ; the ov «^ l ^ i ^ prft « 3 tio £ tjje > irianulactui inff industry ^ r-Z . ^ y *
has thinned the country , impoverished agriculture , and damaged the industrial population . Mr . Kingsley , like all Socialists , insists upon bringing back the population to the land ; counteracting the present tendency towards crowding in towns . I he mere fact—and it is a fact as certain as any fact in science—that the population of a country returns to the soil in the form of sewage fit for immediate absorption by the roots of plants , the whole raw material of its last year ' s food , " . e . all the homegrown and all the imported food—this fact , we say , urgently points to the necessity of a return of the population to the country : —
" Suppose a population of 10 , 000 , who are fed for one year by home-grown food for 8000 , and imported food for 2000 . They will return to the soil , as raw material for next year ' s crop , food for 10 , 000 . By the end of the year they will have increased , say , as a huge rate of increase , far larger than ours , 5 per cent . Then next year there will be 10 , 500 people to feed on home grown food for 10 , 000—that year's imports—and which therefore need be this year only enough to feed 500 ;—and the next year after , the population , though increasing at the same rate , would more than support itself , and become an exporter of food to countries less thrifty than itself . I assert this on the authority of Liebig , and of all good chemists , as an indisputable fact of science .
" The question is , why do we not support ourselves—simply because we throw away every year into our rivers , nine-tenths of the raw materials of food . A very small proportion of the solid sewage in the neighbourhood of great towns , is bought and used by market-gardeners , and the rest goes down to the sea—and then we wonder why we are overpeopled , and have to import corn year by year . —The thing needs no argument . " Mr . Kingsley thus brings Association to bear on the question : —
" The problem of agriculture , then , seems to me to be , how to restore the sewage to the land ; and this , I am inclined to believe , after having cast the matter over in my mind for several years , can only be done by restoring the population to the land . It will never be done , either under a tenant farmer or a peasant proprietor system . I do not in the least undervalue the labours of any friends of the Metropolitan Sewage Manure Company , or any of the plans for a Government distribution of the London sewage to country farms by pipes laid down over the land . This plan will succeed perfectly for a few miles round a great city like London , in market gardens , and meadow farms supplying the town , where there is a constant and all but unlimited
demand for produce , and for manure of every kind . But round the manufacturing cities even this will not pay , for the crops will not grow on account of the smoke . But this plan will not , I think , supply the country even twenty miles off , and for this simple reason , that of course the expense of the pipe conveyance per acre increases with the distance . And we shall find , I think , that it will not pay to convey be wage manure a great distance , unless a large demand , for a vast sheet of country , can be depended on at once . And on the present isolated system of fanning , much more under thestill more isolated system
of peasant proprietors ( from which all the angels of civilization defend us !) there will never be such a demand . Here and there one spirited farmer in a sheet of twenty square miles may ask for sewage from town ; but it will never pay to drive a main thiity miles over hill and dale to supply his single farm , buying too , or perhaps litigating for , a right of pipe-way through the farms of fifty fools between him and London ; and then wait , for perhaps seven years , with the greater part of the capital expended lying Hunk in the tnuin pipes , till the example of his success has awakened some two or three neighbours to look
over his hedge and take courage to follow his example . Londoners little know the stupidity , the cowardice , the . ignorance , the utter isolation from each other on industrial matters , of the mass of fiimier . - * , or they would feel at once that no great public work , like the sewage manure supply , requiring a large , immediate , and spirited demand , can ever be applicable to them . They will combine fast enough ut the Board of G unrdiiinp , to grind the poor in their penny-wise ; and pound-foolish greed ; but to organize parochial labour to improve the land , they will never combine . The iniri ; fact of an improvement benefiting any one hi wide thfinselves is generally a sufficient reiiHon for their rejecting it . Why , if Oliver Cromwell hud not interfered to compel associate draining in the Cdinbridgi-shire fens , and founded the magnificent socialist organization by which they have now become the fiitteM , land in Kn ^ land , the feus would have been to this day what they were in Ht . Gutllake ' s time "No ; if any elans are to carry out . the sewage manure HyHtem , it must be tin : limdlonlH themselves ; and while they are about it , they will find it the cheapest , the most profitable , as well us the most righteous and politic , wny of doing it , to Bend to London , not for th « sewage- itself , but for tljo human
beings who produce the sewage . To cover their broad lands with live stock who can till , manufacture , think , enjoy , become a strength to them , and blessings to the nation , as well as merely eat and drink . That will be the just plan—and that will be the most economic one . That will be the way to preserve their property , to give the poor sooti-choked townsman his share in the blessings of it ; that will be the way to unite those two interests , the manfacturing and the agricultural , which have been most falsely and unchristianly set againat each other , by the selfishness of the isolated competitive system .
" These remarks apply equally , as I have said , if not still more strongly , to the isolated peasant pro - prietor system . And moreover , it will b e impos sible to transfer the population to the land as producers of sewage by a peasant proprietorship ; because , to a peasant proprietor , only the sewage of his own household would be available , sufficient therefore only to grow food for that household ; while what he wants is the sewage of the whole population ,
manufacturing as well as agriculturist . " Neither can the thing be done profitably as long as the inhabitants of the country are dotted about in separate cottages , for then a separate sewage , and means of applying liquid for the land , are required for each house—whereas if the dwellings be in one block , one system of sewers suffices for all , and the expense is diminished to a small fraction of what it would otherwise be . I therefore do look on all model
cottages , pretty as they are , as so many strongholds of mediaeval barbarism . The old isolated cottages , providentially for the present juncture , are fast tumbling down from landlords' and farmers' neglect . Let them go , in the name of all civilization , and let us have bloeks of a dozen or more dwellings instead . And , in the same way as evils do right themselves , by their own intrinsic liability to decay , those wretched styes in which people live in the cities have been built , thanks to the cupidity of house-specula *
tors , to tumble down too , in the course of a few years . Let them tumble down , and rebuild the dwellings out in the country . The earth hath bubbles—and such cities as Manchester are of them . A short-sighted and hasty greed created them ; and when they have lasted their little time and had their day , they will vanish like bubbles , and the materials of them , and the inhabitants of them , be dispersed , I hope and trust , once more over the free face of England , where God intended these to live . "
We will give one more extract from the practical part of this pamphlet , merely observing that Mr . Warnes and others have proved beyond a doubt that flax may be grown on the Belgian method in England at a higher profit than wheat , so as to increase and not diminish the fertility of the land : — " Let a large manufacturer establish a flax-farm in a convenient spot , where steam or water-power was at hand . Let him build there such mills , &c , as should work up that flax , and round them locate , as thickly as possible , all the mechanics and labourers employed . A common kitchen , wash-houses , &c . 8 cc . especially a common and well organized system of sewage , would at once raise—the sanitary reports will tell us how much—the comfort and civilization
of his work-people , and at the same time cheapen the cost of their subsistence . The sewage of the whole establishment should bo laid on over the farm , The value of this sewage may be put at from tnir i shillings to two pounds per head , and as being sufficient to keep one acre per head in a state of P ""* T nent fertility . At all events , there would be added to the supply of manure usual on every farm , the sewage of a dense population . The mills mig ht either , in the case of steam power , be placed at the highest point of the farm , and the sewage laid on at high pressure by mere gravitation , or if water power was employed , and the mills therefore at a lower point , the sewage might be driven over a etand-pip ° equal in height to the highest point on the grou »« - A method , as yo \ i doubtless are aware , already
profitably employed in many cases . "In such an establishment ae this , besides the flax crop , the greater part of the labourer ' s food mig ht nc grown on the furm , more cheaply than anywhere els ^ because the whole of each last year ' s food would i ^ at once returned to the soil , at an expense per » c ' of not one quarter of that now incurred in ninimr" h with yard dung . Thus the establishment iniglU « made chemically , as well an economically , : " r "* J porting ; returning continually to the hoiI tne material of the flax crop ; while the nitrogen n » H ° tn
from the air by the flax plant , and e n ""'' ,,, ; bought into the establishment yearly , would K or to increase continually the fertility of the *«""• ' when the limit of profitable investment lia" i - reached , to increase its nizo . A few unrip 1 « <¦« ll , lions an to the amount of flux which would he pr bly grown per acre , and the number of hands requ ¦ to till and work it up , would enable uh to adupi breadth of land to the number of colonists . ^ " The preparation of tho flax for the mill . n »< lighter and more delicate agricultural huK ) U ™ ; v which flax requires a far greater proportion tnun / other Engliah crop ) would give continual emj >» ?
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 13, 1851, page 876, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1900/page/16/
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