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An essay on the relations between labour and capital
An essay on the relations between labour and capital Author:C. Morrison Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. III. ON PLANS FOB RAISING WAGES. Since the average rate of wages in any country depends upon the amount of that portion of the national capital, whic... more »h is applicable to the payment for labour, compared with the number of working persons, among whom that amount has to be divided, any increase in that rate must involve either an increase in the amount of the funds, which are to be applied in this manner, or a diminution in the number of labourers. A positive diminution of the population of a country is seldom, if ever, relied on by any party as an adequate means of effecting a permanent rise of wages, and consequent improvement in the condition of the working classes. If it is the result of increased mortality, it applies an amount of suffering inconsistent with the well-being of those classes. And the action of the moral or preventive checks on population — that is, the influence of prudential motives in restraining marriages and the production of children—has never yet been found sufficient to produce a positive diminution of numbers: nor is it, in any point of view, desirable that they should act with the intensity, which would be necessary for such a result. All that is to be either expected or wished is, that they should retard the rapidity of increase. Emigration may, under some circumstances, be carried to such an extent as to produce for a time a positive diminution of numbers; as is proved by the fact, that this result has actually been accomplished during a short period in the case of the United Kingdom. But as such anamount of emigration must be caused by the pressure of want or discontent on large classes of the people, or, at the best, by a great inferiority in the earnings of labour in their own country in comparison with the rates in the countries, to wh...« less