Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/391

 DIFFICULTIES OF INDIVIDUALISM 369 us even the Thames. No Londoner who is not a landlord could, under completely free Individualism, obtain one farthing's worth of economic benefit from the existence of London's ocean high- way; the whole equivalent of its industrial advantage would necessarily go to swell the compulsory tribute of London's annual rental. It has often been vaoxtely hoped that this iron law was true only of land, and that, in some unexplained way, the worker did get the advantage of other forms of industrial capital. But further economic analysis shows, as Whately long ago hinted, that rent is a genus of which land rent is only one species.  The worker in the factory is now seen to work no shorter hours or gain no higher wages merely because the product of his labour is multiplied a hundred-fold by machinery which he does not own. Vhatever may be the effect of invention on the wages of one generation as compared with the last, it has now become more than, doubtful to economists whether the worker can count on getting any more of the product of the machine, in a state of 'complete personal liberty,' than his colleague contemporane- ously labouring at the very margin of cultivation with the very minimum of capital. The artisan producing boots by the hundred in the modern machine works of Southwark or Northampton gets no higher wages than the surv/ving hand cobbler in the by- street. The whole differential .advantage of all but the worst industrial capital: like the whole differential advantage of all but the worst land, necessarily goes to him who legally owns it. The mere worker can have none of them. 'The remuneration of labour, as such,' wrote Cairnes in 18747 ' skilled or unskilled, can never rise much above its present level.' Neither can we say that it is the increase of population which effects this result. During the present century, indeed, in spite of an unparalleled increase in numbers, the .wealth annually produced in England per head has nearly doubled. s If popula- tion became stationary to-morrow, and ' complete personal liberty' prevailed, w/th any amount of 'temperance, prudence, and the gift of sympathy,' the present rent and interest would not be affected; our numbers de*,ermine, indeed, how bad the margin of  See, for the argument on this point, the present wrlter's article in the Quarterly Jourml of Economics, January, 1888; reproduced with some additions, in the Pro- ceedis of th Natioml Libal Club Political Economy Circle, vol. i., 1891.  Some Leading Principles, p. 348. a Hence the remarkable suppression of ' Malthusianism' in all recent economic literature, ,notably the hand-books of Symes, Carman, Ely, and Gonner; and its significantly narrow subordination in Prof. Marshall's Princitles of Econom. No. 2. VOL.  B B