Capital and labour;
B :^/^y«^^««a^.^iK W^^ mWf mJ2^m. Mm'M^ 'mmk :^^^Mm. WBmm fm<: wm^ ^^^^iP fornia nal m ft i,\ f^^^gi^'j^f LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA FROM THE LIBRARY OF MRS. H. RUSSELL AMORY GIFT OF HER CHILDREN R. W. AND NINA PARTRIDGE .1 rivA •^y^^mm. ^M^M trnm ;^v.- V^K^i;^ naW^ta;,V;r CAPITAL AND LABOUR; INCLUDING THE RESULTS OF MACHINERY. BY CHARLES KNIGHT. LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT & Co., LUDGATE STREET. 1845. IRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND 30N3, STAMFORD STREET. ( vii ) ADVERTISEMENT. " The Results of Machinery " was written by me at a period of great national alarm, when a blind rage against a power supposed to interfere with the claims of Labour was generally prevalent, and led, in the Southern agricultural districts especially, to many acts of daring violence. That little book had a most extensive sale, and is still in constant demand. Fifty thousand copies have been sold since its first publication. Within a year after that publication I wrote a second tract, " Capital and Labour," which was to form part of a Series entitled '' The Rights of Industry." This Series I never could find leisure to proceed with. It has appeared to me that the two parts might be advan- tageously incorporated. Machinery, in connexion wirh Capital and Labour, is one of the great in- struments of Production. In this Volume, then. Vlll ADVERTISEMENT. thus remodelled, the general subject of the Pro- duction OF Wealth is fully, though popularly- expounded. The original Tracts were especially addressed to Working Men. This Volume is ad- dressed to all. The Statistical details are brought up to the present time. Charles Knight. September 20, 1845. CAPITAL AND LABOUR. CHAPTER I. Let us suppose a man brought up in civilized life, cast upon a desert land — without food, without clothes, with- out fire, without tools. We see the human being in the very lowest state of helplessness. Most of the know- ledge he had acquired would be worse than useless ; for it would not be applicable in any way to his new posi- tion. Let the land upon which he is thrown produce spontaneous fruits — let it be free from ferocious animals — let the climate be most genial — still the man would be exceedingly powerless and wretched. The first condi- tion of his lot, to enable him to maintain existence at ail, would be that he should labour. He must labour to gather the berries from the trees — he must labour to ob- tain water from the rivulets — he must labour to form a garment of leaves, or of some equally accessible material, to shield his body from the sun — he must labour to render some cave or hollow tree a secure place of shelter from the dews of night. There would be no intermission of the labour necessary to provide a supply of food from hand to mouth, even in the season when wild fruits were abundant. If this labour, in the most favourable season, were interrupted for a single day, or at most for two or tiiree days, by sickness, he would in all probability perish. But, when the autumn was past, and the wild fruits were gone, he must prolong existence like some savage tribes are reported to do — by raw fish and undressed roots. B 10 CAPITAL AND LABOUR. The labour of procuring these would be infinitely greater than that of climbing trees for fruit. To catch fish with- out nets, and scratch up roots with naked hands, is indeed painful toil. The helplessness of this man's condition would principally be the effect of one circumstance ; — he would possess no accumulation of former labour by which his present labour might be profitably directed. TJie power of labour ivould in his case be in its least produce five state. He would partly justify the assertion that man has the feeblest natural means of any animal ; — be- cause he would be utterly unpossessed of those means which the reason of man has accumulated around every individual in the social state. We asked the reader to suppose a civilized man in the very lowest state in which the power of labour may Ije exercised, because there is no record of any civilized man being for any length of time in such a state. Ross Cox, a Hudson's Bay ti*ader, whose adventures were given to the world about twelve years ago, was in this state for a fortnight ; and his sufferings may furnish some idea of the gi-eater miseries of a continuance in such a powerless condition. Having fallen asleep in the woods of the north-west of America, which he had been traversing with a large party, he missed the traces of his companions. The weather being very hot, he had left nearly all his clothes with his horse when he rambled from his friends. He had nothing to defend himself against the wolves and serpents but a stick ; he had no- thing of which to make his bed but long grass and rushes ; he had nothing to eat but hips and wild cherries. The man would doubtless have perished, unless he had met with some Indians, who knew better how to avail them- selves of the spontaneous productions around them. But this is not an instance of the continuance of Labour in the lowest state of its power. The few individuals, also, who have been found ex- })osed in forests, such as Peter the Wild Boy, and the Savage of Aveyron, — who were discovered, the one about a century ago, in Germany, the other about forty years since, in France, — differed from the civilized man CAPlTAIi AND LABOUR. 1 1 cast naked upon a desert shore in this particular ,• their ivants were of the lowest nature. Thej were not raised above the desires of the most brutish animals. They supplied those desires after the fashion of brutes. Peter was enticed from the woods by the sight of two apples, which the man who found him displayed. He did not like breai, but he eagerly peeled green sticks, and chewed the rind. He had, doubtless, subsisted in this way in the woods. He would not, at first, w^ear shoes, and delighted to throw the hat which was given him into the river. He was brought to England, and lived many years with a farmer in Hertfordshire. During the Scotch Rebellion, in 1745, he wandered into Norfolk ; and having been apprehended as a sus})icious character, was sent to prison. The gaol was on fire ; and Peter was found in a corner, enjoying the warmth of the flames without any fear. The Savage of Aveyron, in the same manner, had the lowest desires and the feeblest powers. He could use his hands, for instance, for no other pur- pose than to seize upon an object ; and his sense of touch was so defective, that he could not distinguish a raised surface, such as a carving, from a painting. This cir- cumstance of the low physical and intellectual powers of these unfortunate persons prevents us exhibiting them as examples of the state which we asked the reader to sup- pose. Let us advance another step in our view of the power of Labour. Let us take a man in one respect in the same condition that we supposed — left upon a desert land, without any direct social aid ; but with some help to his labour by a small Accumulation of former industry. We have instances on record of this next state. In the year 1681 a Moskito Indian was left by acci- dent on the island of Juan Fernandez, in the Pacific Ocean ; the English ship, in which he was a sailor, having been chased oft' the coast by some hostile Spanish vessels. Captain Dampier describes this man's condition in the following words : — '• This Indian lived here alone above three years ; and although he was several times sought after by the Spa- 12 CAPITAL AND lABOUK. niards, who knew he was left on the island, jet they could never find him. He was in the woods hunting for goats, when Captain Watlin drew oif his men, and the ship was under sail before he came back to shore. He had with him his gun, and a knife, with a small horn of powder, and a few shot ; which being spent, he con- trived a way, by notching his knife, to saw the barrel of his gun into small pieces, wherewith he made harpoons, lances, hooks, and a long knife ; heating the pieces hrst in the lire, which he strack with his gun-flint, and a piece of the barrel of his gun, which he hardened ; having leamt to do that among the English. The hot pieces of iron he would hammer out, and bend as he pleased with stones, and saw them with his jagged knife, or grind them to an edge by long labour, and harden them to a good temper as there was occasion.* With such instruments as he made in that manner, he got such provisions as the island afibrded, either goats or hsh. He told us that at first he was forced to eat seal, which is very ordinary meat, beibre he had made hooks ; but afterwards he never killed any seals but to make lines, cutting their skins into thongs. He had a little house, or hut, half a mile from the sea, which was lined with goat's skin ; his couch, or barbecu of sticks, lying along about two feet distance from the ground, was spread with the same, and was all his bedding. He had no clothes left ; having Avorn out those he brought from Watlin's ship, but only a skin about his waist. He saw our ship the day before we came to an anchor, and did believe we were English ; and therefore killed three goats in the morning, before we came to an anchor, and drest them with cabbage, to treat us when we came ashore." Here, indeed, is a material alteration in the wealth of a man left on an uninhabited island. He had a regulsir * It is difficult to understand how the Indian could convert theiro7i gun-barrel info steel, which it appears, from Dampier's account, that he did. Steel is produced by a scientific ad- mixture of carbon with iron. But we assume that the state- ment is correct, and that a conversion, partial doubtless, of iron into steel did take place. CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 13 supply of goats and fish ; he had the means of cooking this food ; he had a house lined with goats' skins, and bedding of the same ; his body was clothed with skins ; he had provisions in abundance to offer, properly cooked, when his old companions came to him after three years' absence. What gave him this power to labour profitably ? — to maintain existence in tolerable comfort V Simply, the gun, the knife, and the flint, which he accidentally had with him when the ship sailed away. The flint and the bit of steel which he hardened out of the gun-barrel, gave him the means of procuring fire ; the gun became the material for making harpoons, lances, and hooks, with which he could obtain fish and flesh. Till he had these tools, he was compelled to eat seal's flesh. The instant he possessed the tools, he could make a selection of what was most agreeable to his taste. It is almost impossible to imagine a human being with less accumulation about him. His small stock of powder and shot was soon spent, and he had only an iron gun-barrel and a knife left, with the means of changing the form of the gun-barrel by fire. Yet this single accumulation enabled him to direct his labour, as all labour is directed even in its highest employment, to the change of form and change of place of the natural supplies by which he was surrounded. He created nothing ; he only gave his natural supplies a value by his labour. Until he laboured, the things about him had no value, as far as he was concerned ; when he did obtain them by labour, they instantly acquired a value. He brought the wild goat from the mountain to his hut in the valley — he changed its place ; he converted its flesh into cooked food, and its skin into a lining for his bed — he changed its form. Change of form and change of place are the begiiming and end of all human labour ; and the Moskito Indian only employed the same prin- ciple for the supply of his M-ants, which directs the labour of all the producers of civilized life into the channels of manufactures or commerce. But the Moskito Indian, far removed as his situation was above the condition of the man without any accumu- lation of former labour — that is, of the man without any 14 CAPITAL A>D LABOUR. capital about him — was only in tlie second stage in which the power of labour can he exercised, and in which it is comparatively still weak and powerless. He laboured — he laljoured with accumulation — but he laboured without that other power which gives the last and hig-hest direc- tion to profitable labour. Let us state all the conditions necessary for the pro- duction of Utility, or of what is essential to the support, comlbrt, and pleasure of human life : — • 1. lliat there shall he Lahour. The man thrown upon a desert island without accu- mulation,— the half-idiot boy who wandered into the German forests at so early an age that he forgot all the usages of mankind, — were each compelled to labour, and to labour unceasingly, to maintain existence. Even with an unbounded connnand of the spontaneous jjroduc- tions of nature, this condition is absolute. It applies to the inferior animals as well as to man. The bee wanders from flower to flower, but it is to labour for the honey. The sloth hangs upon the branches of a tree, but he labours till he has devoured all the leaves, and then climbs another tree. The condition of the support of animation is labour ; and if the labour of all animals were miraculously suspended for a season, very short as com- j)ared with the duration of individual life, the reign of animated nature upon this globe would be at an end. The second condition in the production of utility is, — 2. That there shall he accumulation of former lahour, or. Capital. Without accumulation, as we have seen, the condition of man is the Iom est in the scale of animal existence. The reason is obvious. Man requires some accumulation to aid his natural ix)wers of labouring ; for he is not pro- vided with instiumtnts of labour to anything like the perfection in which they exist amongst the inferior animals. He wants the gnawing teeth, the tearing claws, the sharp bills, the solid mandibles that enable quadruj^eds, and birds, and insects to secure their food, CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 15 and to provide shelter in so many ingenious ways, each leading us to admire and reverence the directing Pro- vidence which presides over such manifold contrivances, lie must, therefore, to work profitably, accumulate instru- ments of work. But he nmst do more, even in tlie unsocial state, where he is at perfect liberty to direct his industiy as he pleases uncontrolled by the rights of other men. He must accumulate stores of covering and of shelter. He must have a hut, and a bed of skins, which are all accumulations, or capital. He must, further, have a stock of food, which stock, being the most essential for human wants, is called provisions, or things provided. He would require this provision against the accidents which may occur to his own health, and the obstacles of weather, which may prevent him from fishing or hunting. The lowest savages have some stores. Many of the inferior animals display an equal care to provide for the exigencies of the future. But still, all such labour is extremely limited. When a man is occupied only in providing immediately for his own wants — doing every- thing for himself, consuming nothing but what he pro- duces himself, — his labour must have a very narrow range. The supply of the lowest necessities of our nature can only be attended to, and these must be very ill sup- plied. The Moskito Indian had fish, and goats' flesh, and a rude hut, and a girdle of skins ; and his power of obtaining this wealth was insured to him by the absence of other individuals who would have been his competitors for what the island spontaneously pro- duced. Had other Indians landed in numbers on the island, and had each set about procuring everything for himself, as the active Moskito did, they would have soon approached the point of starvation ; and then each would have begun to plunder from the other, unless they had found out the principle that would have given them all plenty. There wanted, then, another power to give the labour of the Indian a profitable direction, besides that of accumulation. It is a power which can only exist where man is social, as it is his nature to be ; — and where the principles of civilization are in a certain degree 16 CAPITAL AXD LABOUR. developed- It is, indeed, the beginning and the end of all civilization. It is itself civilization, partial or com- plete. It is the last and the most important condition in the production of useful commodities, — 3. That there shall he Exchanges. There can be no exchanges without accumulation — there can be no accumulation without labour. Exchange is that step beyond the constant labour and the partial accumulation of the lower animals, which makes man the iord of the world. CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 17 CHAPTER II. Society, both in its rudest form and in its most refined and complicated relations, is nothing' but a system of Ex- changes. An exchange is a transaction in which both the parties who make the exchange are benefited ; — and, consequently, society is a state presenting an uninter- rupted succession of advantages for all its members. Every time that we make a free exchange we have a greater desire for the thing which we receive than for the thing which we give ; — and the person with whom we make the exchange has a greater desire for that which we offer him than for that which he ofiers us. When one gives his labour for wages, it is because he has a higher estimation of the wages, than of the profitless ease and freedom of remaining unemployed ; — and, on the con- trary, the employer who purchases his labour, feels that he shall be more benefited by the results of that labour, than by retaining the capital which he exchanges for it. In a simple state of society, when one man exchanges a measure of wheat for the measure of wine which another man possesses, it is evident that the one has got a greater store of wheat than he desires to consume himself, and that the other, in the same way, has got a greater store of M'ine ; — the one exchanges something to eat for some- thing to drink, and the other something to drink for something to eat. In a refined state of society, when money represents the value of the exchanges, the ex- change between the abundance beyond the wants of the possessor of one commodity, and of another, is just as real as the barter of wheat for wine. The only dilfer- B 3 18 CAPITAL AND LABOUR. ence is, that the exchange is not so direct, although it is incomparably more rapid. But, however the system of exchange be carried on, — whether the value of the things exchanged be determined by barter or by a price in money, — all the exchangers are benefited, because all obtain what they want, through the store which they possess of what they do not want. It has been well said, that " Man might be defined to be an animal that makes exchanges."* There are other animals, indeed, such as bees and ants amongst insects, and beavers amongst quadrupeds, who to a certain extent are social ; that is, they concur together in the execution of a common work for a common good : but as to their individual possessions, each labours to obtain what it de- sires from sources accessible to all, or plunders the stores of others. Not one insect or quadruped, however won- derful may be its approaches to rationality, has the least idea of making a formal exchange with another. The modes by which the inferior animals communicate their thoughts are probably not sufficiently determinate to allow of any such agreement. The very foundation of that agreement is a complicated principle, which man alone can understand. It is the Security of individual Property. Immediately that this principle is established, labour begins to work profitably, for it works with ex- change. If the principle of appropriation were not acted upon at all, there could be no exchange, and consequently no production. The scanty bounty of nature might be scrambled for by a few miserable individuals — and the strongest would obtain the best share ; but this insecurity would necessarily destroy all accumulation. Each would of course live from hand to mouth, when the means of living were constantly exposed to the violence of the more powerful. This is the state of the lowest savages, and as it is an extreme state it is a rare one, — no se- curity, no exchange, no capital, no labour, no production. Let us apply the principle to an individual case. The poet who has attempted to describe the feelings of a man suddenly cut off from human society, in ' Verses * Dr. Whalely's lectures on Political Economy. CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 19 supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk during his solitary abode in the island of Juan Fernandez,' repre- sents him as saying, " I am monarch of all I survey."* Alexander Selkirk was left upon the same island as the Moskito Indian ; and his adventures there have formed the groundwork of the beautiful romance of ' Robinson Crusoe.' The meaning of the poet is, that the unsocial man had the same right over all the natural productive powers of the country in which he had taken up his abode, as we each have over light and air. He was alone ; and therefore he exercised an absolute, although a barren sovereignty, over the wild animals by which he was surrounded — over the land and over the water. Ho was, in truth, the one proprietor — the one capitalist, and the one labourer — of the whole island. His absolute }>roperty in the soil, and his perfect freedom of action, were both dependent upon one condition — that he should remain alone. If the Moskito Indian, for instance, had remained in the island, Selkirk's entire sovereignty must have been instantly at an end. Some more definite prin- ci})le of appropriation must have been established, which would have given to Selkirk, as well as to the Moskito Indian, the right to appropriate distinct parts of the island each to his particular use. Selkirk, for example, might have agreed to remain on the eastern coast, while the Indian might have established himself on the west- ern ; — and then the fruits, the goats, and the fish of the eastern part would have been appropriated to Selkirk, as distinctly as the clothes, the musket, the iron pot, the can, the hatchet, the knii'e, the mathematical instruments, and the Bible, which he brought on shore. f If the Indian's territory had produced something which Selkirk liad not, and if Selkirk's land had also something which the Indian's had not, they might have become ex- changers. They would have passed into that condition naturally enough ; — imperfectly perhaps, but still as easily * Cowper's Miscellaneous Poems. f These circumstances are recorJed in Captain Woodes Rogers" Cruiziii!? Vova.^e ruund the World, 1712. 20 CAPITAL AND LABOUR. as any barbarous people who do not cultivate the earth, but exchange her spontaneous products. The poet goes on to make the solitary man say, " My right there is none to dispute." The condition of Alex- ander Selkirk was unquestionably one of absolute liberty. His rights were not measured by his duties. He had all rights and no duties. JSIany writers on the origin of society have held that man, upon entering into union with his fellow-men. and submitting, as a necessary con- sequence of this union, to the restraints of law and go- vernment, sacrifices a portion of his liberty, or natural power, for the security of that power which remains to him. No such agreement amongst mankind could ever have possibly taken place ; for man is by his nature, and without any agreement, a social being. He is a being whose rights are balanced by the uncontrollable force of their relation to the rights of others. The succour which the infant man requires from its parents, to an extent, and for a duration, so much exceeding that re- quired for the nurture of other creatures, is the natural beginning of the social state, established insensibly and by degrees. The liberty which the social man is thus compelled by the force of circumstances to renounce, amounts only to a restraint upon his brute power of doing injury to his fellow-men : and for this sacrifice, in itself the cause of the highest individual and therefore general good, he obtains that dominion over every other being, and that control over the productive forces of nature, which alone can render him the monarch of all he sur- veys. The poor sailor, who for four years was cut off from human aid, and left alone to struggle for the means of supporting existence, was an exception, and a \ery rare one, to the condition of our species all over the world. His absolute rights placed him in the condition of uncontrolled feebleness; if he had become social, he would have put on the regulated strength of rights ba- lanced by duties. Alexander Selkirk was originally left upon the unin- habited island of Juan Fernandez at his own urgent de- sire. He was unhapj»y on board his ship, in consequence CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 21 of disputes with his captain ; and he resol\ed to rush into a state which might probably have separated him for ever from the rest of mankind. In the belief that he should be so separated, he devoted all his labour and all his ingenuity to the satisfaction of his own wants alone. By continual exercise, he was enabled to run down tlie wild goat upon the mountains ; and by persevering search, he knew where to find the native roots that would render his goat's flesh palatable. He never thought, however, of ])roviding any store beyond the supply of his own personal necessities. He had no moti\e for that thought ; because there was no human being within his reach with whom he might exchange that store for other stores. The very instant, hovrcver, that the English ships, which finally gave him back to society, touched upon his shores, — before he communicated by speech with any of his fellow-men, or was discovered by them, — he became social. He saw that he must be an exchanger. Before the boat's crew landed he had killed several goats, and prepared a meal for his expected guests. He kne\v that he possessed a commodity which they did not pos- sess. He had fresh meat, whilst they had only salt. Of course what he had to ofter was acceptable to the sailors ; and he received in exchange protection, and a place amongst them. He renounced his sovereignty, and be- came once more a subject. It was better for him, he thought, to be surrounded with the regulated power of civilization, than to wield at his own will the uncertain strength of solitary uncivilization. But, had he chosen to remain u])on his island, as in after-years he regretted he had not done, although a solitary man, he would not have been altogether cut off from the hopes and the duties of the social state. If he had chosen to remain after that visit from his fellow-men, he would have said to them, before they had left him once more alone, " I have hunted for you my goats, I have dug for you my roots, I have shown you the fountains which issue out of my rocks ; — these are the resources of my dominion : give me in exchange for them a Iresh supjdy of gunpowder and shot, some of your clothes, some of the moans of re- i:'- CAPITAL Ar,X) JLABOLK. pairing these clothes, some of your tools and implements of cookery, and more of your books to divert my solitary hours." Having enjoyed the benefits which he had be- stowed, they v.ould, as just men, have paid the debt whicli they had incurred, and the exchange would have been completed. Immediately that they had quitted his shores, Selkirk would have looked at his resources with a new eye. His hut was rudely fashioned and wretchedly furnished, lie had fashioned and furnished it as well as he could by his own labour, working upon his own materials. The visit Avhich he had received from his fellow-men after he had abandoned every hope of again looking upon their faces, would liave led him to think that other ships would come, with v.hom he might make other exchanges, — new clothes, new tools, new materials, received as the price of his own accumulations. To make the best of his ci]-cumstanccs when that day should arrive, he must re- double his efforts to increase his stock of commodities, — some for himsolf, and some to exchange for other com- modities, if the opportunity for exchange should ever come. He must therefore transplant his vegetables, so as to be within instant reach when they should be wanted. lie must render his goats domestic, instead of chasing them u])on the hills. lie must go ibrward from the hunting state, into the pastoral and agricultural. All this particular course of improvement, however, supposes that Selkirk should continue in his state of ex- clusive propi'ietor — that there should be none to dispute his right. If other ships had come to his shores — if they had trafficked with him from time to time — ex- changed clothes and household conveniences, and imple- ments of cultivation, for his goats' flesh and roots — it is probable that other sailors would in time have desired to partake his plenty ; — that a colony would have been founded — that the island would have become po{)ulous. It is perfectly clear that, whether for exchange amongst themselves, or for exchange with others, the members of this colony could not have stirred a step in the cultiva- tion of the land without approjjriating its produce ; — and they could not have appropriated its produce without CAPITAL AND LABOUR, 23 appropriating the land itself. Cultivation of the land for a common stock would have gone to the establishment precisely of the same principle ; — they would still have been exchangers amongst themselves, and the partner- ship would not have lasted a day, unless each man's share of what the partnership produced had been ren- dered perfectly secure to him. Without security they could not have accumulated — without accumulations they could not have exchanged — without exchanges they could not have carried forward their labours with any compen- sating productiveness. Imperfect appropriation — that is, an appropriation which respects personal wealth, such as the tools and conveniences of an individual, and even secures to him the fruits of the earth when he has gathered them, but which has not reached the last step of a division of land — imperfect appropriation such as this raises up the same invincible obstacles to the production of utility ; because, with this original defect, there must necessarily be un- profitable labour, small accumulation, limited exchange. Let us exemplify this by another individual case. We have seen, in the instances of the Moskito Indian and of Selkirk, how little a solitary man can do for him- self, although he may have the most unbounded command of natural supplies — although not an atom of those natural supplies, whether produced by the earth or the water, is appropriated by others — when, in iact, he is monarch of all he surveys. Let us trace the course of another man, advanced in the ability to subdue all things to his use by iissociation with his fellow-men ; but carrying on that association in the rude and unproductive relations of savage life ; — not desiring to " replenish the earth" by cultivation, but seeking only to appropriate the means of existence which it has spontaneously produced ; — labour- ing, indeed, and exchanging, but not labouring and ex- changing in a way that will permit the accumulation of wealth, and therefore remaining poor and miserable. We are not about to draw any fanciful pictuie, but merely to select some facts from a real narrative. 24 CAPITAL AND LABOUR. CHAPTER III. Is the year 1828, there came to New York, in the United States, a white man named John Tanner, who had been thirty years a captive amongst the Indians in the interior of North America. He was carried off by a band of these people when he was a little boy, from a settlement on the Ohio river, which was occupied by his father, who was a clergyman. The boy was brought up in all the rude habits of the Indians, and became inured to the abiding: miseries and uncertain ])leasures of their wandering life. He grew in time to be a most skilful huntsman, and carried on large dealings with the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, in the skins of beavers and other animals, which he and his associates had shot or entrapped. The history of this man was altogether so curious, that he was induced to furnish the materials for a complete narrative of his adventures ; and, accord- ingly, a book, fully descriptive of them, was prepared for the press by Dr. Edwin James, and printed at New York in 1830. It is of course not within the intent of our little work to furnish any regular abridgment of John Tanner's story ; but it is our wish to direct attention to some few particulars, which appear to us strikingly to illustrate some of the positions which we desire to entbrce by thus exhibiting their practical operation. The country in which this man lived so many years is that immense territory belonging to the United States, which is still covered by boundless forests which the pro- gress of civilization has not yet cleared away. In this region a number of scattered Indian tribes maintain a precarious CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 25 existence by hunting: the moose-deer and the buffalo for their supply of food, and by entrapping the foxes and martens of the woods and the beavers of the lakes, whose skins they generally exchange with the white traders of Europe for articles of urgent necessity, such as ammuni- tion and guns, traps, axes, and woollen blankets ; but too often for ardent spirits, equally the curse of savage and of civilized life. The contact of savage man with the outskirts of civilization perhaps attticts him with the vices of both states. But the principle of exchange, imper- fectly and irregularly as it operates amongst the Indians, furnishes some excitement to their ingenuity and their industry. Habits of providence are to a certain degree created ; it becomes necessary to accumulate some capital of the commodities which can be rendered valuable by their own labour, to exchange for commodities which their own labour, without exchange, is utterly unable to procure. The principle of exchange, too, being recog- nised amongst them in their dealings with foreigners, the security of property — without which, as we have shown, that principle cannot exist at all — is one of the great rules of life amongst themselves. But still these poor Indians, from the mode which they propose to them- selves for the attainment of property, which consists only in securing what nature has produced, without directing the course of her productions, must be very far removed from the regular attainment of those blessings which civi- lized society alone offers. We shall exemplify these state- ments by a few details. The country over which these people range occupies a surface that may be roughly described as five or six times as large as all England. They have the unbounded com- mand of all the natural resources of that country ; and yet their entire numbers do not exceed a few hundred thou- sands— that is, they do not equal the population of a mo- derately sized English county. It may be fairly said that each Indian requires a thousand acres for his maintenance. The supplies of food are so scanty — a scantiness which would at once cease to exist were there any cultivation — that if a large number of these Indians assembled tO£:ether 26 CAPITAli AND LABOUR. to co-operate in their hunting- expeditions, they are very soon dispersed by the ui'gent desire of satisfying hunger. Tanner says, " We all went to hunt beavers in concert. In hunts of this kind the proceeds are sometimes equally divided ; but in this instance every m&n retained what he had killed. In three days I collected as many skins as I could carry. But in these distant and hasty hunts little meat could be brought in ; and the -whole band was soon suffering with hunger. Many of the hunters, and I among others, for want of food became extremely weak, and unable to hunt far from home." In another place ha says, " I began to be dissatisfied at remaining with large bands of Indians, as it was asual for theru, after having remained a short time in a place, to suflier from hunger " These suftierintrs were not, in many cases, of short dura- tion, or of trifling intensity. Tanner describes one in- stance of famine in the following words : — " The Indians gathered around, one after another, until we became a considerable band, and then we began to suffier fram hunger. The weather was very severe, and our sutfenng increased. A young w oman was the first to die of hung-er. Soon after this, a young man, her brother, was taken with that kind of delirium or madness which precedes death in such as die of starvation. In this condition he had left the lodge of his debilitated and desponiing parents ; and when, at a late hour in the evening, I returned from my hunt, they could not tell what had be- come of him. I left the camp alx)ut the middle of the night, and following his track, I found him at some dis- tance, lying dead in the snow ." This worst species of suffering equally exists at par- ticular periods, whether food be sought for by large or by small parties, by bands or by individuals. Tanner was travelling with the family of the woman w ho had adopted him. He says, " We had now a short season of plenty; but soon became hungry again. It often happened that for two or three days we had nothing to eat ; then a rab- bit or two, or a })ird, would afford us a prospect of pro- tracting the sufterings of hunger a few days longer." Again he says, " Having subsisted for some time almost CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 27 entirely on the inner bark of trees, and 'particularly of a climbing vine found there, our strength was much re- duced." The misery which is thus so strikingly described, pro- ceeds from the circumstance that the labour of the Indians does not take a profitable direction : and that this waste of labour (for unprofitable applications of labour are the greatest of all wastes) arises from the one fact, that in certain particulars these Indians labour with- out appropriation. They depend upon the chance pro- ductions of nature, without compelling her to produce ; and they do not compel her to produce, because there is no appropriation of the soil, the most efficient natural in- strument of production. If the Indians had directed the productive powers of the earth to the growth of corn, instead of to the growth of foxes' skins, they would have become rich. But they could not have reached this point without appropriation of the soil. They had learnt the necessity of appropriating the products of the soil, when they had bestowed labour upon obtaining them; but the last step towards productiveness wtis not taken. The Indians thereibre were poor ; the European settlers who had taken this last step were rich. The want of resources in the country of the Indians, for the maintenance, even for a short time, of any con- siderable body of persons, is so notorious a fact, that when the Government of the United States, in 180*2, gathered together the chiefs of the various tribes of the Creek Indians in their own country, to propose to them a plan for their civilization, it became necessary for the Commissioners of that Government to provide for the support of the people so assembled, by conveying food into the forests from the stores of the American towns. The imperfect appropriation which exists amongst the Indians, preventing, as it does, the accumulation of capital, prevents the application of that skill and knov/- ledge which is preserved and accumulated by the Divi- sion of employment. Tanner describes a poor fellow who was wounded in the arm by the accidental dis- charge of a gun. As there was little surgical skill 28 CAPITAL, A>'D LABOUR. 