In 1793 Britain was at war with France. War crippled the flow of
agricultural products to England from Europe and this, combined
with a poor harvest, forced skyward the price of food -- bread
in particular. To ward off food riots, the magistrates of the
small Berkshire village of Speen agreed to supplement the wages
of day laborers, scaling the subsidy to the price of bread. The
higher bread prices climbed, the greater the subsidy. The so-
called "Speenhamland" laws, wildly popular at first, were
quickly adopted throughout the south of England. But there were
problems. Among the most serious of these was that wealthy land
owners had no incentive to raise wages. Indeed, under the
Speenhamland scheme, wages dropped ever lower as subsidies, paid
by taxpayers, grew ever higher. Eventually, some landowners were
paying next to no wages, transforming farm workers from
independent agents to wards of the state. "In the long run, the
result was ghastly," wrote political philosopher and economist
Karl Polanyi, in his 194