London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (80 page)

But a still greater blunder than the non-distinction between products and materials lies in the confounding of
processes
with
products
. In an Industrial Exhibition to reserve no special place for the processes of industry is very much like the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted; and yet it is evident that, in the quadruple arrangement before mentioned, those most important industrial operations which consist merely in arriving at the same result by simpler means – as, for instance, the hot blast in metallurgical operations – can find no distinct expression. The consequence is that methods of work are arranged under the same head as the work itself; and the ‘Executive’ have been obliged to group under the first subdivision of
Raw Materials
the following inconsistent jumble: Salt deposits; ventilation; safety lamps and other methods of lighting; methods of lowering and raising miners, and draining; methods
of roasting, smelting, or otherwise reducing ores; while under the second subdivision of Raw Materials chemical and pharmaceutical
processes
and
products
are indiscriminately confounded.

Another most important defect is the omission of all mention of those industrial processes which have
no special or distinct products of their own
, but which are rather engaged
in adding to the beauty or durability of others
: as, for instance, the bleaching of some textile fabrics, the embroidering of others, the dyeing and printing of others; the binding of books; the cutting of glass; the painting of china, &c. From the want of an express division for this large portion of our industrial arts, there is a jumbling and a bungling throughout the whole arrangement. Under the head of
manufactures
are grouped printing and bookbinding, the ‘dyeing of woollen, cotton, and linen goods’, ’embroidery, fancy, and industrial work’, the cutting and engraving of glass; and, lastly, the art of ‘decoration generally’, including ‘ornamental, coloured decoration’, and the ‘imitations of woods, marbles, &c.’ – though surely these are one and all
additions
to manufactures rather than
manufactures
themselves. Indeed, a more extraordinary and unscientific hotch-potch than the entire arrangement has never been submitted to public criticism and public ridicule.

Amid all this confusion and perplexity, then, how are we to proceed? Why, we must direct our attention to some more judicious and more experienced guide. In such matters, at least, as the Exposition of the Science of Labour, it is clear that we must ‘put not our trust in princes’.

That Prince Albert has conferred a great boon on the country in the establishment of the Great Exhibition (for it is due not only to his patronage but to his own personal exertions), no unprejudiced mind can for a moment doubt; and that he has, ever since his first coming among us, filled a most delicate office in the State in a highly decorous and commendable manner, avoiding all political partizanship, and being ever ready to give the influence of his patronage, and, indeed, co-operation, to anything that appeared to promise an amelioration of the condition of the working classes of this country, I am most glad to have it in my power to bear witness; but that,
because of this
, we should pin our faith to a ‘hasty generalization’ propounded by him, would be to render ourselves at once silly and servile.

If, with the view of obtaining some more precise information concerning the several branches of industry, we turn our attention to the Government analysis of the different modes of employment among the people, we shall find that for all purposes of a scientific or definite character the Occupation Abstract of the Census of this country is comparatively useless. Previous
to 1841, the sole attempt made at generalization was the division of the entire industrial community into three orders, viz.:

I.
Those employed in agriculture

1. Agricultural Occupiers

a.
Employing Labourers

b.
Not employing Labourers

2. Agricultural Labourers

II
Those employed in manufacturers

1. Employed in manufactures

2. Employed in making Manufacturing Machinery

III.
All other classes

1. Employed in Retail Trade or in Handicraft, as Masters or Workmen

2. Capitalists, Bankers, Professional and other educated men

3. Labourers employed in labour not Agricultural – as Miners, Quarriers, Fishermen, Porters, &c.

4. Male Servants

5. Other Males, 20 years of age

The defects of this arrangement must be self-evident to all who have paid the least attention to economical science. It offends against both the laws of logical division, the parts being neither distinct nor equal to the whole. In the first place, what is a manufacturer? and how is such an one to be distinguished from one employed in handicraft? How do the workers in metal, as the ‘tin manufacturers’, ‘lead manufacturers’, ‘iron manufacturers’ – who are one and all classed under the head of manufacturers – differ, in an economical point of view, from the workers in wood, as the carpenters and joiners, the cabinet-makers, ship-builders, &c., who are all classed under the head of handicraftsmen? Again, according to the census of 1831, a brewer is placed among those employed in retail trade or in handicrafts, while a vinegar maker is ranked with the manufacturers. According to Mr Babbage,
manufacturing
differs from mere
making
simply in the quantity produced – he being a manufacturer who makes a great number of the same articles; manufacturing is thus simply production in a large way, in connection with the several handicrafts. Dr Ure, however, appears to consider such articles manufactures as are produced by means of machinery, citing the word which originally signified production by hand (being the Latin equivalent for the Saxon
handicraft
) as an instance of those singular verbal corruptions by which terms come to stand for the very opposite to their literal meaning. But with all deference to the Doctor, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, Mr Babbage’s definition
of a manufacturer, viz., as a producer on a large scale, appears to me the more correct; for it is in this sense that we speak of manufacturing chemists, boot and shoe manufacturers, ginger-beer manufacturers, and the like.

The Occupation Abstract of the Census of 1841, though far more comprehensive than the one preceeding it, is equally unsatisfactory and unphilosophical. In this document the several members of Society are thus classified:

I.
Persons engaged in commerce, trade, and manufacture

II.
Agriculture

III.
Labour, not agricultural

IV.
Army and navy merchant seamen, fishermen, and watermen

V.
Professions and other pursuits requiring education

VI.
Government, Civil Service, and municipal and parochial officers

VII.
Domestic servants

VIII.
Persons of independent means

IX.
Almspeople, pensioners, paupers, lunatics, and prisoners

X.
Remainder of population, including women and children

Here it will be seen that the defects arising from drawing distinctions where no real differences exist, are avoided, those engaged in handicrafts being included under the same head as those engaged in manufacture; but the equally grave error of confounding or grouping together occupations which are essentially diverse, is allowed to continue. Accordingly, the first division is made to include those who are engaged in trade and commerce as well as manufacture, though surely – the one belongs strictly to the distributing, and the other to the producing class – occupations which are not only essentially distinct, but of which it is absolutely necessary for a right understanding of the state of the country that we know the proportion that the one bears to the other. Again, the employers in both cases are confounded with the employed, so that, though the capitalists who supply the materials, and pay the wages for the several kinds of work are a distinct body of people from those who
do
the work, and a body, moreover, that it is of the highest possible importance, in an economical point of view, that we should be able to estimate numerically – no attempt is made to discriminate the one from the other. Now these three classes, distributors, employers, and operatives, which in the Government returns of the people are jumbled together in one heterogeneous crowd, as if the distinctions between Capital, Labour, and Distribution had never been
propounded, are precisely those concerning which the social inquirer desires the most minute information.

The Irish census is differently arranged from that of Great Britain. There the several classes are grouped under the following heads:

I. 
Ministering to food

1. As producers

2. As preparers

3. As distributors

II. 
Ministering to clothing

1. As manufacturers of materials

2. As handicraftsmen and dealers

III. 
Ministering to lodging, furniture, machinery, &c
.

IV. 
Ministering to health

V. 
Ministering to charity

VI. 
Ministering to justice

VII. 
Ministering to education

VIII. 
Ministering to religion

IX. 
Various arts and employments, not included in the foregoing

X. 
Residue of population
, not having specified occupations, and including unemployed persons and women.

This, however, is no improvement upon the English classification. There is the same want of discrimination, and the same disregard of the great ‘economical’ divisions of society.

Moreover, to show the extreme fallacy of such a classification, it is only necessary to make the following extract from the Report of the Commissioners for Great Britain:

‘We would willingly have given a classification of the occupations of the inhabitants of Great Britain into the various wants to which they respectively minister, but, in attempting this, we were stopped by the various anomalies and uncertainties to which such a classification seemed necessarily to lead, from the fact that many persons supply more than one want, though they can only be classed under one head. Thus to give but a single instance –
the farmer and grazier may be deemed to minister quite as much to clothing by the fleece and hides as he does to food by the flesh of his sheep and cattle.
’

He, therefore, who would seek to elaborate the natural history of the industry of the people of England, must direct his attention to some social philosopher, who has given the subject more consideration than either princes or Government officials can possibly be expected to devote to it.
Among the whole body of economists, Mr Stuart Mill appears to be the only man who has taken a comprehensive and enlightened view of the several functions of society. Following in the footsteps of M. Say, the French social philosopher, he first points out concerning the products of industry, that labour is not creative of objects but of utilities, and then proceeds to say:

‘Now the utilities produced by labour are of three kinds; they are –

‘First, utilities
fixed and embodied in outward objects
; by labour employed in investing external
material
things with properties which render them serviceable to human beings. This is the common case, and requires no illustration.

‘Secondly, utilities
fixed and embodied in human beings
; the labour being in this case employed in conferring on human beings qualities which render them serviceable to themselves and others. To this class belongs the labour of all concerned in education; not only schoolmasters, tutors, and professors, but governments, so far as they aim successfully at the improvement of the people; moralists and clergymen, as far as productive of benefit; the labour of physicians, as far as instrumental in preserving life and physical or mental efficiency; of the teachers of bodily exercises, and of the various trades, sciences, and arts, together with the labour of the learners in acquiring them, and all labour bestowed by any persons, throughout life, in improving the knowledge or cultivating the bodily and mental faculties of themselves or others.

‘Thirdly, and lastly, utilities
not fixed or embodied in any object
, but consisting in a mere
service rendered
, a pleasure given, an inconvenience or pain averted, during a longer or a shorter time, but without leaving a
permanent
acquisition in the improved qualities of any person or thing; the labour here being employed in producing an utility
directly
, not (as in the two former cases) in
fitting some other
thing to afford an utility. Such, for example, is the labour of the musical performer, the actor, the public declaimer or reciter, and the showman.

‘Some good may, no doubt, be produced beyond the moment, upon the feeling and disposition, or general state of enjoyment of the spectators; or Instead of good there may be harm, but neither the one nor the other is the effect intended, is the result for which the exhibitor works and the spectator pays, but the immediate pleasure. Such, again, is the labour of the army and navy; they, at the best, prevent a country from being conquered, or from being injured or insulted, which is a service, but in all other respects leave the country neither improved nor deteriorated. Such, too, is the labour of the legislator, the judge, the officer of justice, and all
other agents of Government, in their ordinary functions, apart from any influence they may exert on the improvement of the national mind. The service which they render is to maintain peace and security; these compose the utility which they produce. It may appear to some that carriers, and merchants or dealers, should be placed in this same class, since their labour does not add any properties to objects, but I reply that it does, it adds the property of being in the place where they are wanted, instead of being in some other place, which is a very useful property, and the utility it confers is embodied in the things themselves, which now actually are in the place where they are required for use, and in consequence of that increased utility could be sold at an increased price proportioned to the labour expended in conferring it. This labour, therefore, does not belong to the third class, but to the first.’