Charles Knight

“ We believe that the entire system of any proposed co-operation that would set aside competition is a delusion,—out of which, indeed, some small good might be slowly and painfully evoked, but which can never mainly affect the great workings of individual industry, whilst its futile attempts may relax the springs of all just and honest action. But we do not in any degree seek to oppose any practical form of co-operation that is built upon the natural and inevitable workings of capital, tending to produce, in a manner not less favourable for production than a system entirely competitive. ”

“ What an infinite variety of machines, in combination with the human hand, is found in a carpenter's chest of tools! The skilful hand of the workman is the power which sets these machines in motion; just as the wind or the water is the power of a mill, or the elastic force of vapour the power of a steam-engine. ”

“ If the freedom of labour were not established upon the same imperishable basis as the security of property, we might, indeed, think that it was a pitiable thing for a man to labour through life at one occupation, and believe that it was debasing to the human intellect and morals to make for ever the eye of a needle, or raise a nap upon woollen cloth. ”

“ The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, Losing both beauty and utility: And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness; Even so our houses, and ourselves and children, Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time, The sciences that should become our country. ”

“ The knife will do it for him in time; and if he take it to the turner, the turner with his machinery, his lathe, and his gouge, will work it out for him in half an hour. The man who has a lump of iron-ore has just as certainly a knife in the heart of it; but no mere labour can work it out. Shape it as he may, it is not a knife, or steel, or even iron—it is iron-ore; and dress it as he will, it would not cut better than a brickbat—certainly not so well as the shell or bone of the savage. ”

“ One of the most striking effects of the want of knowledge producing disunions amongst mankind that are injurious to the interests of each and all, is the belief which still exists amongst many well-meaning but unreflecting persons, that the powers and arrangements which Capital has created and devised for the advancement of production are injurious to the great body of working-men in their character of producers. The great forces by which capital and labour now work,—forces which are gathering strength every day,—are accumulation of skill and division of employments. ”

“ Who can doubt whether, instead of a state of society where the labourers were few and wretched, wasting human strength, unaided by art, in labours which could be better performed by wind, and water, and steam,—by the screw and the lever,—it would not be better to approach as nearly as we can to a state of society where the labourers would be many and lightly tasked, exerting human power in its noblest occupation, that of giving a direction by its intelligence to the mere physical power which it had conquered? ”

“ The ever-present necessities of the people—the absolute want of house-accommodation for a population increasing so rapidly—rendered it a paramount duty of the government no longer to let tax interfere with the cheap building of houses. Every invention that adds to cheapness acts in the same direction; for although the direct taxes cease to press upon the various trades of building, the constant demand keeps bricks and timber at a price almost as high as before the removal or mitigation of the tax. But bricks, regarded as the production of a vast amount of labour, are intrinsically cheap. ”

“ 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 offers 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 contrary, 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. ”

“ One of our great judges, Sir Matthew Hale, said, long ago, what we even now too often forget—"The prevention of poverty, idleness, and a loose and disorderly education, even of poor children, would do more good to this kingdom than all the gibbets, and cauterizations, and whipping-posts, and jails in this kingdom." The whole scheme of legislation for the poor was to set the poor to work by forced contributions from capital. If the energy of the people had not found out how to set themselves to work in spite of bad laws, we might have remained a nation of slaves and paupers. ”

“ What a miserable exception to the comfort of the rest of the English people does it appear when we see a beggar in the streets without stockings! We consider such a person to be in the lowest stage of want and suffering. Two centuries ago, not one person in a thousand wore stockings;—one century ago, not one person in five hundred wore them;—now, not one person in a thousand is without them. Who made this great change in the condition of the people of England, and, indeed, of the people of almost all civilized countries? William Lee—who died at Paris of a broken heart. ”

“ If chemistry and machinery had not been at work to produce more iron and cheaper iron, how would our great modern improvements have stopped short—our railroads, our water-pipes, our gas-pipes, our steam-ships! ”

“ If there were no capital there would be no labour. Capital gives the labourer the power, which he has not in himself, of working for a profit.
A capitalist desires to set up a cotton manufactory. He erects buildings, he purchases machines, he buys cotton-wool, he engages workmen. The annual value of the buildings and of the machines,—that is the interest upon their cost, added to their loss by wear and tear—the price of the raw material, and the wages of the workmen, are all calculated to be paid out of the price at which the cotton thread will be sold. ”

“ However earnest and thinking men may differ as to the legislative means of effecting a more perfect union of skill and capital, it is a prayer in which all good men unite, that the condition of the working-classes may be more and more improved,—that their outward circumstances may be made better and better. But those who labour the steadiest, and the most zealously, in the endeavour to realize this hope, feel that the day of this amelioration is far removed by perpetual contests between the employed and the employers, which impede production and diminish the funds for the support of labour. ”

“ The circulating capital that found wages for the men, and fuel for the engines, would have been idle, because it could not have worked with security. Accumulation, therefore, would have been suspended;—and all profitable labour would, in consequence, have been suspended. It was the unquestionable right of the labourer that his labour should be free; but it was balanced by the right of the capitalist that his accumulation should be secure. Could the labour have seized upon the capital, or the capital upon the labour, production would have been stopped altogether, or in part. ”

“ Those who have not taken the trouble to witness, or to inquire into, the processes by which they are surrounded with the conveniences and comforts of civilized life, can have no idea of the vast variety of ways in which invention is at work to lessen the cost of production. The people of India, who spin their cotton wholly by hand, and weave their cloth in a rude loom, would doubtless be astonished when they first saw the effects of machinery, in the calico which is returned to their own shores, made from the material brought from their own shores, cheaper than they themselves could make it. ”

“ As we have before said, tools and machines are in principle the same. When we strike a nail upon the head with a hammer, we avail ourselves of a power which we find in nature—the effect produced by the concussion of two bodies; when we employ a water-wheel to beat out a lump of iron with a much larger hammer, we still avail ourselves of the same power. There is no difference in the nature of the instruments, although we call the one a tool, and the other a machine. Neither the tool nor the machine has any force of itself. ”

“ The Romans were rich, in the common sense of the word, because they plundered other nations; but they could not produce largely when the individual spirit to industry was wanting. The industry of the freemen was rapine: the slaves were the producers. No man will work willingly when he is to be utterly deprived of the power of disposing at his own will of the fruits of his labour; no man will work skilfully when the same scanty pittance is doled out to each and all, whatever be the difference in their talents and knowledge. ”

“ Even if the whole world were to become communistic, there would be competition between one nation and another nation.
The main objection to the theory of Communism (the objections to its application are obvious enough) is that, in proposing to have a common fund for all labour, it wars against the natural principle of individuality, and destroys the efficiency of production, by confounding the distinctions between the various degrees of skill and industry. If it give higher rewards to skilled labour than to unskilled, it does exactly what is done in the present state of society. ”

“ Let us suppose a man brought up in civilized life, cast upon a desert land—without food, without clothes, without fire, without tools. We see the human being in the very lowest state of helplessness. Most of the knowledge he had acquired would be worse than useless; for it would not be applicable in any way to his new position. 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. ”

“ Or rather, ought we not to feel that every improvement brings healing upon its wings, even to those for whom it is a momentary evil;—that if it displaces their labour or their capital for a season, it gives new springs to the general industry, and calls forth all labour and all capital to higher and more successful exertions? At every advance which improvement makes, the partial and temporary evils of improvement are more and more lessened. ”

“ The density of our population renders the employment of the telegraph less necessary for the ordinary transmission of intelligence. But private curiosity, in a time of great public interest, steps in; and one of the most remarkable exhibitions of our provincial towns at the time at which we are writing—when an agonizing anxiety for the fortunes of our heroic defenders in the Black Sea is the chief thought of millions—is the crowd about the telegraph-office to know something more than the morning paper, brought by railway speed, can furnish to this universal excitement. ”

“ The stars are shining in heaven, but there are thousands of earthly stars glittering in the city there spread before us: and as we look into any small space of that wondrous illumination, we can trace long lines of light losing themselves in the general splendor of the distance, and we can see dim shapes of mighty buildings afar off, showing their dark masses amidst the glowing atmosphere that hangs over the capital for miles, with the edges of flickering clouds gilded as if they were touched by the first sunlight. This is a spectacle that men look not upon, because it is common ”

“ The quantity of labour is, therefore, not diminished, while its productiveness is much increased. It is as if every man among us had become suddenly much stronger and more industrious. The machines labour for us, and are yet satisfied without either food or clothing. They increase all our comforts, and they consume none themselves. The hand-mills are not grinding, it is true: but the ships are sailing that bring us foreign produce; the looms are moving that give us more clothes; the potter, and glass-maker, and joiner, are each employed to add to our household goods ”

“ The Indian could not labour profitably—he could not obtain fish and goats for his food, instead of seal's flesh—till he had called into action the power which he possessed in his knife and his gun-barrel. The prodigal had no accumulation whatever of his own. He had not even the accumulation of peculiar skill in any mode of labour;—for a continual process of waste enlarges neither the mental nor physical faculties, and generally leaves the wretched being who has to pass into the new condition of a producer as helpless as the weakest child. ”

“ When we look at the nature of the accumulated wealth [Pg 47] of society, it is easy to see that the poorest member of it who dedicates himself to profitable labour is in a certain sense rich—rich, as compared with the unproductive and therefore poor individuals of any uncivilized tribe. The very scaffolding, if we may so express it, of the social structure, and the moral forces by which that structure was reared, and is upheld, are to him riches. To be rich is to possess the means of supplying our wants—to be poor is to be destitute of those means. ”

“ There was plenty of labour then to be performed, even with the machinery of the hand-mill; but the slaves and the women did not consider that labour was a good in itself, and therefore they bitterly groaned under it. By and bye the understandings of men found out that water and wind would do the same work that the slaves and the women had done; and that a large quantity of labour was at liberty to be employed for other purposes. Does any one ask if society was in a worse state in consequence? We answer, labour is worth nothing without results. ”

“ It is a law of this manufacture that the demand is greater in the summer than in the winter. The increased summer demand for the lucifer-matches shows that the great consumption is among the masses—the labouring population—those who make up the vast majority of the contributors to duties of customs and excise. In the houses of the wealthy there is always fire; in the houses of the poor, fire in summer is a needless hourly expense. Then comes the lucifer-match to supply the want—to light the candle to look in the dark cupboard—to light the afternoon fire to boil the kettle. ”

“ The common hoe of the English gardener is a much more perfect tool, because it saves labour. Could we have any doubt of the madness of the man who would propose that all iron hoes should be abolished, to furnish more extensive employ to labourers who should be provided only with a crooked stick cut out of a hedge? The truth is, if the working men of England had no better tools than crooked sticks, they would be in a state of actual starvation. ”

“ Wisely, therefore, did the London daily papers each send their active, fearless, and eloquent correspondents, to endure some of the hardships of the march and the bivouac—to observe the battle-field, not secure from its dangers—to write of victories, surrounded by the dead and dying—to be the historians of a day, and thus to furnish the best materials for all future historians. The life of a London reporter, although a life of constant labour, is generally accompanied by much ease and comfort. ”

“ What a quantity of waste both of time and stuff is saved by his foot-rule! and when he chalks a bit of string and stretches it from one end of a plank to the other, to jerk off the chalk from the string, and thus produce an unerring line upon the face of the plank, he makes a little machine which saves him great labour. Every one of his hundreds of tools, capable of application to a vast variety of purposes, is an invention to save labour. Without some tool the carpenter's work could not be done at all by the human hand. A knife would do very laboriously what is done very quickly by a hatchet. ”

“ Bear in mind this; that the first great object of every invention and every improvement is to confer a benefit upon the consumers,—to make the commodity cheap and plentiful. The working man stands in a double character; he is both a producer and a consumer. But we will be bold to say that the question of cheapness of production is a much more important question to be decided in his favour as a consumer, than the question of dearness of production to be decided in his favour as a producer. ”