Bursary

“ But the peasant proprietor, the metayer, and even the peasant-farmer or allotment-holder—the labourer, under whatever name, producing on his own account—is seeking, not an investment for his little capital, but an advantageous employment for his time and labour. His disbursements, beyond his own maintenance and that of his family, are so small, that nearly the whole proceeds of the sale of the produce are wages of labour. ”

“ BOURSE (from the Med. Lat. bursa, a purse) , the French equivalent of the Stock Exchange, and so used of the Paris Exchange, or of any foreign money-market. The English form “burse,” as in Sir Thomas Gresham’s building, which was known as “Britain’s Burse,” went out of use in the 18th century. ”

“ The payment of wages, therefore, always implies the previous rendering of labour. Now, what does the "rendering" of labour in production imply? Evidently the production of wealth, which, if it is to be exchanged or used in production, is capital. ”

“ Chapter IV The source of wages When it is affirmed that wages are drawn from capital, it is evident that the economic meaning of the term wages is lost sight of, and attention is concentrated upon the common and narrow meaning of the word. For in all those cases in which the labourer is his own employer and takes directly the produce of his labour as his reward it is plain enough that wages are not drawn from capital, but result directly as the product of labour. ”

“ Bursar, burs′ar, n. one who keeps the purse, a treasurer: in Scotland, a student maintained at a university by funds derived from endowment.—adj. Bursar′ial.—ns. Burs′arship, the office of a bursar; Burs′ary, in Scotland, the allowance paid to a bursar ”

“ The Bourse, the great rendezvous of merchants and capitalists of every rank, presents a lively, stirring business aspect, between the hours of 1 and 2 o'clock p. m., when three or four thousand business people may generally be seen thronging the apartments. ”

“ A capital of a thousand pounds, for example, employed in a foreign trade of consumption, of which the returns are made regularly once in the year, can keep in constant employment, in the country to which it belongs, a quantity of productive labor equal to what a thousand pounds can maintain there for a year. If the returns are made twice or thrice in the year, it can keep in constant employment a quantity of productive labor equal to what two or three thousand pounds can maintain there for a year. ”

“ But I am convinced, whatever part of England be the theatre of his operations, a farmer who cultivates twelve hundred acres, which I consider as a large farm, though I know there are larger, cannot proceed with any degree of safety and effect with a smaller capital than ten thousand pounds, and that he cannot, in the ordinary course of culture, make more upon that great capital of ten thousand pounds than twelve hundred a year. ”

“ We propose to show what Labour can effect, and how it is to be encouraged and economized and rewarded: to treat of Capital, its nature and operation, and the proportions of its increase; and to exhibit the union of these two mighty agents of Production. Under the second head, Distribution, occur the great questions of Rent, Profits, Wages, and Population, the various modes of Interchange at home and abroad, including the consideration of all Monopolies, domestic and foreign. Under the third head, Consumption, are considered the modes of Demand and Supply, and of Taxation. ”

“ This week’s bill for groceries is five dollars and sixty-three cents, the baker has owing him about seventy-five, the meat man let me have them two ham bones and that shank end, and I owe him for that; there’s some white shirts and collars at the Chinaman’s, but I want to say right here that your uncle will have to pay for those out of his own spending money. That’s too much of a luxury, that is; we can’t go on with such gentlemanly notions in this house and ever get ahead. Oh, these debts, when will they be paid! That is all I think of except the beer man. ”

“ Suppose him to be a single man, whose cooking and household matters are attended to by the people of the house in which he has a room; then the rent which he pays them out of this capital is, in part, wages for their labour, and he is, so far, an employer. If he saves one shilling out of his thirty, he has, to that extent, added to his capital when the next Saturday comes round. ”

“ If it is possible, we live together. At any rate, you shall live near me; we shall at least meet every day, or oftener, if we please. Nothing will interrupt us. We will regulate our own amusements and pursuits. Here are no expensive diversions of any kind. Your salary shall be a genteel maintenance in such a situation. You shall have sixty pounds, New-York currency, which is more than I expend here. You will find it impossible to spend a farthing except board and clothing. ”

“ Then one day there came a flash which clearly lighted up everything. “Why are you going through this wild, unequal labor in this dull room day by day! Why? Do you absolutely have to do it? Are others keeping at it, as you? Why, why, why?” each one bigger than its fellow, made me meet every fact squarely. “To what end all this?”
My labor was helping to buy beer at home! I was giving up all my wage to my aunt, and getting back a little spending money. I had fifteen cents in the bank at the time. ”

“ Let the most astute or utilitarian of social economists try the experiment of housing, feeding and clothing himself, wife and six children too young to earn anything, on ten or twelve shillings a week; and he will learn something that his philosophy never dreamed of.
Even while bending under the weight of the beer-barrel, thousands of agricultural laborers in England have accomplished wonders by their indefatigable industry, integrity and economy. ”

“ Another branch of the stock must be hands (for a stock of men is a stock of money) , to which purpose every county, city, town, and parish shall be rated at a set price, equivalent to eight years’ payment, for the repair of highways, which each county, &c., shall raise, not by assessment in money, but by pressing of men, horses, and carriages for the work (the men, horses, &c., to be employed by the directors) ”

“ New weavers' cottages with loomshops rose in every direction, all immediately filled and when in full work the weekly circulation of money as the price of labour only rose to five times the amount ever before experienced in this subdivision, every family bringing home weekly 40, 60, 80, 100 or even 120 shillings per week. ”

“ If the steward reside in London, spare cash may, in like manner, be employed at a full rate of interest, by discounting such good bills as are always to be met with at the principal brokers in and about Lombard Street; and these bills will be received by the bankers as they arrive at maturity. By this means 3 or 4 per cent may always be added to the income of a nobleman or gentleman, or sufficient to pay the wages of all the servants. ”

“ The capital of the employer forms the revenue of the labourers, and if this exceeds the necessaries of life, it gives them a surplus which they may either expend in enjoyments, or save. For every purpose for which there can be occasion to speak of the net produce of industry, this surplus ought to be included in it. ”

“ Even if wages thus paid be considered as drawn from capital, then by that act they pass from the category of capital to that of wealth devoted to the gratification of the possessor, as when a cigar dealer takes a dozen cigars from the stock he has for sale and puts them in his pocket for his own use The manufacturer and his capital Take, for instance, an employing manufacturer who is engaged in turning raw material into finished products - cotton into cloth, iron into hardware, leather into boots, or so on, as may be, and who pays his hands, as is generally the case, once a week. ”

“ As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry and so to direct that industry that its product may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. ”

“ It is cases of this class that are always instanced as showing that wages are advanced from capital. For where wages are paid before the object of the labor is obtained, or is finished—as in agriculture, where plowing and sowing must precede by several months the harvesting of the crop ”

“ Fifty years ago no class of labour was worse paid than that of farm servants. A small maid on a farm earned some four and twenty shillings a year—thirty francs!—her board, her clothes, her washing, and lodging. Nowadays, even children of twelve earn from four to six pounds a year—in addition to their keep and certain perquisites{123}—while, after sixteen, their wages rise to three hundred francs (£12) ; and a full-grown man, besides his keep and perquisites, earns, as a rule, some twenty pounds a year. ”

“ The fact that the labourer must have food, clothing, etc., in order to enable him to perform the work is at once recognized and the unwary reader, having been told that the food, clothing, etc., used by productive labourers are capital, assents to the conclusion that the consumption of capital is necessary to the application of labour. ”

“ We everywhere find (in contradiction to statements frequently made in popular declamations) that the labourer gains by his connexion with large capital: in the instances presented in the course of this inquiry, of residences held from the employer, we find that the labourer gains by the expenditure for the external appearance of that which is known to be part of the property,—an expenditure that is generally accompanied by corresponding internal comforts; he gains by all the surrounding advantages of good roads and drainage, and by more sustained and powerful care to maintain them ”

“ Shut in that little office behind the iron bars, bending over the great books sometimes far into the night, looking out each pay-day through a little arched window on grimy faces and rough-bearded men who held out toil-worn hands to receive the week's earnings which long before another week would find their way into some saloon-keeper's till or gambler's pocket. ”

“ Lombard Street are in an orderly uproar of finance. The rattling of shovels is incessant; office-boys cast thousands of pounds, in notes, bills, and money, to the cashier, carelessly, across the counter, paying vast sums in to their masters’ accounts ”

“ The worthy laborer's deposit in the savings-bank, once sufficient to build a little house, will no longer buy a decent pair of boots, and as the rise of the prices of necessaries always runs far ahead of the rise of his wages, he has been rather consuming what he had than laying up new savings. ”

“ Wages, profits, interest and rent take the product.—It is common to consider distribution as made in the forms of wages for labor given without risk as to the product, profits to the one whose labor is associated with risk of loss as well as gain, interest to the one who furnishes capital in any form and waits for his compensation, and rent to the landlord, or owner of estate, whose property is used for a definite time and returned. ”

“ If we are told that the wages of day-labor in a particular country are, at the present time, fourpence a day, or that the revenue of a particular sovereign, seven or eight hundred years ago, was four hundred thousand pounds a year, these statements of nominal value convey no sort of information respecting the condition of the lower class of people in the one case, or the resources of the sovereign in the other. ”

“ If, for instance, I devote my labour to gathering birds' eggs or picking wild berries, the eggs or berries I thus get are my wages. Surely no one will contend that in such a case wages are drawn from capital. ”

“ The rate of wages, in truth, has no direct relation to that price. Labor is a commodity like every other, and rises or falls according to the demand. This is in the nature of things; however, the nature of things has provided for their necessities. Wages have been twice raised in my time; and they hear a full proportion, or even a greater than formerly, to the medium of provision during the last bad cycle of twenty years. They bear a full proportion to the result of their labor. ”

“ A banker's profession being that of a money-lender, his issue of notes is a simple extension of his ordinary occupation. He lends the amount to farmers, manufacturers, or dealers, who employ it in their several businesses. So employed, it yields, like any other capital, wages of labor, and profits of stock. ”

“ Better times may come—a shilling or two may be added to the week's wages—parsimony may accumulate a small capital in the Savings-bank sufficient to purchase an old eight-day clock, a chest of drawers for the wife, a curtained bed for the lumber-place, which a little labour will convert into a bedroom. ”

“ Herbert Burrows and I interviewed some of the girls, got lists of wages, of fines, &c. "A typical case is that of a girl of sixteen, a piece-worker; she earns 4s. a week, and lives with a sister, employed by the same firm, who 'earns good money, as much as 8s. or 9s. a week.' Out of the earnings 2s. a week is paid for the rent of one room. ”

“ Or, if they are content to go on with their old fare of food, they may save the money they expended in ale for the rent of one or two acres of land, for a cow, or for two or three pigs, or deposit it weekly in the Post-Office Savings’ Bank, until it shall amount to a sum sufficient to enable them to set up a little independent business of their own. ”