> (HP) On the repeal of the Corn Laws:
> >> The good guys won, cheap American corn flooded Britain, and it was
> >possible
> >> to eat again. They didn't stop there. All import restrictions were
removed
> >> in spite of heavy opposition from the Conservative Party - who favored
> >> "Tariff Reform".
>
> (EW)
> >I recall that the repeal of the Corn Laws was not really about good guys
and
> >bad guys, but rather about the growing power struggle between the landed
> >classes and industrial capital. I believe it went something like this:
The
> >growth of industry in 18th and 19th century Britain required a huge
labour
> >force. People flocked to cities to work for subsistence wages. They
needed
> >food which, because of the Corn Laws, was provided by the landed classes
at
> >high prices protected by high tariffs. Industrial capital recognized
that,
> >without the Corn Laws, it could pay a subsistence wage lower than the
> >current one. Ultimately, it won, Britain had access to cheaper American
> >"corn", The poor did not really benefit because the wage fell to the new
> >lower subsistence level. The reason the wage could be kept at the
> >subsistence level was because of the "reserve army of the unemployed", as
> >Marx put it -- i.e. there were far more people than jobs.
>
> (KH) Surely not! Despite what Marx was forecasting (and Engels was
stating
> about the northern cities on the basis of false statistics) the average
> standard of living of the ordinary worker rose four or five times during
> the latter part of the 19th century.
Ok, guys, you sent me back to the books, or rather to 'the' book, Polanyi's
"Great Transformation". Here are the notes that I made this morning:
The English Poor Law of 1601 decreed that all able bodied poor should be put
to work that the parish should supply, relying on taxing local landholders
and tenants in accordance with the rental value of the lands or houses they
occupied. The Speenhamland Laws of 1795 specified that the parish must
provide all parishioners with a minimum income pegged to the price of bread
irrespective of their earnings. This amounted to a huge subsidization of
wages by landholders and tenants because Speenhamland guaranteed a living
income. The wage fell throughout Britain because the burden of paying it
had been shifted from the employer to the landowner. It also made it
worthwhile not to work and greatly inhibited the mobility of labour and
hence the creation of a competitive labour market because livelihood was
tied to remaining in the parish. This system was effectively ended with the
Reform Act of 1832 and the amendment of the Poor Law in 1834, which put an
end to the parish-based allowance system.
The motives underlying Speenhamland were essentially those of altruism and
social justice. Major change had taken place in agriculture. Land had
become part of the market-based industrial economy and people had been
forced off the land in order to make room for sheep for the woolen mills.
But instead of moving to the cities to seek employment, they remained in
their parishes because they were guaranteed a living income.
The rise of laissez-faire liberalism, emphasizing the primacy of the
competitive market, and the reforms of 1832 and 1834, abolishing "the right
to live", marked a radical change in the history of industrialization. The
purpose was to get people off guaranteed income and into the mills; that is,
to create a labour market guided by the "invisible hand". However, the
result was a market in which labour initially had little recourse but to put
itself at the mercy of the industrial employer. As Karl Polanyi puts it:
"Never perhaps in all modern history has a more ruthless act of social
reform been perpetrated; it crushed multitudes of lives while merely
pretending to provide a criterion of genuine destitution in the workhouse
test. Psychological torture was coolly advocated and smoothly put into
practice by mild philanthropists as a means of oiling the wheels of the
labour mill. . In short, if Speenhamland meant the rot of immobility, now
the peril was that of death through exposure." (Pp. 82-83, Beacon Press,
1971)
The destitute could, under the direst of circumstances remain in their
perishes and enter the workhouse, but that was not a desirable option, since
it had been deliberately transformed , in the words of Polanyi, "to a place
of horror." (p. 102) The only real option was to find work in the new
industrial economy.
Labour flocked to the cities to work for subsistence wages, if work was to
be found at all. But subsistence wages were tied to the price of grain,
which was held at artificially high levels by protective tariffs against
imported grain. Driven by laissez-faire liberalism and the need to protect
the value of its gold-backed currency, the British government linked Britain
's future to becoming a powerful exporter by underselling its competitors.
But to achieve this, a reduction in manufacturing costs and particularly
wage costs, was needed. The solution was the Anti-Corn Law Act of 1846,
which repealed the high tariffs on imported grain and effectively shifted
power away from the landed classes to industrial capital.
Whether or not cheaper grain benefited the poor is questionable. It meant
cheaper wages, but wages that could nevertheless maintain the worker at his
previous minimum standard. The worker was thus perhaps not worse off, but
certainly not better off. As for those who could not find work, they could
not afford bread at any price and had to continue to rely on the work house
or on charity.
However, change for the better came. It relied on demonstrations of what
working conditions could be like, such as Robert Owen's New Lanark, on
movements toward enfranchisement, such as the Chartists, on political reform
and on the growth of the union movement, all of which were underpinned by
the in increasing wealth of a rapidly growing industrial society.
That is as far as I could take things this morning. I admit that my
previous stuff on the Corn Laws (above) was not quite right, though not
generally wrong. Having replaced it with something better, I now retract
it.
Best regards,
Ed Weick
