it
encourages the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are
the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality,
improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives."[225] But the
teaching of Ricardo, and the writers who most closely followed him in
his conception of the industrial system, leaned heavily in favour of
low wages as the sound basis of industrial progress.

The doctrine of the economy of low wages in England scarcely needed
the formal support of the scientific economist. It was already
strongly implanted in the mind of the eighteenth century "business
man," who moralised upon the excesses resulting from high wages much
in the tone of the business man of to-day. It would be scarcely
possible to parody the following line of reflection:--

"The poor in the manufacturing counties will never work any
more time in general than is necessary just to live and
support their weekly debauches. Upon the whole we may fairly
aver that a reduction of wages in the woollen manufactures
would be a national blessing and advantage and no real injury
to the poor. By this means we might keep our trade, uphold our
rents, and reform the people into the bargain." (Smith's
_Memoirs of Wool_, vol. ii. p. 308.)

Compare with this Arthur Young's frequent suggestion that rents should
be raised in order to improve farming.[226] So Dr. Ure, half a century
later, notwithstanding that his main argument is for the "economy of
high wages," both on the ground that it evokes the best quality of
work and because it keeps the workman contented, is unable to avoid
flatly contradicting himself as follows:--

"High wages, instead of leading to thankfulness of temper and
improvement of mind, have, in too many cases, cherished pride
and supplied funds for supporting refractory spirits in
strikes wantonly inflicted upon one set of mill-owners after
another throughout the several districts of Lancashire for the
purpose of degrading them into a state of servitude."
(_Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 366.)

So again (p. 298):--"In fact, it was their high wages which enabled
them to maintain a stipendary committee in affluence, and to pamper
themselves into nervous ailments by a diet too rich and exciting for
their indoor occupation."

The experiments of Robert Owen in raising wages and shortening
hours in his New Lanark mills failed utterly to convince his