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Wallace's First Letter

I note a fallacy in Professor Marshall's lectures on "Progress and Poverty." He endeavours to show that the condition of the labourer has greatly improved in the last century, by comparing wages at the two periods, estimated in wheat. Now this is quite as fallacious as to estimate it in money, and is, in fact, no test at all. In the last century, the bulk of the labourers lived in the country, and had cottages and some land in permanent tenure, with the use of commons and woodlands. They obtained a considerable portion of their income from the produce of their gardens, from pigs and poultry which they could keep. They had milk often free from the farmers; they had wood and turf free from commons and woodlands; and they used, to a considerable extent, rye or oats or barley bread instead of wheat. Their cottages, too, were often copyhold, or at mere nominal rents. Now the bulk of the labourers are town-dwellers, with no land or common rights. Rents are high, and every scrap of food and fuel has to be bought, while cheaper bread than the finest wheat is not to be had, and thus beggars and paupers eat it, though it is dearer, less wholesome, and often less palatable than the old brown bread! Consequently, the value of four pecks of wheat now, in wages, may leave a man worse off than the value of two pecks in the last century. Such a fallacy ought to have been exposed at once, but I cannot see that it was noticed. The political economists always ignore the difference of condition of labourers formerly as regards "use of land," when comparing wages, yet it is the essential thing. Another supposed error of George's was attacked by equal fallacies. Interest was said to be high and wages low in Asia—ignoring the fact that interest there includes enormous risk owing to plundering and bribable government, while wages are only low estimated in money, food and all that land produces being cheap, and fuel and house rent being usually nothing.

¹ Western Daily Press, Mar. 17, 1883, at 3. This letter was read by the chairman at a meeting of the Land Nationalisation Society in Bristol and published as part of an account of the proceedings. The meeting was held to hear a lecture on The Nationalisation of the Land by Professor Newman.