work upon a rough piece of wood, worth some four or five pounds of our English money, and, after the fashion of my trade, convert it into a highly-finished cabinet, and then receive -well, let us say some fifteen or twenty pounds in the form of wages, when I have but to slip round the corner and look into my master's shopwindow to find it boldly ticketed up one hundred guineas. To my judgment, all such labour was at the best misdirected and a waste. I will not take upon myself to determine how far such labour may be positively injurious by fostering a vain and ostentatious display, resulting in some instances in a suicidal rivalry. What, however, I do feel justified in saying is, that I do not, on the whole, exactly see how the political economy of the empirics affects me, otherwise than as the producer of unnecessary wares. At the same time, I have a most distinct perception of the trade economy comprised in selling for a hundred guineas an article that cost twenty-five pounds at most."

The fact that luxury is neither promoted nor supported, but avoided by the working man, will at once condemn all labour spent in its production, not only as an idle waste, but as a needless and pernicious addition to the burden that oppresses him.

Articles of luxury may be classed into two kinds; the first including those that have been produced from a cheap and common material by the elaborate workmanship bestowed upon it; the second comprising those objects where little or no additional labour was applied to a costly and rare material. A profusely carved wooden chair and a diamond jewel would be fit representatives of the two classes of articles of luxury. Of those, the first of the two is objectionable, because of the waste of labour thrown away in useless ornature; and the second is more so, because it can, by reason of its rarity and costliness, only become the object of enjoyment to a wealthy person.

The plea that all luxury is likewise accessible and procurable to the working man receives a contradiction by the fact that some jewels, especially those of diamonds and pearls, are of an enormously high price, frequently amounting to many thousand pounds for only one tiny object, so that it is utterly impossible that they can ever be purchased by a working man;

for the accumulated labour of his whole lifetime, were it calculated at £1 per week, would in sixty years but amount to £3,000, which would scarcely be an equivalent sum to the value of many a costly jewel.

Concerning the first kind of luxury entailing superfluous labour upon cheap material, the author is inclined to think that in a better organised state of society the labour thus wasted will be reduced to a minimum by the simple expedient that all those who like to use such articles of luxury will themselves be obliged to produce them; and as to the enjoyment of the second kind, including the use of all articles of rarity, the wearing of costly jewels, of precious stones, the consumption of choice fruit, etc., it can be made accessible to all by an alternate use amongst all the members of the community.

The author is also confident that in a well-organized state of society, in which all the members of the community perform labour by equal allotment, no one would be willing to do any work the result of which should become a means to administer to the satisfaction of the bad and vicious habits of others, such as drunkenness, gluttony, tobacco-smoking, and opium. eating; moreover, if drinkers and smokers, for instance, were obliged to produce the objects of their vicious consumption by their own manual labour; if the beer drinker had to till the barley field, to make the malt, to brew the beer, to make the barrel where to keep it in; and if the smoker had to cultivate a field for the tobacco plant, to gather the leaves in, to dry them, to manufacture them into tobacco or cigars, and if he had also to mould the clay or cut the meerschaum for the tobaccopipe he wishes to use,-both the drinkers and smokers would very soon find that the final enjoyment obtained was not worth the labour it required to put it within their reach. Although these considerations will offer a powerful obstacle against the indulgence in vicious habits in the future social state, they are, however, of no influence in the present state of society, where money is the easy medium of the exchange of labour, and where it always represents labour performed some time past, which renders people forgetful of past hardships and troubles, and they thus spend money easily and freely, even if it is the product of hard work, in order to

obtain the enjoyment of luxury by a deplorable sacrifice of their own labour. The luxury of high living,* the excessive and almost exclusive use of meat as the principal article of food, creates an immense amount of agricultural labour of the most disagreeable kind in the breeding, rearing, fattening, and driving of cattle, which, according to some highly-esteemed testimony, might advantageously be avoided by the introduction of a purely vegetable diet. Sir George Campbell

says: "It is well known that the mass of the Scotch people became one of the finest and most vigorous races of the earth on oat-meal and a little milk, with scarcely any meat at all. There are no finer specimens of mankind than the Afghans and the natives of the Punjaub, but they live on the simplest diet a diet almost entirely without meat.'

CHAPTER XI.-WASTE IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRODUCE BY WHOLESALE TRADING.

IT

T is really surprising that the enormous waste of labour caused by the present system of the distribution of produce has not yet aroused the indignation of the political economist. But it seems that, on the contrary, he rejoices at the wasteful working of the system in both wholesale and retail trade. Being deficient of inventive ingenuity, he cannot imagine a better state of things in which this waste might be avoided, and he thus looks upon the present mode of distribution as the only possible one, and reasons that the waste connected with it is at least preferable to the abnormities that

* A cheerful prescription by the celebrated Dr. Brown runs thus :— "For breakfast, toast and rich soup, made on a slow fire; a walk before breakfast, and a good deal after it. A glass of wine in the forenoon, from time to time. Good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind he likes, but always the most nourishing. Several glasses of port or punch to be taken after dinner, and a dram of whisky after everything heavy. One hour and a half after dinner, another walk. Between tea-time and supper, a game with cheerful company at cards, or any other play, never too prolonged; lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful young women, and an enlivening glass."

would be created by new social arrangements, the principles of which he rejects without any previous and serious investigation.

The frequent displacement of goods from one wholesale warehouse into another, or the changing of hands, as this cumbersome process is called by a facile commercial term, -the repeated selling and reselling of the same goods, is, in the opinion of the political economist, the surest means of distributing produce in the cheapest and most expeditious way. He is blinded by preconceived notions of the excellency of the present social system, and is therefore unable to see its absurdity, which even a child could point out to him.

There is scarcely any commercial transaction, however simple, both in wholesale and retail trade, which is not more or less causing deplorable waste of labour. The changing of hands which takes place with a cargo still afloat on the distant ocean needs no trans-shipment, or unloading of goods; but it cannot be effected without a considerable amount of labour being spent in advertising the sale, and committing the transaction into writing, and entering it into the ledgers of the respective merchants by their clerks. The transfer of goods from one warehouse to another, their frequent displacement in one and the same repository, entail a waste of labour on the part of warehousemen, porters, clerks, carmen, and others, which, if its fearful amount were ascertained, would cast the greatest discredit upon this mode of distributing produce; but the political economist boldly faces the stupidity of the system, and obstinately persists in its efficacy of cheapening all articles of consumption, though the most limited understanding can see that all additional labour required for the repeated displacement and removal of goods must inevitably enhance their price. Is it not bitter irony that many of the real workers -the porters and carmen, for instance-are by this wasteful labour raising the price of many articles of consumption which they themselves need buying for their daily support?

Losses incurred and failures experienced in commerce and trade are so much loss of labour; for money is but the result of accumulated labour, and the amount lost in adverse commercial transactions exactly represents an equal amount of waste in labour. The political economist thinks that the

losses and failures in commerce and trade can be repaired by subsequent success in speculation; but the social reformer maintains that, as capital cannot increase by itself unless it is fructified by labour, the amount of money once lost cannot be regained by subsequent successful operations without further appeal to the fructifying nature of labour.

To the waste of labour, caused by the frequent displacement of goods, and by the losses in unsuccessful commercial speculations, must be added the waste resulting from the injury and damage the goods themselves are frequently suffering by long lying in store, and by their repeated removal from one warehouse to another before they reach the retail dealer, who in his turn may be overtaken by slackness of trade, and have great quantities of goods spoiled in his shop.

The loss incurred by society at large from the present mode of distribution is nowhere more conspicuous than in the provision trade. The facts brought to light by the annual report of Dr. Letheby are startling in the highest degree; for they not only discredit the present mode of the distribution of food, but inculpate in a serious manner even the character of the distributors, and lead to the grave conclusion that our provision dealers deserve to rank high among the eminent poisoners of the nineteeth century, and that they are diverting from the support of the people, and especially of the poorer classes, an amount of food that had to be destroyed as unfit for human use, but which, under proper regulations, might have served to cheapen provisions, and to lighten the burdens of living. His report for the official year of 1873 states that the inspectors of meat and markets seized and condemned and destroyed 80 tons of meat, and in the bonded warehouses 896 boxes, 600 barrels, 30 hogsheads, 40 bags, and 69 cartloads of figs; 22 barrels of currants; more than a million of fish (weighing nearly 400 tons); 9,425 gallons of shrimps, 882 bushels of sprats, oysters, perriwinkels, mussels, and cockles; 4,278 lb. of eels, and rather more than 8 cwt. of salmon. If one, however, considers that this spoiling and destruction of so much valuable food as stated above is not confined to London, but that a similar process and proportionate destruction of the means of living have obtained in all the large towns of the United Kingdom,-in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham,