This was posted by SageThinker quite some time ago. It is a PDF so had to be re-typed by hand to post.
The key to avoiding the curse of a comfortable life was to create artificial scarcity for the rural poor. As Arthur Young observed in 1771, "everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious" (cited in EP Thompson 1963, 317). Access to common land touched a particularly sensitive nerve among more affluent property owners. Marx (1977, 881 and EP Thompson, 1963, 217 ) cited by a Dr. Hunter who fretted that "a few acres to the cottage would make the laborers too independent."
Such fears were commonplace during the period of classical political economy. A 1794 report to the Board of Agriculture on Shropshire noted that the use of the commons "now open ...operates on the mind as a sort of independence." Others remarked that the enclosure would ensure the subordination of the lower ranks of society which in the present times is so much wanted (Bishton 1794, 24 cited in McNally 1993, 19). According to one proponent of the eighteenth century enclosures,:
The possession of a cow or two with a hog and a few geese naturally exalts the peasant... in sauntering after his cattle, he acquires a habit of indolence. Quarter, half and occasionally whole days are imperceptibly lost. Day labor becomes disgusting, the aversion increases by indulgence and the length of the sale of a half-fed calf or hog furnishes the means of adding intemperance to idleness. (Billingsly 1798, 31 and cited in Horn 1981, 52).
From The Invention of Capitalism by Michael Perelman
No comments:
Post a Comment