The Malay Archipelago, Volume 2 _ The Land - Alfred Russel Wallace

enormous capital, and intense competition force the produce of our looms and
workshops, would be not a whit worse off physically, and would certainly be
improved morally, if all the articles with which w e supply them were double or
treble their present prices. If at the same time the difference of cost, or a large
portion of it, could find its way into the pockets of the manufacturing workmen,
thousands would be raised from want to comfort, from starvation to health, and
would be removed from one of the chief incentives to crime. It is difficult for an
Englishman to avoid contemplating with pride our gigantic and ever-increasing
manufactures and commerce, and thinking everything good that renders their
progress still more rapid, either by lowering the price at which the articles can be
produced, or by discovering new markets to which they may be sent. If,
however, the question that is so frequently asked of the votaries of the less
popular sciences were put here—"Cui bono?"—it would be found more difficult
to answer than had been imagined. The advantages, even to the few who reap
them, would be seen to be mostly physical, while the wide-spread moral and
intellectual evils resulting from unceasing labour, low wages, crowded
dwellings, and monotonous occupations, to perhaps as large a number as those
who gain any real advantage, might be held to show a balance of evil so great, as
to lead the greatest admirers of our manufactures and commerce to doubt the
advisability of their further development. It will be said: "We cannot stop it;
capital must be employed; our population must be kept at work; if we hesitate a
moment, other nations now hard pressing us will get ahead, and national ruin
will follow." Some of this is true, some fallacious. It is undoubtedly a difficult
problem which we have to solve; and I am inclined to think it is this difficulty
that makes men conclude that what seems a necessary and unalterable state of
things must be good-that its benefits must be greater than its evils. This was the
feeling of the American advocates of slavery; they could not see an easy,
comfortable way out of it. In our own case, however, it is to be hoped, that if a
fair consideration of the matter in all its hearings shows that a preponderance of
evil arises from the immensity of our manufactures and commerce-evil which
must go on increasing with their increase-there is enough both of political
wisdom and true philanthropy in Englishmen, to induce them to turn their
superabundant wealth into other channels. The fact that has led to these remarks
is surely a striking one: that in one of the most remote corners of the earth
savages can buy clothing cheaper than the people of the country where it is
made; that the weaver's child should shiver in the wintry wind, unable to
purchase articles attainable by the wild natives of a tropical climate, where
clothing is mere ornament or luxury, should make us pause ere we regard with
unmixed admiration the system which has led to such a result, and cause us to