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sixpence saved may be considered as so much added to the income of the labourer.[1]
The amount of food in a country may be said to limit the population supported by it; while the amount of articles of convenience, not necessary to the support of life, measures the comforts to be divided among that population. Thus we hear of people in one country rearing families under circumstances of discomfort and misery that are not to be found in another: a fact that has been accounted for by some writers by supposing that the inhabitants of one country had a superior "taste for the comforts of life."[2] The real reason appears to be, that the power of rearing a family depends upon the command that a man has over food, and the absolute
- ↑ The individual labourer may undoubtedly lay out this additional sum in the purchase of food, and to increase his means of supporting a family. But though an individual may do this, everybody cannot: for if everybody was to spend an additional sum, say one-fifth more, in the purchase of corn, without any increase in the quantity for sale, then it is evident that the amount of corn being the same, and being divided in the same proportion among the same number of people, each will purchase exactly the same quantity of corn for the greater sum, as he got before for the smaller sum. It is evident, therefore, that if one man buys more, some one else must buy less. And this is practically the case: the man with a family will buy more food, while the increase of the artificial comforts of life that must be sacrificed to enable a man to maintain a family will form an additional temptation to others to continue in a single state.
- ↑ Torrens, Wages and Combination, p. 12.
