In another column we publish a letter from Mr. J. Noble* 
finding fault with some of our remarks in a leading article of the 
Labour Standard of June 18.° Although we cannot, of course, make 
our leading columns the vehicle of polemics on the subject of 
historical facts or economic theories, we will yet, for once, reply to 
a man who, though in an official party position, is evidently 
sincere. 

To our assertion that what was aimed at by the repeal of the 
Corn Laws was to “reduce the price of bread and thereby the 
money rate of wages’, Mr. Noble replies that this was a 
“Protectionist fallacy” persistently combated by the League, and 
gives some quotations from Richard Cobden’s speeches and an 
address of the Council of the League to prove it.“ 

The writer of the article in question was living at the time in 
Manchester—a manufacturer amongst manufacturers.**”’ He is, of 
course, perfectly well aware of what the official doctrine of the 
League was. To reduce it to its shortest and most generally- 
recognised expression (for there are many varieties) it ran 
thus:—The repeal of the duty on corn will increase our trade with 
foreign countries, will directly increase our imports, in exchange 
for which foreign customers will buy our manufactures, thus 
increasing the demand for our manufactured goods; thus the 
demand for the labour of our industrial working population will 
increase, and therefore wages must rise. And by dint of repeating 

a J. Noble, “The Anti-Corn Law League and Wages”, The Labour Standard, 
No. 10, July 9, 1881.— Ed. 
> See this volume, pp. 389-93.— Ed. 

The Wages Theory of the Anti-Corn Law League 401 

this theory day after day and year after year the official 
representatives of the League, shallow economists as they were, 
could at last come out with the astounding assertion that wages 
rose and fell in inverse ratio, not with profits, but with the price of 
food; that dear bread meant low wages and cheap bread high 
wages. Thus, the decennial revulsions of trade which have existed 
before and after the repeal of the Corn duties were, by the 
mouthpieces of the League, declared to be the simple effects of 
the Corn Laws, bound to disappear as soon as those hateful laws 
were removed; that the Corn Laws were the only great obstacle 
standing between the British manufacturer and the poor foreign- 
ers longing for that manufacturer’s produce, unclad and 
shivering for want of British cloth. And thus Cobden could 
actually advance, in the passage quoted by Mr. Noble, that the 
depression of trade and the fall in wages from 1839 to 1842 was 
the consequence of the very high price of corn during these years, 
when it was nothing else but one of the regular phases of 
depression of trade, recurring with the greatest regularity, up to 
now, every ten years; a phase certainly prolonged and aggravated 
by bad crops and the stupid interference of greedy landlord 
legislation. 

Well, this was the official theory of Cobden, who with all his 
cleverness as an agitator was a poor business man and a shallow 
economist; he no doubt believed it as faithfully as Mr. Noble 
believes it to this day. But the bulk of the League was formed of 
practical men of business, more attentive to business and generally 
more successful in it than Cobden. And with these matters were 
quite different. Of course, before strangers and in_ public 
meetings, especially before their “hands”, the official theory was 
generally considered “the thing’. But business men, when intent 
upon business, do not generally speak their mind to their 
customers, and if Mr. Noble should be of a different opinion, he 
had better keep off the Manchester Exchange. A very little 
pressing as to what was meant by the way in which wages must rise 
in consequence of free trade in corn, was sufficient to bring it out 
that this rise was supposed to affect wages as expressed in 
commodities, and that it might be quite possible that the money 
rate of wages would not rise—but was not that substantially a rise 
of wages? And when you pressed the subject further it usually 
came out that the money rate of wages might even fall while the 
comforts supplied for this reduced sum of money to the working 
man would still be superior to what he enjoyed at the time. And if 
you asked a few more close questions as to the way, how the 

expected immense extension of trade was to be brought about, 
you would very soon hear that it was this last contingency upon 
which they mainly relied: a reduction in the money rate of wages 
combined with a fall in the price of bread, etc., more than 
compensating for this fall. Moreover, there were plenty to be met 
who did not even try to disguise their opinion that cheap bread 
was wanted simply to bring down the money rate of wages, and 
thus knock foreign competition on the head. And that this, in 
reality, was the end and aim of the bulk of the manufacturers and 
merchants forming the great body of the League, it was not so 
very difficult to make out for any one in the habit of dealing with 
commercial men, and therefore in the habit of not always taking 
their word for gospel. This is what we said and we repeat it. Of 
the official doctrine of the League we did not say a word. It was 
economically a “fallacy”, and practically a mere cloak for 
interested purposes, though some of the leaders may have 
repeated it often enough to believe it finally themselves. 

Very amusing is Mr. Noble’s quotation of Cobden’s words about 
the working classes “rubbing their hands with satisfaction” at the 
prospect of corn at 25s. a quarter. The working classes at that time 
did not disdain cheap bread; but they were so full of “satisfaction” 
at the proceedings of Cobden and Co. that for several years past 
they had made it impossible for the League in the whole of the 
North to hold a single really public meeting. The writer had the 
“satisfaction” of being present, in 1843, at the last attempt of the 
League to hold such a meeting in Salford Town Hall, and of 
seeing it very nearly broken up by the mere putting of an 
amendment in favour of the People’s Charter.*** Since then the 
rule at all League meetings was “admission by ticket”, which was 
far from being accessible to everyone. From that moment 
“Chartist obstruction” ceased. The working masses had attained 
their end—to prove that the League did not, as it pretended, 
represent them. 

In conclusion, a few words about the wages theory of the 
League. The average price of a commodity is equal to its cost of 
production; the action of supply and demand consists in bringing 
it back to that standard around which it oscillates. If this be true 
of all commodities, it is true also of the commodity Labour (or 
more strictly speaking, Labour-force). Then the rate of wages is 
determined by the price of those commodities which enter into the 
habitual and necessary consumption of the labourer. In other 
words, all other things remaining unchanged, wages rise and fall 
with the price of the necessaries of life. This is a law of political 

The Wages Theory of the Anti-Corn Law League 403 

economy against which all the Perronet Thompsons, Cobdens, and 
Brights will ever be impotent. But all other things do not always 
remain unchanged, and therefore the action of this law in practice 
becomes modified by the concurrent action of other economical 
laws; it appears darkened, and sometimes to such a degree that 
you must take some trouble to trace it. This served as a pretext to 
the vulgarising and vulgar economists dating from the Anti-Corn 
Law League to pretend, first, that Labour, and then all other 
commodities, had’ no real determinable value, but only a fluctuat- 
ing price, regulated by supply and demand more or less without 
regard to cost of production, and that to raise prices, and 
therefore wages, you had nothing to do but increase the demand. 
And thus you got rid of the unpleasant connection of the rate of 
wages with the price of food, and could boldly proclaim that in 
this crude, ridiculous doctrine that dear bread meant low wages 
and cheap bread high wages. 

Perhaps Mr. Noble will ask whether wages are not generally as 
high, or even higher, with to-day’s cheap bread than with the dear 
taxed bread before 1847? That would take a long inquiry to 
answer. But so much is certain: where a branch of industry has 
prospered and at the same time the workmen have been strongly 
organised for defence, their wages have generally not fallen, and 
sometimes perhaps risen. This merely proves that the people were 
underpaid before. Where a branch of industry has decayed, or 
where the workpeople have not been strongly organised in Trades 
Unions, these wages have invariably fallen, and often to starvation 
level. Go to the East-end of London and see for yourselves!