Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, 1946.

INTRODUCTION

THE MERCANTILIST BACKGROUND OF
AMERICAN LABOR RELATIONS

The revolution in the government's relations with business and labor, inaugurated in 1933 and gaining increased momentum in the course of the Second World War, does not mark the first appearance in this country of a system of elaborate governmental controls over the economic order. Prior to laissez faire capitalism, both business and labor considered government regulation the normal order. This was particularly true in the age of colonial settlement an era when business enterprise was regulated in the interest of a political program. Then the entrepreneur was not free to carry on his business as he saw fit, nor was the worker free to withhold his labor or to demand any working conditions he wished. The controls for the regulation of commerce, industry, and labor which were introduced in the English colonies in the New World were to a large degree rooted in English and continental experience. However, in studying these controls it must be borne in mind that the labor problem was only one phase of the general problem of economic regulation under mercantilism.1 A study of the labor codes apart from these general controls would serve to give to labor matters a false emphasis for that time and place.

Mercantilism had as its objective the creation of a prosperous and powerful national state or self-sufficing empire. According to the prevailing thought of the day, such prosperity and power were to be obtained by maintaining an adequate system of national defense and an adequate stock of precious metals, by affording protection to home industries against foreign competition, and by making it possible for home industries to compete successfully in foreign markets through assurance of necessary raw materials and low production costs. Hence, mercantilism in England may be said to have rested upon two main pillars -- the Acts of Trade and the Tudor industrial code. The former provided for the external regulation and control of foreign trade and the subordination of colonial interests to those of the mother country.2 The latter sought to assure profit to the English entrepreneur by guaranteeing him an adequate labor supply at a subsistence wage3 and at the same time to safeguard the worker against unrestrained exploitation in order that agricultural and industrial labor needs might continue to be met over the long term.

The Tudor industrial code patterned colonial legislation and administrative practice, although both the colonial entrepreneur and the free worker, owing to widely divergent conditions obtaining in this country, enjoyed a larger measure of freedom from restriction than they would have if they had remained at home. Even in the colonies there were many vestigial remains of medieval town regulations alongside a vigorous program of centralizing mercantilism. Because of the failure to effectuate any true measure of colonial unification, mercantilism as a system of internal regulation for the strengthening of the national economy never attained in colonial life a fullness of vigor comparable with its counterpart in the mother country, where town regulatory activity was in the course of time subordinated to a broad national policy.4 Typical urban regulations, such as those sustaining the craft monopolies, were introduced into some of the colonies for a brief period at best, although by regulating admission to freemanship the colonial towns were long able to check competition in the crafts and retail trades. However, while the craft guild system was not successfully re-created at the time of settlement, vigorous enforcement was given to colonial and local regulations against forestalling, engrossing, and regrating, and establishing the assizes of bread.5 In England the enforcement of the industrial code was relegated to such local agencies as the borough, the guild, newly incorporated companies, the justice of the peace, and other local authorities. In the colonies the codes were largely in the hands of town and parish officials and county justices.

The keystone of the Tudor industrial code was found in the Statute of Artificers,6 which restated and modified the medieval Statutes of Labourers, and in the Poor Laws.7 Let us consider the basic principles laid down by this legislation and the extent of their adoption in this country.8


Notes

1 The term "mercantilism" has been criticized by some recent students of the period because of its vagueness. See E. A. J. Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith (New York, 1937), pp. 3-5. However, despite this difficulty the term is used in the present study to identify a group of writers and a body of doctrine. In support of this position, see P. W. Buck, The Politics of Mercantilism (New York, 1942), p. 4n. The procedural side of mercantilism has more significance for us today than its body of substantive regulations. See L. A. Harper, "Geopolitics and Mercantilism," Amer. Hist. Assn., Ann. Rep., 1942, III, 121n.

2 The paramount principle of settlement was that it must prove advantageous to the mother country. See Hillsborough to Gage, Correspondence of General Thomas Gage, ed. C. E. Carter (2 vols., New Haven, 1931, 1933), II, 108, 109 (1770). Wrote Gage to Barrington in 1772: "I [think it would] be for our interest to Keep the Settlers within reach of the Sea-coast as we can; and to cramp their Trade as jar as it can be done prudentially. Cities flourish and increase by extensive Trade, Artisans and Mechanicks of all sorts are drawn thither, who teach all sorts of Handicraft work before unknown in the Country, and they soon come to make for themselves what they used to import. I have seen this Increase, and I assure your Lordship that Foundations are laid in Philadelphia, that must create Jealousy in all Englishmen." Ibid., pp. 615, 616 (1772). (Italics mine.) See also HMC, Rep., XLV, Pt. I, 735.

In 1774 the Marquis of Carmarthen, aghast at the rioting in America on the eve of the Revolution "by a people sent out from this country, as it were from our own bowels," undubitably expressed public sentiment in a rhetorical question which he phrased in Parliament in debating the bill for the administration of justice in Massachusetts: "For what purpose were they suffered to go to that country, unless the profit of their labour should return to their masters here? I think the policy of colonization is highly culpable, if the advantages of it should not redound to the interests of Great Britain." The Parliamentary History of England, XVII (London, 1813), 1208, 1209.

See also G. L. Beer, Origins of the British Colonial System (New York, 1908) and The Old Colonial System (2 vols., New York, 1912); Jacob Viner, "Early English Theories of Trade before Adam Smith," /. Pol. Econ., XXXVIII (1930), 249-301, 404-457; C. M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven, 1938), IV, ch. x; L. A. Harper, The English Navigation Laws (New York, 1939); "The Effect of the Navigation Acts on the Thirteen Colonies," in The Era of the American Revolution: Studies Inscribed to Evarts Boutell Greene, ed. R. B. Morris (New York, 1939), pp. 3-39; Curtis Nettels, "The Menace of Colonial Manufacturing," N.E.Q., IV (1931), 230-269. For the contemporary writers on the Navigation Acts and the colonial system, see Buck, op. cit., pp. 202-204.

3 In general, the mercantilists favored an economy of low wages as a preventive of poverty and vice, an assurance of a favorable trade balance, and as serving to keep the labor classes in their place. Increasing wages was considered a "notorious prejudice to the Commonwealth" and "the support of all the Insolence of Servants." Thomas Manley, Usury at Six Per Cent. Examined (London, 1669), pp. 17-20, passim; [Daniel Defoe], The Great Law of Subordination Consider'd (London, 1724), pp. 79-80. However, there was no agreement on this point among mercantilists, just as on many other subjects. Some of the best known, such as Child and Cary, opposed the subsistence wage program. Eli F. Heckscher, Mercantilism, trans. M. Shapiro (London, 1935), II, 152, 163-172, 297-301; E. S. Furniss, The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism (Boston, 1920), chs. vi, vii; Witt Bowden, Industrial Society in England towards the End of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1925), pp. 231-233; W. Hasbach, History of the English Agricultural Laborer (London, 1908), p. 100n. See also E. Lipson, The Economic History of England (3 vols., London, 1927, 1931); L. Brentano, Geschichte der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung Englands (Jena, 1927), Vol. II; M. T. Wermel, The Evolution of the Classical Wage Theory (New York, 1939), pp. 21-27.

4 Thus, it had been the aim of European mercantilists such as Colbert to abolish local tolls and tariffs impeding national trade. For the colonial problem, see infra, pp. 21, 118.

5 See infra, pp. 60, 126.

6 5 Eliz. c. 4.

7 39, 40 Eliz. c. 3; 43 Eliz. c. 2.

8 In the preface to Greenleaf's edition of An Abridgment of Burn's Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer (Boston, 1773), the editor declares: "What we have rejected related to acts made for the regulating their woolen manufactory . . . weights and measures, vagrants, . . . shoemakers, servants, seamen, . . . linen cloth, leather, . . . and a number of articles under other heads of no possible use or importance to us in America." Nevertheless, in a number of the named fields parallel legislation was enacted in the colonies.