By improving in efficiency,and by maintaining his standard of life,the labourer's position may be improved.Still,however,improvement supposes a due regard to the interests of the capitalists,who make all the advances and receive all the produce.Here we have the old doctrine of the 'tendency of profits to a minimum.'(85)This theory,admitted though inadequately explained by Adam Smith,had been illustrated by E.
G.Wakefield,and as Mill thinks,most scientifically treated by his friend Ellis.Another writer,to whom Mill refers with his usual generosity,was John Rae,whose New Principles of Political Economy had,he thinks,done in regard to accumulation of capital what Malthus had done in regard to population.(86)The necessity of resorting to inferior soils,which enriches the landowner,causes the difficulty of raising the labourer's 'real wages.'
Profits are lowered not by the 'competition of capitalists,'but by the limitation of the national resources.As the difficulty of raising new supplies becomes more pressing,the 'cost of labour'rises,and the capitalist's profits diminish.Now,in every country,as Rae had shown,there is a certain 'effective desire of accumulation.'(87)It varies widely,and corresponds,we may say,to the principle which limits population --the 'effective desire'of propagation.There is a certain rate of profit which will induce men to save,and saving is the one source of capital.
Hence,if the rate obtainable falls to this point,saving will cease,the capital which supports labour will not increase,and the country will be in the 'so-called stationary state.'Such a state,no doubt,is possible and often actual.Given a nation forced to draw its resources from a fixed area,and unable to improve its methods of cultivation,it is obvious that it may reach a point at which it can only just maintain its actual position.Mill holds not only that such a result is possible,but that it is always imminent.In an 'old country,'he says,'the rate of profit is habitually within,as it were,a hair's-breadth of the minimum,and the country therefore on the very verge of the stationary state.'(88)He does not mean,he explains,that such a state is likely soon to be reached in Europe,but that,if accumulation continued and nothing occurred to raise the rate of profit,the stationary state would be very quickly reached.We have still the Malthusian view.We are always 'within a hair's-breadth'of the dead wall which will absolutely limit progress.Improvements are in fact constantly staving off the impending catastrophe.We are drifting,so to speak,towards a lee-shore,where,if not wrecked,we shall at least come to a standstill.Again and again we manage to make a Little way,and by new devices to weather another dangerous point.By prudence,too,we may turn each new advantage to account,and improve our condition by refraining from increasing our numbers.But the danger is always threatening.
One noteworthy result is Mill's chapter upon the stationary state.(89)He has,it seems,been so impressed by the probability that he will find refuge from his fears by facing the worst.After all,are not the grapes sour?If we are unable to grow richer,is the loss of wealth so great a misfortune?He turns to think of the 'trampling,crushing,elbowing,and treading on each other's heels which form the existing type of human life.'(90)Is such a state desirable?In America,where all privileges are abolished,poverty unknown,and the six points of the Chartists accepted,the main result achieved is that 'the whole of one *** is devoted to dollar-hunting and the whole of the other to breeding dollar-hunters.'(91)Coarse stimuli are needed for coarse minds;but a better ideal should be possible.
We might aim at an order quite compatible with the 'stationary state,'where labourers should be comfortable,no enormous fortunes accumulated,and a much larger part of the population free from mechanical toil and enabled to 'cultivate freely the graces of life.'Nor is it desirabLe that cultivation should spread to every corner of the world,every flowery waste ploughed up and all wild animals extirpated.'A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal.'
Mill agreed with Ruskin,though Ruskin did not agree with Mill,and,indeed,called him a goose.A stationary state of wealth need not,says Mill,imply a stationary state of the 'art of living.'That art was more likely to improve when we were not all engrossed by the 'art of getting on.'How far that is true Ido not presume to say .It seems possible that in such a state the struggle to be stationary might be as keen,though advance would be hopeless.But,without criticising a theory which represents rather a temporary protest than a settled conviction,we may be content to notice how far removed was this typical economist from the grovelling tendencies often ascribed to his kind.Mill,as even Carlyle would have admitted,was not a mere devotee of 'pig's-wash.'
