Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. LABOUR AND COMMERCE. Relation of the Traffic to Industrial Depression Value of Labour in Legitimate Industry Reciprocal Benefits of Commercial Prosperity The Law of Industrial Progress reversed Labour perverted Capital misapplied Wages wasted Loss to Employers by Dissipated Workmen Drink and Prison Labour Brisk Trade and Increased Drunkenness Unequal Distribution of Wealth Division of Drink Profits Drinking among Different Classes Drink and Foreign Competition Results of Emigration Advantages of American over British Workmen British Capital and Foreign Investments British Agriculture and American Produce Ruinous National Loss through Drink Remedy for Commercial Depression. THE relation of the Drink Traffic to the industrial and commercial well being of the nation is invested with special interest at the present time, when the labouring classes and capitalists alike are suffering from serious and protracted depression. The drink evil has contributed in no small measure to the suffering among the industrial and commercial classes, but as this is not so fully recognised as it should be, it is most desirable that it should be made indisputably clear. It will be accepted as a settled principle in theindustrial world that raw material increases in value as labour is expended on it. No one knows this better than the working man. The stone that is blasted or hewn out of the rock increases in value as it passes from one workman to another, until it finds its place in the doorway or as the corner stone of the stately edifice. In like manner, the wool shorn from the sheep's back increases in value at each successive stage of the process of manufacture, until it passes into the wareroom a web of superfine black cloth or a piece of good tweed. In every field or depar...
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