Nassau Senior objected to any government regulation of factories which meant that a horde of inspectors would interfere with the organization of production (1837)
About this Quotation:
Senior likened the running of a large factory with its complex organization of labor and material to an army regiment or a ship. Having government inspectors interfering with this organization, as allowed under the new Factory Acts of 1833, meant that mill-owners and entrepreneurs could not create the most efficient factories they could which in turn meant higher costs for consumers of the factories’ products.
Other quotes from this week:
- 2006: John Milton opposed censorship for many reasons but one thought sticks in the mind, that “he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself” (1644)
- 2005: With the return of spring the memories of Petrarch’s beloved Laura awaken a new pang in him (late 14thC)
- 2004: Hugo Grotius on sparing Civilian Property from Destruction in Time of War (1625)
Other quotes about Economics & Free Trade:
- 2010: Richard Cobden outlines his strategy of encouraging more people to acquire land and thus the right to vote in order to defeat the “landed oligarchy” who ruled England and imposed the “iniquity” of the Corn Laws (1845)
- 2009: Ludwig von Mises on the impossibility of rational economic planning under Socialism (1922)
- 2009: Frank Taussig argues for the reverse of a common misconception about the relationship between high wages and the use of machinery (1915)
- 2009: Condy Raguet lays out a set of basic principles of free trade among which is the idea that governments cannot create wealth by means of legislation and that individuals are better judges of the best way to use their capital and labor than governments (1835)
- 2009: John Ramsay McCulloch argues that smuggling is “wholly the result of vicious commercial and financial legislation” and that it could be ended immediately by abolishing this legislation (1899)
- 2009: Adam Smith argues that retaliation in a trade war can sometimes force the offending country to lower its tariffs, but more often than not the reverse happens (1776)
- 2008: Jean-Baptiste Say argues that there is a world of difference between private consumption and public consumption; an increase in the latter does nothing to increase public wealth (1803)
- 2007: Ludwig von Mises argues that monopolies are the direct result of government intervention and not the product of any inherent tendency within the capitalist system (1949)
- 2007: Harriet Martineau condemns tariffs as a “vicious aristocratic principle” designed to harm the ordinary working man and woman (1861)
- 2007: Ludwig von Mises argues that the division of labor and human cooperation are the two sides of the same coin and are not antagonistic to each other (1949)
- 2007: Lord Macaulay writes a devastating review of Southey’s Colloquies in which the Poet Laureate’s ignorance of the real condition of the working class in England is exposed (1830)
- 2006: Jane Haldimand Marcet, in a popular tale written for ordinary readers, shows the benefits to workers of foreign trade, especially at Christmas time (1833)
- 2006: Adam Ferguson observed that social structures of all kinds were not “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” (1782)
- 2006: Forrest McDonald argues that the Founding Fathers envisaged a new economic order based upon Lockean notions of private property and the creation of the largest contiguous area of free trade in the world (2006)
- 2006: Montesquieu thought that commerce improves manners and cures “the most destructive prejudices” (1748)
- 2005: Bernard Mandeville concludes his fable of the bees with a moral homily on the virtues of peace, hard work, and diligence (1705)
- 2005: Bernard Mandeville uses a fable about bees to show how prosperity and good order comes about through spontaneous order (1705)
- 2005: Adam Smith argued that the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” was inherent in human nature and gave rise to things such as the division of labour (1776)
- 2004: Voltaire on the Benefits which Trade and Economic Abundance bring to People living in the Present Age (1736)
- 2004: Adam Smith on the natural ordering Tendency of Free Markets, or what he called the “Invisible Hand” (1776)
19 May, 2008
 | Nassau Senior objected to any government regulation of factories which meant that a horde of inspectors would interfere with the organization of production (1837) |
The English economist Nassau Senior (1790-1864) complained in Letters on the Facory Act that one consequence of the new Act of 1833 would be to allow government inspectors to interfere with the smooth running of cotton factories:
The “personel” of a large factory is a machine as complicated as its “materiel,” and is, I think, on the whole, the great triumph of Sir R. Arkwright’s genius. In such an establishment from 700 to 1400 persons, of all ages and both sexes, almost all working by the piece, and earning wages of every amount between two shillings and forty shillings a-week, are engaged in producing one ultimate effect, which is dependent on their combined exertions. Any stoppage, even any irregularity in one department, deranges the whole. A strict and almost superstitious discipline is necessary to keep this vast instrument going for a single day. Now how, ask the mill-owners, could this discipline be kept up, if the sub-inspectors were at liberty to walk over our establishments at all hours; listen to the complaints and jealousies of all our servants, and at their instigation summon us as criminals before the magistrates?
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
2d. The free admission of the sub-inspectors would, however, be still more opposed. The “personel” of a large factory is a machine as complicated as its “materiel,” and is, I think, on the whole, the great triumph of Sir R. Arkwright’s genius. In such an establishment from 700 to 1400 persons, of all ages and both sexes, almost all working by the piece, and earning wages of every amount between two shillings and forty shillings a-week, are engaged in producing one ultimate effect, which is dependent on their combined exertions. Any stoppage, even any irregularity in one department, deranges the whole. A strict and almost superstitious discipline is necessary to keep this vast instrument going for a single day. Now how, ask the mill-owners, could this discipline be kept up, if the sub-inspectors were at liberty to walk over our establishments at all hours; listen to the complaints and jealousies of all our servants, and at their instigation summon us as criminals before the magistrates? Could the discipline, they ask, of a regiment or of a ship be carried on, if we had sub-inspectors of regiments, with power to ask all the privates for grievances, and summon their officers for penalties?