Franklin’s innate conservatism about government intervention and welfare was evident in the series of questions he had posed to Peter Collinson in 1753. Back then, he had asked whether laws “which compel the rich to maintain the poor have not given the latter a dependence” and “provide encouragements for laziness”?
To Collinson these points were raised as questions. But in his essays in the late 1760s and early 1770s, Franklin asserted these ideas more forcefully. Most notable was an anonymous piece in 1768 which he signed as “Medius,” from the Latin word for middle. He noted that in England wealthy legislators had passed many laws to help support the poor. These laws were compassionate, but he warned that they could have unintended consequences and promote laziness.
Not only did he warn against welfare dependency, he offered his own version of the trickle-down theory of economics. The more money made by the rich and by all of society, the more money that would make its way down to the poor. He also debunked the idea of imposing a higher minimum wage.
ON THE LABORING POOR, THE GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE, APRIL, 1768
Sir,
I have met with much invective in the papers for these two years past, against the hard-heartedness of the rich, and much complaint of the great oppressions suffered in this country by the laboring poor. Will you admit a word or two on the other side of the question? I do not propose to be an advocate for oppression, or oppressors. But when I see that the poor are by such writings exasperated against the rich, and excited to insurrections, by which much mischief is done, and some forfeit their lives, I could wish the true state of things were better understood, the poor not made by these busy writers more uneasy and unhappy than their situation subjects them to be, and the nation not brought into disrepute among foreigners by public groundless accusations of ourselves, as if the rich in England had no compassion for the poor, and Englishmen wanted common humanity.
In justice then to this country, give me leave to remark, that the condition of the poor here is by far the best in Europe, for that, except in England and her American colonies, there is not in any country of the known world, not even in Scotland or Ireland, a provision by law to enforce a support of the poor. Everywhere else necessity reduces to beggary. This law was not made by the poor. The legislators were men of fortune. By that act they voluntarily subjected their own estates, and the estates of all others, to the payment of a tax for the maintenance of the poor, encumbering those estates with a kind of rent charge for that purpose, whereby the poor are vested with an inheritance, as it were, in all the estates of the rich. I wish they were benefited by this generous provision in any degree equal to the good intention with which it was made, and is continued: But I fear the giving mankind a dependence on any thing for support in age or sickness, besides industry and frugality during youth and health, tends to flatter our natural indolence, to encourage idleness and prodigality, and thereby to promote and increase poverty, the very evil it was intended to cure; thus multiplying beggars, instead of diminishing them.
Besides this tax, which the rich in England have subjected themselves to in behalf of the poor, amounting in some places to five or six shillings in the pound of the annual income, they have, by donations and subscriptions, erected numerous schools in various parts of the kingdom, for educating gratis the children of the poor in reading and writing, and in many of those schools the children are also fed and clothed. They have erected hospitals, at an immense expense, for the reception and cure of the sick, the lame, the wounded, and the insane poor, for lying-in women, and deserted children. They are also continually contributing towards making up losses occasioned by fire, by storms, or by floods, and to relieve the poor in severe seasons of frost, in times of scarcity, &c. in which benevolent and charitable contributions no nation exceeds us. Surely there is some gratitude due for so many instances of goodness!
Add to this, all the laws made to discourage foreign manufactures, by laying heavy duties on them, or totally prohibiting them, whereby the rich are obliged to pay much higher prices for what they wear and consume, than if the trade was open: These are so many laws for the support of our laboring poor, made by the rich, and continued at their expense; all the difference of price between our own and foreign commodities, being so much given by our rich to our poor; who would indeed be enabled by it to get by degrees above poverty, if they did not, as too generally they do, consider every increase of wages, only as something that enables them to drink more and work less; so that their distress in sickness, age, or times of scarcity, continues to be the same as if such laws had never been made in their favor.
Much malignant censure have some writers bestowed upon the rich for their luxury and expensive living, while the poor are starving, &c. not considering that what the rich expend, the laboring poor receive in payment for their labor. It may seem a paradox if I should assert, that our laboring poor do in every year receive the whole revenue of the nation; I mean not only the public revenue, but also the revenue, or clear income, of all private estates, or a sum equivalent to the whole. In support of this position I reason thus. The rich do not work for one another. Their habitations, furniture, clothing, carriages, food, ornaments, and every thing in short that they, or their families use and consume, is the work or produce of the laboring poor, who are, and must be continually, paid for their labor in producing the same. In these payments the revenues of private estates are expended, for most people live up to their incomes. In clothing and provision for troops, in arms, ammunition, ships, tents, carriages, &c. &c. (every particular the produce of labor) much of the public revenue is expended. The pay of officers civil and military, and of the private soldiers and sailors, requires the rest; and they spend that also in paying for what is produced by the laboring poor. I allow that some estates may increase by the owners spending less than their income; but then I conceive that other estates do at the same time diminish, by the owners spending more than their income, so that when the enriched want to buy more land, they easily find lands in the hands of the impoverished, whose necessities oblige them to sell; and thus this difference is equaled. I allow also, that part of the expense of the rich is in foreign produce or manufactures, for producing which the laboring poor of other nations must be paid; but then I say, that we must first pay our own laboring poor for an equal quantity of our manufactures or produce, to exchange for those foreign productions, or we must pay for them in money, which money, not being the natural produce of our country, must first be purchased from abroad, by sending out its value in the produce or manufactures of this country, for which manufactures our laboring poor are to be paid. And indeed if we did not export more than we import, we could have no money at all. I allow farther, that there are middle men, who make a profit, and even get estates, by purchasing the labor of the poor and selling it at advanced prices to the rich; but then they cannot enjoy that profit or the incomes of estates, but by spending them and employing and paying our laboring poor, in some shape or other, for the products of industry. Even beggars, pensioners, hospitals, and all that are supported by charity, spend their incomes in the same manner. So that finally, as I said at first, our laboring poor receive annually the whole of the clear revenues of the nation, and from us they can have no more.
If it be said that their wages are too low, and that they ought to be better paid for their labor, I heartily wish any means could be fallen upon to do it, consistent with their interest and happiness; but as the cheapness of other things is owing to the plenty of those things, so the cheapness of labor is, in most cases, owing to the multitude of laborers, and to their underworking one another in order to obtain employment. How is this to be remedied? A law might be made to raise their wages; but if our manufactures are too dear, they will not vend abroad, and all that part of employment will fail, unless by fighting and conquering we compel other nations to buy our goods, whether they will or no, which some have been mad enough at times to propose. Among ourselves, unless we give our working people less employment, how can we, for what they do, pay them higher than we do? Out of what fund is the additional price of labor to be paid, when all our present incomes are, as it were, mortgaged to them? Should they get higher wages, would that make them less poor, if in consequence they worked fewer days of the week proportionally? I have said a law might be made to raise their wages; but I doubt much whether it could be executed to any purpose, unless another law, now indeed almost obsolete, could at the same time be revived and enforced; a law, I mean, that many have often heard and repeated, but few have ever duly considered. Six days shalt thou labor. This is as positive a part of the commandment as that which says, the Seventh day thou shalt rest. But we remember well to observe the indulgent part, and never think of the other. St. Monday is generally as duly kept by our working people as Sunday; the only difference is, that, instead of employing their time, cheaply, at church, they are wasting it expensively at the alehouse. I am, Sir, &c.