The work catalogued as Price of Corn and Wages of Labour is Edward West’s controversial essay in classical political economy, not a treatise written by David Ricardo. Its full title identifies its method and target: it offers observations upon Dr. Smith’s, Mr. Ricardo’s, and Mr. Malthus’s doctrines on the price of corn and the wages of labour. Ricardo is therefore one of the economists whose arguments the book examines and disputes, along with Adam Smith and Thomas Robert Malthus. The volume is a polemical intervention in the debate over grain prices, wages, subsistence, capital, and the demand for labour.
The book’s central problem is the relation between the price of corn—grain, especially wheat, in the British economic usage of the period—and the wages of labour. West asks how a high price of corn is connected to money wages, the cost of subsistence, the accumulation of capital, and the demand for workers. He distinguishes between a high corn price produced by increasing demand and a high price produced by other causes. In the demand-driven case, he argues that a rise in corn prices is preceded by a rise in wages, since additional demand presupposes additional means of payment among the people. The accumulation of capital, on this account, increases competition among employers of labour and consequently raises the price of labour. From this starting point the book examines how far the standard doctrines of Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus can explain the actual movements of corn prices and wages.
A major part of the work is devoted to Ricardo’s theory of wages. West engages with the Ricardian distinction between the natural price of labour and the market price of labour. The natural price is presented as the price necessary to enable labourers to subsist and perpetuate their race without increase or diminution; the market price is the price actually paid, and in an improving society it may remain above the natural price for an indefinite period. West scrutinizes this scheme and objects that Ricardo places the natural price of labour outside the universal operation of supply and demand. He also fastens on the Ricardian supposition that the value of labour will always be the same, treating it as a weakness in the analysis of how wages actually move in response to corn prices and capital accumulation. The book is thus not a neutral exposition of Ricardo but a critical reading of Ricardian wage theory.
The volume also examines the doctrine of capital and the funds destined for the payment of wages. It quotes and analyses the definition of capital as that part of a country’s wealth employed in production, consisting of food, clothing, tools, raw materials, machinery, and similar requisites. It considers the proposition that the demand for those who live by wages cannot increase except in proportion to the increase of the funds destined for the payment of wages, and that this demand necessarily grows with the increase of revenue and stock. West uses these propositions to test how wages, population, and corn prices are related. The book also attends to the market price of commodities, quoting the standard formula that market price is regulated by the proportion between the quantity brought to market and the demand of those willing to pay the natural price. At the same time, it treats the opinion that commodity prices depend solely on the proportion of supply to demand as an overconfident axiom that has been a source of error in political economy.
Adam Smith and Malthus are not mere names on the title page; their doctrines are part of the book’s argument. West examines Smith’s treatment of corn prices and wages in The Wealth of Nations, testing Smith’s account of how subsistence costs, money wages, and the price of provisions interact. He likewise examines Malthus’s doctrines on the same subjects, asking whether Malthus’s account of corn prices, wages, and demand is consistent with the accumulation of capital and with the operation of supply and demand. The book’s method is exegetical and controversial: it quotes or paraphrases positions held by the three economists, compares them with one another, and measures them against West’s own propositions about corn, wages, capital, and demand. It also considers monetary disturbance, including the effect of an influx of money on industry and prices, as part of the broader inquiry into how corn prices and wages are determined.
The work is also marked by a priority dispute. West uses it to claim that principles he had earlier set out concerning capital applied to land had been adopted by Ricardo without acknowledgement, and he asserts his own discovery of those principles. This polemical strand runs alongside the analytical criticism of Ricardo’s wage theory and of the Smithian and Malthusian doctrines. The book is therefore not a systematic textbook or a biography of any economist; it is a short, argumentative essay built around close engagement with the leading authorities of classical political economy. Its contents are the relation of corn prices to wages, the natural and market price of labour, the funds for the maintenance of labour, capital accumulation, supply and demand, and the critical comparison of Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus on those subjects.
The book delves into the concept of the “natural price of labour,” exploring how it is determined by the price of the food, necessaries, and conveniences required to enable labourers to subsist and perpetuate their race without either increase or diminution. It scrutinizes the factors that cause the market price of labour to deviate from this natural price, particularly the interplay between the demand for labour and the supply of labourers. West investigates the implications of an increasing or decreasing demand for labour on the market wage, and how this, in turn, influences population growth and the long-term equilibrium of wages.
A central theme is the relationship between the price of corn and the general level of wages. The book meticulously analyzes how changes in the cost of subsistence, primarily driven by corn prices, translate into adjustments in money wages. It considers the mechanisms through which a rise or fall in corn prices affects the real wages of labourers and the profitability of capital. This analysis extends to the impact of agricultural improvements and the opening of foreign trade on corn prices, and consequently, on wages and the accumulation of capital.
The volume also addresses the concept of the “wages fund,” examining the idea that there is a predetermined amount of capital available for the payment of wages. It explores the implications of this doctrine for understanding the limits to wage increases and the potential for overpopulation. West critically assesses the assumptions underlying the wages fund theory and its consistency with observed economic phenomena, particularly in the context of capital accumulation and technological progress.
Furthermore, the book explores the role of profits in the determination of wages and the overall economic system. It considers how the rate of profit influences the incentive for capital accumulation, and how this accumulation, in turn, affects the demand for labour and the level of wages. The interrelationship between rent, profits, and wages is a recurring subject, with West examining how these distributive shares are affected by changes in corn prices, population, and the state of agricultural production. The book’s significance lies in its direct challenge to prevailing economic theories of its time, offering a detailed and critical examination of the core tenets of classical political economy regarding wages, prices, and capital.
