Item 125 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

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University Club - WW is smoking a cigar and reading 'The Rights of Industry'. Will RJ's work on wages 'include the solution of some of the problems which have been suggesting themselves under the pleasant influence of water and smoke. They are mainly about the proportion that the productiveness of labour is always increased by its freedom from restrictions. The industry men of course maintain this, and urges it as a general and certain truth...It is of course inevitable that writers and especially popular writers, should dogmatise on the subject and make the assertion anticipatively; but this which is natural and perhaps good in them will not do for us. Moreover I see reasons to doubt the proposition where they absolutely started. It is certainly not true in limited periods and particular circumstances, and therefore requires more than mere logic to make it true generally'. WW explains the necessary approach: 'nothing but an analysis, or rather a classification of circumstances and of the mode of operation in each case over the whole of a very wide field can possibly shew what kind of adjustment of the personal relation and civil condition of producers is in successive stages of production most effective. To assert that most will be produced by giving to each an equal right in his own industry seems to me no more probable beforehand, than to assert that most will be gained from the law by giving to each man an equal right to the law which is certainly false'.