Politics and Economics

Although Fawcett was in some sense an avowedly orthodox Millian who did much to spread Mill’s influence at Cambridge, such a description can be more problematic than it may seem at first blush. As remarked, he had nothing close to Mill’s range of interests, and was never counted as a force in philosophy in the way that Mill was. After all, Mill himself evolved and changed his stripes on any number of important counts. Was Fawcett an ‘orthodox’ follower of Mill’s early editions of the Principles ofPoliticalEconomy, or of the later editions, when under the influence of Harriet Taylor Mill, the work sounded a much more ‘socialistic’ note, celebrated the cooperative movement, and rejected the so-called Wages- Fund theory (or Wage-Fund doctrine) that supposedly doomed the labouring classes to always making gains solely at the expense of one another? He is usually singled out (e.g. by Deane 1987; Kadish 1989) as adhering to the Wages-Fund theory—the rather Malthusian view that any gains to the working class would only be counterbalanced by eventual losses to them—even after Mill himself had abandoned it. But matters may be more complicated. At the very least, one must agree with Stephen that for Fawcett,

the principles of laissez-faire commended itself by its nobler aspect. It did not mean, Leave the blind struggle to work itself out, and apply no remedy to the most cruel grievances. It meant, on the contrary, Give free play to all men’s intellects and faculties; be exceedingly jealous of all restrictions upon the energies of any class, especially of the poorest class (Stephen 1885: 162).

Indeed, at every turn in the Manual, Fawcett shows a deep sympathy with the plight and everyday life of labourers, such that, for example, rather than condemning the allotment system—allowing ‘small plots of ground, cultivated by the labourers after they have done their regular work’—as a distraction from work or the improvement of their minds, he maintained that ‘the labour which they spend on their allotments is not irksome; in fact, the interest they take in watching the growth of the various vegetables which they plant, is to them a source of great pleasure’ (Fawcett 1865 [1995]: 253). The same kindness is displayed in his other works, particularly The Economic Position of the British Labourer. This is not to mention the little pamphlets that he laboured over so earnestly, such works as the 1880 ‘Aids to Thrift’, which he hoped would be of real use to the poor themselves.

In his essay on ‘Modern Socialism’, Fawcett explained at some length that

[t]o many, Socialism and Communism are supposed to be synonymous with confiscation and spoliation. A Socialist exists vaguely in the minds of the comfortable classes as a sort of abandoned creature who wishes to live by robbing other people of their property, and who desires to see general pillage introduced...yet nothing can be more unjust than to throw aspersions upon the character of the Socialists, and to misinterpret their motives. They no doubt have been mistaken enthusiasts, but it is impossible to deny that their motives have been pure and their aims lofty. They have been animated by a desire which must have been felt by all who are not depraved by selfishness, to lighten poverty, to alleviate human suffering, and to diffuse more general happiness among mankind. The injustice which is so generally done to Socialists will be perhaps more clearly perceived when attention is directed to the origin of the socialistic sentiment (Fawcett 1872 [1995]: 7-8).

But sympathetic as he may have been, Fawcett was principled, outspoken, honest, and very difficult to control, both politically and academically. The ‘Fawcettites’ in Parliament, such men as Charles Dilke and Auberon Herbert, among others, were the quintessential loose cannons. At Cambridge, he could drive even his friends to distraction, ‘talking Mill’s “Liberty” of the crudest kind at the top of his voice’ (Stephen quoted in Goldman 1989: 9).

Of course, Fawcett did occasionally hedge, politically. As Goldman has noted, in ‘the debate on the second reading of the 1870 Elementary Education Act, Fawcett described himself as ‘a moderate Churchman’. In truth, he was no sort of churchman at all but an agnostic whose attachment to the social virtues of industry and endeavour owed nothing to faith’ (ibid.: 19). Indeed, as his forceful and outspoken opposition to the secularism of higher education showed, he was certainly not one to allow religion to stand in the way of progress.

If one had to single out the leading demands of Fawcett’s political campaigns, the following would emerge: improvement in the conditions of the labouring classes; political and educational equality for women; opposition to primogeniture and landed, aristocratic monopolies; the reform and universalization of educational opportunities and institutions (including the elimination of the religious tests); better public services; elimination of waste and extravagance; preservation of the commons (including Epping Forest); improving the quality of life for the people of India; and the advance of cooperative societies, which was ‘Fawcett’s great panacea’ (Stephen 1885: 166). When compared to the leading claims of his writings on economics, the overlap is nearly perfect.

Fawcett’s Manual—which underwent significant revisions, especially between the second (1865) and fourth (1876) editions—opens with the perfectly frank admission that it is simply meant as a shorter and more accessible version of Mill’s Principles, which ‘is so complete and so exhaustive, that many are afraid to encounter the labour and thought which are requisite to master it’ (Fawcett 1865 [1995]: viii). The first chapter sets out to disabuse the reader of the view that political economy is ‘hardhearted and selfish’, and that the political economist is one ‘who wishes to see everyone rich, but who has no sympathy with those higher qualities which ennoble the character of man’ (ibid.: 4). The truth, by contrast, is that the political economist may ‘be the most useful of all philanthropists; because a mere desire to do good without any principles of guidance is ever liable to be a futile and misdirected effort’ (ibid.). ‘Political Economy’ is ‘concerned with those principles which regulate the production, the distribution, and the exchange of wealth’, but it need not ignore ‘the other phenomena of man’s social existence’ (ibid.: 4-5). ‘It is therefore a fundamental error to suppose that political economy ever asserts that the higher motives which actuate human actions ought to be discarded in favour of wealth’ (ibid.: 6). ‘Wealth’, in turn, may be defined ‘to consist of every commodity which has an exchangeable value’ (ibid.: 7), which means that it ‘is not determined by the nature and quality of a commodity, but rather by the circumstances in which that commodity may be placed’ (ibid.). Thus, for example, ‘the social condition of a nation and the state of its civilization determine to what extent natural resources may be classed as wealth’ (ibid.: 8). Failure to appreciate such facts was the abiding sin of mercantilism.

From the critique of mercantilism, Fawcett launches into the topics that structure much of the book—‘The Requisites of Production’, which are land (or ‘appropriate natural agents’), labour, and capital. ‘Capital’ is saved wealth available for the future production of wealth. Labour, which can be either productive or unproductive, calls for careful definition: ‘Productive labour is that which either directly or indirectly produces utilities fixed and embodied in material objects’ (ibid.: 17-18). This allows that ‘the labour of the teacher who imparts skill to the mechanic is productive, for by this skill wealth is created’. Consumption can also be productive or unproductive, though ‘even the poorest labourers in this country purchase some luxuries which they could abstain from, without in the slightest degree diminishing the efficiency of their labour’ (ibid.: 18).

Thus, it is quite plain from the start that Fawcett is primarily concerned with improving the condition of the labouring class. The great spectre that hung over the effort, according to many recent commentators as well as earlier ones, was the difficulty of any such quest, the grim Malthusian spectre of workers who multiply with every improvement in their conditions and thus undo their gains in part by flooding the market with more cheap labour. The narrower, more technical version of this was encapsulated in the Wages-Fund theory, which, as Mill put it, in his ‘Thornton on Labour and Its Claims’:

The theory rests on what may be called the doctrine of the wages fund. There is supposed to be, at any given instant, a sum of wealth, which is not regarded as unalterable, for it is augmented by saving, and increases with the progress of wealth; but it is reasoned upon as at any given moment a predetermined amount. More than that amount it is assumed that the wages-receiving class cannot possibly divide among them; that amount, and no less, they cannot but obtain. So that, the sum to be divided being fixed, the wages of each depend solely on the divisor, the number of participants. In this doctrine it is by implication affirmed, that the demand for labour not only increases with the cheapness, but increases in exact proportion to it, the same aggregate sum being paid for labour whatever its price may be (Mill 1869 [2006]: 643—644).

Now, one of the leading points on which Fawcett is pilloried for being an uncritical follower of Mill is precisely this, the Wages-Fund theory, which he supposedly defended even after Mill, late in life, abandoned the doctrine, in the article cited above. Yet it would seem that Fawcett had himself contributed to the very serious qualification of any such view, a point that his younger colleague Sidgwick put with his usual penetrating insight in his article ‘Wages Fund Theory’:

Fawcett (e.g.), Pol. Econ., II. c. ix. (ed. I.), while arguing that combinations of workmen cannot permanently raise wages, affirms that they may do so temporarily if they demand an increase when trade is flourishing and profits high. In this passage he implies that this addition to the wages of one set of labourers will not be taken from the wages of another set; and the same conclusion is reached by Cairnes (Some Leading Principles, Pt. II. c. 3). But how is this result consistent with the chain of reasoning that we have just been considering? If the total amount of capital is determined by saving, and therefore independently of the haggling of the market, and if the proportion of capital that becomes wages-fund is determined by the character of the national industries, &c., together with the supply of labour, how can any action of any set of labourers (so long as these determining conditions remain unchanged) increase the total wages-fund, as it must do if they raise their own wages without diminishing those of any other labourers? The only possible answer to this question seems to be that which Mill gives in his review of Mr. Thornton’s book ‘On Labour.’ Although the process of increasing capital is generally voluntary—what we ordinarily call ‘saving’—there is no economic law which prevents it from being compulsory; and, in fact, when an employer yields to the demands of a union and raises his workmen’s wages, if he finds the money by cutting down his expenditure instead of taking it from a bank or some other investment, he does increase capital in this compulsory way. Whether we choose to call this saving or not is a mere question of words; it is at any rate a process not independent of, but determined by, the haggling of the labour-market.

But if this be so, what becomes of the wages-fund theory? If this compulsory economy be possible at all, why should it not be on the whole successful? In fact, neither Professor Fawcett nor Professor Cairnes really denies this possibility. When they say that combinations of labourers can only raise wages ‘temporarily,’ they do not mean to assert that the temporary rise will inevitably be balanced by a consequent temporary fall in the wages either of the same or of other labourers; they clearly imply that this will not be the case, if only the combined action of the labourers be wisely directed, and their demands for advances only made when trade is exceptionally prosperous ... Of course the force thus exerted by any single strike is very slight; but if we make the rather ideal supposition that the whole body of labourers in their several industries are wisely led, and thus never demand an advance unsuccessfully, it is clear that the level of average wages may be steadily elevated by a continual series of slight rises. And if we suppose the movement of wages to take place not in one trade only, but along the whole line of the labour-market, what is there to prevent the compulsory enlargement of the wages-fund from being both rapid and extensive? (Sidgwick quoted in Schultz et al. 1999: 405—406; italics in original).

Thus, as Sidgwick sums it up, the last edition of Fawcett’s Manual, which ‘has even removed the qualification of “temporariness” in some cases’, suggests that ‘there can be no doubt that labourers can by combining secure a permanent advance in wages’, and if this is so, the claim that ‘wages depend upon the ratio between capital and population’ seems to have lost its chief significance; since, whatever else it may mean, it has not the meaning usually attributed to it, that ‘wages depend on saving and not on bargaining’ (ibid.: 353). Moreover, Mill had in fact enthusiastically endorsed Fawcett’s claims about the labour movement and the emergence of a new form of bargaining. As Simon Cook rightly observes:

Political economists such as Ricardo, and following in his footsteps J. S. Mill, had constructed an account of the natural value of wages with little or no thought as to the significance of trade union activity. An exception had been Henry Fawcett, who, in his 1860 essay ‘Strikes,’ argued that trade unions could not alter the natural wage rate, but could prolong the period in which market wages remained above the natural rate and could hasten the rise of market wages when they were below the natural rate. Mill’s position in his 1869 review is not free of ambiguity, but he seems to have followed Fawcett’s analysis in his recantation, suggesting that trade unions could influence the market wage but insisting that the orthodox theory applied only to the natural rate of wages (Cook

2009: 159).

Yet for all that, the progress of the labouring classes was not, for Fawcett, best had through the mobilization of the collective bargaining power of labour or strikes. Rather, he followed Mill—or worked in tandem with Mill—in theorizing and advocating on behalf of the cooperative movement, a force that Fawcett took to nearly as soon as it first appeared on the historical scene in England, with the weavers of the Rochdale Pioneers:

During the last few years, the rapid extension of cooperative institutions has excited as much attention as trades-unions and strikes. In the last chapter we had to refer to much that was unsatisfactory and distressing; we, however, discuss the subject of the present chapter with unmixed pleasure, because we believe that wherever the principle of cooperation is carried into practical effect, the labourers enjoy a far more favourable distribution of wealth, and that this advantage is moreover secured to them without the slightest suspicion of the least injustice having been inflicted on any other class (Fawcett 1865 [1995]: 277).

Citing the Rochdale Pioneers as an outstanding, though not entirely problem-free, example, Fawcett extols the virtues of the cooperative movement at length:

The advantages which the working classes derive from a cooperative store are very apparent. In the first place, it provides them with the most eligible investment for their savings. This is most important, because the absence of good opportunities for investing small savings acts most powerfully to increase the improvidence of the poor. Even the middle and upper classes, whose superior education gives them prudence and foresight, are very much influenced in the amount they save by the profit which they believe would be realized on their capital. Hitherto the savings’- bank has been the only investment which, as a general rule, has been open to the working man. Now the ordinary English labourer must make many severe sacrifices to save 50l, and if this amount is placed in the savings’-bank, the labourer obtains an annuity not exceeding thirty shillings a year, as his reward for self?denial and prudence. If old age or sickness compels him to cease work, his position is scarcely improved at all by the money which he had saved. If he had been improvident, and saved nothing, he would have received parish allowance; but the poor-law guardians perform their duty when they grant just sufficient relief to enable a man to live; the labourer, therefore, who possesses an annuity of thirty shillings a year will obtain from his parish, if he requires relief, thirty shillings a year less than the man who has recklessly spent everything that he has received. Under these combined discouragements, it is not surprising that our labouring classes have been extremely improvident. No labouring man, in fact, has ever had definitely placed before him the prospect that he would be able himself to employ his savings as capital, and enjoy the profits arising therefrom. Our labourers, therefore, could never be cheered with the hope of improving their social position, for they must have seen that at least 99 out of every 100 of those whose parents are hired labourers, always remain in the same condition. Now it is evident that, as far as the investment of money is concerned, such cooperative stores as those we have described afford the labouring classes opportunities for obtaining profits which they never possessed before. We shall moreover presently show, that the cooperative principle, when applied to trade and manufactures, enables the labourer to support his industry with his own capital, and in this manner to rise from the mere status of a hired labourer. The figures we have already quoted sufficiently prove the eligible nature of the investment which is provided by a well-managed cooperative store (ibid.: 283—284).

There were some complications, given the diversity of cooperative enterprises, and the possibility of their degenerating into mere joint-stock companies, but Fawcett was supportive of nearly every such effort, whether it were simply a store or a true, productive cooperative enterprise. Even if the cooperatives seemed to work best when dealing in groceries rather than with, say, clothing, this form of social experiment was to be given every opportunity. The ideal, a realistic one given the examples set in France, would be much more than a joint-stock company or a store, and would, as he put it in The Economic Position of the British Labourer, have the associated workers

provide both capital and labour. The whole proceeds of their industry would be their own property; wages and profits would be merged in the aggregate remuneration which they received, instead of being allotted to reward two distinct classes, viz. the employers and the employed. A complete union of capital and labour would thus be established, and this union has been termed Co-operation (ibid.: 74).

Poverty, he urged, could not ultimately be eliminated ‘as long as the labourer simply works for hire ... If the efficiency of labour is to be maintained, and if England is to continue to grow in wealth, happiness, and prosperity, the labourers must participate in the profits yielded by their industry’ (ibid.: 117-118).

Of course, the cooperative movement was seen by Fawcett as precisely the type of movement that could generate social change without reliance on either class strife or governmental interference, and it consequently does not reflect the ways in which he did allow for certain forms of interference. Again, as Stephen has noted, Fawcett ‘did not consider himself entitled to reject any proposal without further hearing on the ground of its incompatibility with some general formula. He asked whether it could or could not be supported by specific reasoning, and in his own arguments he always relies upon definite practical objections’. The ‘crucial test’ that he always applied was simply this: ‘Does the remedy tend to raise or to lower the spirit of self-help?’ The ‘moral injury’ of making the poor more dependent was no benefit at all, whereas prudence and self-reliance were real gains:

A society in which every class does not take its own part is one in which the surviving energy will be oppressed by an ever-growing and ultimately insuperable burden. To call out therefore the energy of all classes, to open the widest field for the application of all their faculties, is the aim which should preside over every genuine effort for social improvement (Stephen 1885: 161).

Under this rubric came calls for a number of interferences that would later be justified in the now familiar terms of public goods and collective action problems. Fawcett was indeed familiar enough with the basic dilemmas, as his plea for the open commons, in Pauperism: Its Causes and Remedies, demonstrates:

It is usually urged that whenever an attempt is made to preserve a common the rights of property are seriously encroached upon. Those who reason in this way apparently think that a common is absolutely the property of the lord of the manor and of the commoners; the public is supposed to possess no right in it whatever. In strict legal phraseology this is no doubt true, because the rights of the public cannot be legally defined. But there is this essential difference between a common and land which is owned by private proprietors: every one has a right to wander over the common by immemo?rial usage, and the reality of this right is at once evidenced by the fact that no lord of a manor can exclude the public from a common by surrounding it with a fence. It is highly inexpedient that Parliament should intervene to facilitate the enclosure of lands, if it can be shewn that these enclosures are now no longer economically desirable, and that they deprive the public of a valuable right (Fawcett 1871 [1995]: 265—266).

But, as he also argued, in ‘State Intervention’:

Those who are most thoroughly indoctrinated with ‘laissez faire apparently consider that they are bound to oppose compulsory education because it involves State interference. Such opposition affords an instructive warning against the danger of offering too implicit obedience to any general principle. A moment’s consideration will suffice to show that interference on behalf of children and on behalf of grown up persons rest on entirely different grounds. The latter kind of interference may be objected to because it impedes the freedom of men’s actions, is antagonistic to individual liberty, and, in the words of Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘prevents the harmonious development of the human character.’ The child, however, independently of all Government interference, must be under the control of a parent or a guardian. It is therefore idle to talk of his individual liberty and of his freedom of action; these must be more or less completely surrendered to his parent or guardian. It is therefore evident that the question of State intervention must be regarded from an entirely different point of view when it is applied on behalf of children. It most generally happens that they require the aid of the State when those who are constituted their natural protectors neglect their duty or abuse their power. The extent to which there is such an abuse of power or such a neglect of duty must be the chief element in determining the limits to which it is desirable that the State should extend its protection to children. A child having no power to provide itself with food and clothing, it will be generally admitted that the State ought to take some action if a parent either cannot or will not supply his children with the necessaries of life (Fawcett 1872 [1995]: 33—34).

Of course, his concern with the extension of postal services and the telephone network also involved such calls to resist a dogmatic adherence to laissez-faire. He called for, and got, ‘(1) The parcel post; (2) the issue of postal orders; (3) the receipt of small savings in stamps and the allowing of small sums to be invested in the funds; (4) increasing the facilities for life insurance and annuities; (5) reducing the price of telegrams’ (Holt 1914: 271). Strange as it may seem, Fawcett proved himself to be a remarkable public administrator capable of generating a great deal of team spirit in his efforts to bring the advantages of the postal service and the telephone network within the reach of the poor. As Holt noted:

First, he wished to give the machine a soul and a heart: the thought of such things in the Post Office seems comic, but in Fawcett’s time this miracle was accomplished. Its whole system was waked up, shaken from its lethargy, and flooded with a new interest, and that unusual esprit de corps.was aroused among the employees, and alone made possible the results which he achieved. As usual, far ahead of his time, he grasped the chief principles of scientific business management ... Without labeling his principles with high-sounding names, he carried them out, insisting on economy, both of work and fatigue, which produced contentment, increased interest and zeal among the employees; and hence greater efficiency. His method was, first, to diminish fatigue, perhaps the most wasteful factor in quasi-efficient business. Working and sanitary conditions were improved, and the staff of Post Office doctors was augmented (ibid.: 254—255).

Importantly, Fawcett also led the way in hiring women to work in the Post Office, including women doctors, an astonishingly progressive manoeuvre at the time. He amply demonstrated in his own practice the effective extension of well-run government services to better serve the less well-off in society, and this without any compunction about failing to privatize such services. These concerns also animated his frequent criticisms of the government for the inept, profiteering financial management of India—calling one egregious example a ‘masterpiece of meanness’—and efforts to advance towards full Imperial citizenship.

But perhaps his most forceful arguments for interference concerned the growth of human capital through universal, compulsory education, a cause that he championed unstintingly, if, by modern standards, in limited terms: ‘[A]lthough I believe that a general system of free education ought to be resisted because it would weaken the sense of parental obligation, yet, in my opinion, no child ought to be permitted to grow up in ignorance because his school fees are not forthcoming’ (Fawcett 1872 [1995]: 43). Indeed, education was his second ‘great panacea’, and its importance was tightly linked to the case for cooperativism:

The main obstacle to the spread of co-operation was the want of intelligence of the classes which most needed it. The labourer who had to go to bed with the sun was cut off from the intellectual influences of the superior artisan. His mental darkness isolated him; he could not take advantage of a rise in wages elsewhere, for he heard nothing of what was going on in regions as strange to him as the remotest part of Australia. The periodical press now acts like a nervous system of the nation, spreading every central impulse to the most distant ramifications of the social body. The man who cannot read or write is out of touch with all the impulses of his day. To raise the educational standard of the labourer, especially in agricultural districts, was therefore a first condition for bringing direct impulses to bear. This, as Fawcett held, could only be done effectually by a national and unsectarian system of education (Stephen 1885: 167).

A man who is allowed to grow up with his mind entirely neglected has inflicted upon him a grievous wrong; he is cut off from the surest and noblest sources of happiness, and even if he is regarded simply as an agent for the production of wealth, he is made by ignorance comparatively useless and inefficient. An unintelligent labourer is like a machine which works roughly, because no care was taken about the putting together of its various parts, which, perfect themselves, might have been so combined that the machine would achieve completeness in all its operations (Fawcett 1865 [1995]: 115—116).

Sounding the note of human capital theorists, Fawcett continues by explaining how ‘ignorance, by impairing the efficiency of labour, inflicts upon the nation a most serious pecuniary loss’, and in fact also costs it dearly by producing poverty and crime (ibid.: 116). If people do not ‘possess sufficient intelligence to enable them to combine and to cooperate for a common object’, the nation suffers, and the national disgrace will continue—‘nearly 130,000 criminals are annually convicted in England and Wales, and whilst one out of every twenty of our population is a pauper’ (ibid.).

In this nexus of cooperativism and educational reform working to mutually support one another, one finds Fawcett sounding the notes of the later, more socialistic Mill, the Mill who had influenced Sidgwick as he took a giant step towards the later welfare economics of Pigou, and who had revealed himself as having both socialist sympathies and a green bent. Just so, many of Fawcett’s campaigns and concerns were tied together here, not only cooperativism and education, but also the commons. Commenting on the spoliation of Epping Forest, he wrote, in words that remain timely:

But unfortunately, either through jobbing or blundering, government officials have permitted a very considerable portion of the forest to be appropriated by private individuals. Seldom is government carelessness likely to prove more mischievous; for who can estimate the extent to which the toiling myriads of the metropolis will be socially and morally injured by the loss of such a delightful recreation-ground? How can the health of dense masses of population be maintained, if they can never feel and breathe the air of Heaven unimpregnated by noxious vapours? How can a people continue to be contented and happy, if they can never reinvigorate their exhausted energies by some of the pleasures and amusements which the country can alone afford? And finally let me ask, How can human conceptions be elevated, how can human tastes be raised above mere sordid and worldly pleasures, when there is no opportunity of feeling that inspiration which is derived from the contemplation of the beauties and glories of Nature? ... Let us hope that a warning has been given in time, and that the government will never again be permitted to barter away, for an insignificant sum, which would be wasted in one useless military experiment, proprietary rights which have a value beyond price, not only to countless thousands who are now living, but which may be still more precious to the millions who in future ages are destined to uphold the industrial fabric of this nation (ibid.: 65—66).

However much he may have opposed the large landed estates, and favoured breaking them up to allow the growth of small, peasant proprietors, this was not because of any lack of concern with preserving open green spaces for the enjoyment of all classes and future generations. In Fawcett’s view, the preservation of the commons, the growth of cooperativism, and the growth of agriculture could work together:

As labourers gradually advance they will feel that they have the power and the capacity to raise themselves into an entirely different social condition by forming cooperative combinations; in this way, they will supply the capital which their labour requires; they will thus become their own masters, and enjoy all the profits, which their industry yields. Our rural labourers will rapidly show an anxiety to join the movement by applying the cooperative principle to agriculture; and if in agriculture the movement is checked by artificial restrictions which would tend to prevent these associations of labourers acquiring the necessary area of land, then we may depend upon it that these men will not stay here to enrich us by their industry, and to augment our national greatness by their growing wealth and prosperity; they will seek a home in far distant regions where land is abundant, and where they will prove that, if an Englishman has fair scope for his energy and skill, he will soon raise himself from the poverty by which he may have been depressed; and he will show, that he has that in him, to entitle him to take the foremost place amongst mankind (ibid.: 61).

In these respects, Fawcett was more a part of that change in the atmosphere of Cambridge economics than one would suppose from the slighting accounts of him by his younger contemporaries. Jevons, in the concluding section of his Theory of Political Economy, had lamented the ‘noxious influence of authority’ (Jevons 1871: 265), meaning Mill, Fawcett, et al. (despite Fawcett having written a testimonial for him). Moreover, Sidgwick, in his official academic work, only occasionally refers to Fawcett, however allied they were in political causes. Marshall, Foxwell, and others of the emerging Cambridge School tended to mention him only to scorn, with Foxwell famously writing to Neville Keynes about a less than impressive examination candidate: ‘The Fawcetts are at the bottom of most of his errors as invariably happens. The most curious is his almost complete omission of any treatment of interest as distinct from profits—and his very bad theory of wages—both thoroughly characteristic of the Fawcetts’ (Foxwell quoted in Deane 1989: 106).

No doubt there were generational tensions that made it difficult to see how much was shared in this Cambridge context. It must also be said that, whatever the merits of Jevons’s Theory on such matters as marginal, or final, utility, progress in economics may be harder and more compromised than one would like to suppose. Jevons’s work, for example, was also steeped in the growing racism of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Fawcett’s work, for all its theoretical simplicity, was at least comparatively free of such racial constructions, and he did not contribute to that part of the atmospheric change.