HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.--IN FLOURISHING TIMES.
When, where a nation's economy[172-1] is growing and flourishing,
capital increases more rapidly than population, there is a search for
employment by capital still greater than the search for employment by
labor. The consequence is, of course, a decline in the rate of interest,
and a rise in the rate of the wages of labor, although the latter may be
compelled to surrender a part of its increase to rent, which also rises.
If simultaneously with these phenomena, there have been great advances
made in national productive skill, especially in the cultivation of
land; if, therefore, labor and the capital consumed have become more
prolific, the condition of the laboring class is improved in a two-fold
manner; the condition of capitalists needs, to say the least, grow no
worse, and the increase of rent paid to landowners may be
avoided.[172-2]
This favorable development is most striking in the colonies of rich and
highly civilized parent countries, where the labor, capital and social
customs of an old and ripe civilization are found together with the
overflowing natural forces inherent in a virgin soil, engaged in the
work of economic production. Here the growth of national wealth is most
rapid; and the rate of wages is here wont to be highest.[172-3] With the
high rate of interest that obtains where capital is rapidly saved, and
with the low price of land, it is not a matter of difficulty for good
workmen to enter into the ranks of landowners and capitalists. In North
America, and especially in the western part,[172-4] it is very
frequently in the normal course of economic development for young people
to begin to work on wages, then to work on their own account, and
finally to become themselves employers of labor.
[Footnote 172-1: Compare _Hermann_, Staatswirths. Unters.,
241 ff.; _J. S. Mill_, Principles, ch. 3. As to how _Carey_
confounds the rise and fall of the productiveness of labor
with the rise and fall of wages, see _J. S. Mill's_ views in
_Lange_, 1866, 218 ff.]
[Footnote 172-2: In England, wages from 1400 to 1420,
estimated in produce, were much higher than from 1500 to
1533. (Statist. Journal, 1861, 544 ff.) Later, a quarter of
wheat was earned by day labor as follows: under Elizabeth,
in about 48 days; during the seventeenth century, in 43
days; between 1700 and 1766, in 32 days; between 1815 and
1848, in from 19 to at most 28-3/4 days. (_Hildebrand_, Nat.
Oek. der Gegenwart und Zukunft.) Since 1860, it has been
earned in about 14 days. About 1668, the wages paid to
English laborers and servants was one-third higher than
twenty years before. (_Sir J. Child_, Discourse on Trade, p.
43 of the French translation.) _D. Defoe_, Giving Alms no
Charity, 1704, draws a much more favorable picture of the
time next succeeding. _Adam Smith_, Wealth of Nat., I, ch.
8, shows how money-wages, in the eighteenth century, were
higher and the price of corn lower than in the seventeenth
century. Between 1737 and 1797, wages in most parts of
England, except in the immediate neighborhood of the great
cities, doubled. (_Eden_, I, 385.) In Scotland, about the
year 1817, the wages of married farm servants, expressed in
corn, were about 60 per cent. higher than in 1792.
(_Sinclair_, Grundgesetze des Ackerbaues, 105.)
_Boisguillebert_, Traité des Grains, I, 2, estimates the
wages in France, for agricultural laborers, at least from 7
to 8 sous, of present money, and at twice that amount in
harvest time. In 1697, laborers in Paris received from 40 to
50 sous. (Détail de la France, I, ch. 1, ch. 7.) _Vauban_
estimates wages in large cities at 22-1/2-45 sous; for
country manual laborers, at 18 sous; for agricultural
laborers, 12-13-1/5 sous. (Project d'une Dime royale, 89
Daire.) On the other hand, _Chaptal_, De l'Industrie, Fr. I,
245, 1819, speaks of an average wage--25 sous. _Dureau de la
Malle_, Economie polit. des Romains, I, 151, allows
agricultural laborers, in 80 departments of France, only
20-25 sous. According to _Moreau de Joannés_, Journal des
Econ., Oct. 1850, the average wages of a French agricultural
family amounted per annum, in 1700, to 135 francs; in 1760,
to 126; in 1788, to 161; in 1813, to 400; in 1840, to 500
francs. While _A. Young_, Travels in France, 1787-89, speaks
of wages of 20 sous a day; _Peuchet_, Statist. élémentaire,
1805, 361, assumes it to be 30 sous, although the price of
corn was not much higher. Compare _Birkbeck_, Agricultural
Tour of France, 13, who is of opinion even, that French
laborers are better situated than the English (?). From 1830
to 1848, wages decreased about 30 per cent. (_L. Faucher_,
Revue des deux Mondes, Avril, 1848.) _Levasseur_, Histoire
des Classes ouvrières en France, II, 1858.
General data for whole countries are obviously very
doubtful. In Germany, for instance, economically active
places have witnessed an undoubted elevation of the
condition of the laboring classes. Thus, in Hamburg and
Lower Saxony, about the end of the eighteenth century
(_Büsch_, Geldumlauf, II, 56 ff.); while in Thuringia, in
1556, a _sümmer_ of rye was earned by 7 summer days' labor,
and in 1830 ff. by 8. (_Lotz_, Handbuch, I, 404.) In Hessen,
also, there has been but a very small increase in wages.
_(Hildebrand,_ Nat. Oek., I, 190.) According to _von der
Goltz_, Ländliche Arbeiterfrage, 1872, 84 seq., wages in the
country during the last twenty or thirty years have
increased on an average, 50 per cent. at least; in Bavaria
about 100 per cent.; in the Rhine province, male wages,
about 100; female wages, from about 75 to 100 per cent. The
masterly investigations of the wages of typesetters in Jena
and Halle by _Strasburger_ in _Hildebrand's_ Jahrb., 1872, I
ff., show that from 1717 to 1848, there was scarcely any
change in them. A million m's was paid for in 1717-40 with
26.93 Prussian _sheffels_ of rye; 1804-47 with from 24.80 to
28.80. Since then, a remarkable rise; so that in 1871, up to
November, 76.26 was reached. The prices of food, dwellings,
fuel, clothing, such as is in demand by such laborers, rose
between 1850 and 1860, 16.7 per cent., and the wages for
1,000 m's in the same period of time rose about 14.3 and
43.7 per cent. In the industrious manufacturing vicinity of
Moscow, wages in 1815 were four times as high as in 1670,
while the means of subsistence rose relatively much less.
(_Storch_, I, 203.)]
[Footnote 172-3: In the United States, the wages of
carpenters and masons, about the end of the last century,
were $0.62 and $0.75; in 1835, of the former from $1.12 to
$1.25, and for the latter from $1.37 to $1.50. In 1848, the
general wage was $0.75. The price of corn, in the meantime,
did not rise, and the price of manufactured articles was
much smaller. (_Carey_, Rate of Wages, 26 seq.; Past,
Present and Future, 154.) In New York, as far back as 1790,
wages were much higher (_Ebeling_, Geschichte und
Erdbeschreibung von Nordamerika, II, 917); and between 40
and 50 years ago, a journeyman mason might earn over 700
thalers per annum. Agricultural laborers, in 1835, got $9 a
month and their board, valued at $65 for the whole year. In
the vicinity of large cities, both were higher. (_Carey_,
91.) The condition of the factory hands, in Lowell, is a
very good one. In 1839, more than 100 of them had over
$1,000 each in the savings banks, and pianos at their mess
places. (_Boz_, Notes on America, 1842.) Most of them could
save $1.50 a week. _Colton_, in his Public Economy (1849),
says that a workman would consider himself in a bad way if
he could not save half of his wages. Compare _Chevalier_,
Lettres sur l'Amérique, II, 174, 122, 19; I, 221 ff.
Apprentices in the United States, in almost every instance,
begin to be paid wages as soon as their work begins to prove
useful. The work of half-grown children, who had not yet
left the parental roof, was so well paid that it was
estimated that a child earned for his parents, on the whole,
£100 more than he cost them. What an incentive to marriage!
(_Adam Smith_, Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8.) In Canada,
agricultural laborers earn between £24 and £30 per annum and
their board. In and around Melbourne, agricultural laborers
got from 15 to 20 shillings a week and lodging; herdsmen,
£35 to £40 a year; girls, from £20 to £45 (Statist. Journal,
1872, 387 ff.); female cooks, from £35 to £40; male cooks,
from £52 to £156. In hotels, girls, from £30 to £35; female
cooks, from £50 to £100; domestic servants, £39 to £52;
carpenters, masons, etc., 10 shillings a day; the best
tailors, from 60 to 75 shillings a week; shoemakers, from 40
to 55 shillings; bakers, from 40 to 60 shillings a week.
(Statist. Journal, 1871, 396 seq.) In San Francisco, a short
time since, servant girls got $25 a month; Chinese, $1 a
day; common laborers, $2; skilled artisans, from $3 to $5.
(_Whymper_, Alaska, 299, 326.) The wages of a European
tradesman, in Rio Janeiro, was from I to 2 Spanish piasters
a day. (_Martius_, Reise, I, 131.) In the English West
Indies, a new-born negro was formerly worth £5. (_B.
Edwards_, History of the West Indies, II, 128.) The high
wages paid in young colonies are frequently made temporarily
still higher, by a large influx of capital in the shape of
money, brought by emigrants, and by government outlays.
Thus, in Van Diemen's land, for instance, in 1824,
carpenters, masons, etc. got 12 shillings a day; in 1830,
10; in 1838, only from 6 to 7, although between 1830 and
1838, the export trade of the island trebled while the
population scarcely doubled. (_Merivale_, On Colonies, II,
225.)]
[Footnote 172-4: As to how many workmen in the eastern part
of North America buy land in the west, and so threaten their
employers with immediate emigration, see _Brentano_,
Arbeitergilden, II, 131. However, in Massachusetts, women's
wages are in many instances so low that, considering the
dearness of the means of subsistence, it is almost
impossible to understand how they exist. (Statist. Journal,
1872, 236 ff.)]