WAGE POLICY.--SET PRICE OF LABOR.
Among the artificial means employed to alter the existing rate of wages,
we may mention first, a rate of wages fixed by governmental authority.
These have, in many places, constituted an intermediate step between
serfdom and the free wage-system. In most cases, this measure was
intended in the interest of the upper classes to prevent the lower
obtaining the full advantage of their freedom under the favoring
circumstances of competition.[175-1] In later times, another cause has
frequently been added to this, viz.: by diminishing the cost of
production to increase foreign sales. (See § 106.) In the higher stages
of civilization, nations will scarcely look with favor on the diminution
of the rightful, for the most part, individually small gains of the most
numerous, the poorest and most care-worn class of the community.[175-2]
The purchasers of labor would, in consequence, be badly served, since
they would have lost the possibility of obtaining better workmen by
paying higher wages. Hence, there would, probably, be none but mediocre
labor to be found.[175-3] On the other hand, fixed rates which keep
within the limits described in § 114 are, under certain circumstances,
desirable. This is especially the case where the purchasers of labor on
the one hand, and the buyers of labor on the other, have formed
themselves into united groups, and where the rate fixed is only in the
nature a treaty of peace under governmental sanction, when a war over
prices had either broken out actually or there was danger to fear that
one would break out. It must not be forgotten, that thus far common
labor has scarcely had any thing similar to an "exchange."[175-4]
[Footnote 175-1: The plague known as the black death of
1348, which devastated the greater part of Europe, was
followed by many complaints on the part of the buyers of
labor, of the cupidity and malicious conspiracies of the
working classes. (See _supra_ § 160.) Fixed rates of wages
under Peter the Cruel of Castile, 1351; contemporaneously in
France, Ordonnances, II, 350, and in England, 25 Edw. III,
c. 2; 37 Edw. III, c. 3. In France, the wages of a thresher
were fixed at the one-twentieth or the one-thirtieth of a
_scheffel_, while in present Saxony it is from
one-fourteenth to one-twelfth. In England, under the same
ruler, who had seen his castle at Windsor built, not by day
laborers for wages, but by vassal masons, vassal carpenters,
etc., whom he got together from all parts of the kingdom.
That the rates might not be evaded, the succeeding king
forbade both the leaving of agriculture for industry and
change of domicile without the consent of a justice of the
peace. (12 Richard II., c. 3.) All such provisions were
little heeded in the 16th century. (_Rogers_, the Statist.
Journal, 1861, 544 ff.)
Fixed rates of wages under Henry VII. and Henry VIII., in
the interest of workmen. (_Gneist_, Verwaltungsrecht, II,
Aufl., 461 ff.) The fact that in 5 Elizabeth, c. 4, another
attempt was made to fix the rate of wages by governmental
provisions, in which the person paying more than the sum
fixed was threatened with 10 days' imprisonment, and the
person receiving less with 12, was in part akin to the
English poor laws. If a poor man had the right to be
eventually employed and supported by the community, it was,
of course, necessary that the justice of the peace should be
able to determine at what wages anybody should be prepared
to work before he could say: I can find no work. Extended by
2 James I., c. 6, to all kinds of work for which wages were
paid. (_Eden_, State of the Poor, V, 123 ff., 140.) The
buyers of labor in the eighteenth century frequently
complained that these fixed wages were more to the advantage
of workmen than of their masters. (_Brentano_, English
Guilds., ed. by _Toulmin Smith_, 1870, Prelim. CXCI.)
In Germany, the depopulation caused by the Thirty Years' War
explains why, before and after the peace of Westphalia, so
many diets were concerned with fixing the rate of wages of
servants. Compare _Spittler_, Gesch., Hanovers, II, 175.
Among the most recent instances of English fixed rates of
wages, is 8 George III., for London tailors, and the
Spitalfields Act of 1773, for silk weavers who had, a short
time before, revolted. Also in New South Wales, about the
end of the last century, on account of the high rate of
colonial wages. (_Collins_, Account of the English Colonies
of New South Wales, 1798.) Later, _Mortimer_, Elements of
Politics, Commerce and Finance, 1174, 72, maintains fixed
rates of wages to be necessary. In Germany the imperial
decree of 1830, tit., 24, and again the ordinance of Sept.
4, 1871, provide that each magistrate shall fix the rate of
wages in his own district. _Chr. Wolf_, Vernunftige Gedanken
vom gesellsch. Leben der Menschen, 1721, § 487, would have
the rates so fixed that the laborers might live decently and
work with pleasure.]
[Footnote 175-2: Proposal for a fixed sale of wages in the
protocols of the Chamber of Lords of Nassau, 1821, 12.]
[Footnote 175-3: The Spitalfields Act was repealed in 1824,
for the reason that the manufacturers themselves attributed
the stationary condition of their industries for a hundred
years to the fact that they were hampered by that act.
_Ricardo's_ and _Huskisson's_ prophecies, on this occasion,
fulfilled by the great impulse which the English silk
industries soon afterwards received.]
[Footnote 175-4: Compare _Brentano_, Arbeitergilden der
Gegenwart, II, 288. However, fixed rates of wages equitably
arranged, in the establishment of which neither party has
been given an advantage over the other, have continued to
exist much longer than our distrustful and novelty-loving
age would think possible. Thus compositors' wages in London,
from 1785 to 1800, from 1800 to 1810, from 1810 to 1816, and
from 1816 to 1866, remained unaltered; those of London ship
builders, from 1824 to 1867; of London builders, from 1834
to 1853, and from 1853 to 1865. (_Brentano_ II, 213. Compare
II, 250, 267 ff.)]