SECTION CLXII.. Cost of Production of Labor.

COST OF PRODUCTION OF LABOR.

The idea conveyed by the expression necessaries of life is, within certain limits, a relative one. In warm countries, a workman's family needs less clothing, shelter, fuel and even food[162-1] than in cold countries. This difference becomes still more striking when the warm countries possess absolutely cheaper food as, for instance, rice, Turkish wheat, bananas etc. Here, evidently, other circumstances being the same, the rate of wages may be lower.[162-2] The cultivation of the potato has operated in the same direction; since an acre of land planted with potatoes yields, on an average, twice as much food as the same acre planted with rye.[162-3] In France, two-thirds of the population lived almost without animal food, on chestnuts, Indian corn, and potatoes (Dupin), while in England, malt, hops, sugar, brandy, tea, coffee, tobacco, soap, newspapers, etc. are described as "articles chiefly used by the laboring classes." (Carey.)

The standard of decency of the working class also has great influence here. The use of blouses in Paris has nothing repulsive, nor that of wooden shoes in many of the provinces of France, nor the absence of shoes in lower Italy; while the English workman considers leather shoes indispensable, as he did only a short time ago a cloth coat. Compare infra, § 214.[162-4]

Watery contents Watery contents included. excluded.

Of wheat, 1,881 lbs. 1,680 lbs. " rye, 1,549 " 1,404 " " pease, 1,217 " 1,095 " " potatoes, 21,029 " 5,257 "

The dry substance of these products yielded:

Azotized Mineral Substance. Fecula. Matter.

Wheat, 282 lbs. 879 lbs. 49 lbs. Rye, 243 " 661 " 34 lbs. Pease, 309 " 431 " 33 lbs. Potatoes, 525 " 3,785 " 178 lbs.

In Saxony, from 1838 to 1852, the average prices stood as follows:

Of Rye. Of Wheat. Of Potatoes.

One lb. of dry substance, 1 1.28 .95 One lb. of protein substance, 1 1.11 1.78 One lb. of fecula, 1 1.14 0.72

(loc. cit.) The high price of protein in wheat depends probably on the more agreeable appearance and pleasanter taste of wheat flour; the still higher price of potato protein on the exceedingly easy mode of its preparation.]

The necessary outlay of the family of an agricultural day laborer in England, in 1762, was estimated as follows: for bread and flour, £6 10s. per annum; for vegetables and fruit, £1 1-2/3s.; for fuel, light and soap, 2-9-5/6s.; for milk, butter and cheese, £1 1-6-5/6s.; for meat, £1 6s.; for house-rent, 1-6s.; for clothing, bedding, etc., 2-16-1/3s.; for salt, beer and colonial wares, 1-16-5/6s.; for medicine, expenses attending confinement of wife, etc., 1-6-1/2s. (J. Wade, History of the middle and working Classes, 1853, 545.) Concerning 1796, compare Sir F. M. Eden, State of the Poor, I, 660, 1823; Lowe, on the present Condition of England. Compare on the receipts and expenses of ten working families in and about Mühlhausen, the tables in the Journal des Economistes, October, 1861, 50; and further Ducpétiaux, Budgets économiques des Classes ouvrières en Belgique, 1855. According to Playfair in Knop, Agriculturchemie, I, 810, ff., different classes of grown men need daily food.

==================+=========+========+========+========+======== GRAMMES. | 1. | 2. | 3. | 4. | 5. ------------------+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------- Plastic material, | 56.70 | 70.87 | 119.07 | 155.92 | 184.27 Fat, | 14.70 | 28.35 | 51.03 | 70.87 | 70.87 Starch, | 340.20 | 340.20 | 530.15 | 567.00 | 567.00 ==================+=========+========+========+========+========

Here 1 stands for a convalescent who can bear only enough to preserve life; 2, the condition of rest; 3, moderate motion of from 5 to 6 English miles' walk daily; 4, severe labor = a walk of 20 English miles daily; 5, very severe labor = to a day's walk of 14 English miles, with a load weighing 60 lbs. If the fat be given in terms of starch, the aggregate need of both substances in the case of 1 is 6.6 times as great as the need of plastic substance; in the case of 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively 5.7, 5.2, 4.8 and 4.0 times as much.

A Dutch soldier doing garrison duty receives daily, in times of peace, 0.333 kilogrammes of wheat flour, 0.125 of meat, 0.850 of potatoes, 0.250 of vegetables, containing in the aggregate 60 grammes of albumen. In forts, where the service is more severe, he receives 0.50 kilogrammes of wheat flour, 0.06 of rice or groats, with an aggregate amount of 116 grammes of albumen. (Mulder, Die Ernährung in ihrem Zusammenhange mit dem Volksgeiste, übersetzt von Molecshott, 1847, 58 seq.) According to the researches of Dr. Smith, in order to avoid the diseases caused by hunger, a man needs, on an average, to take 4,300 grains of carbon and 200 grains of nitrogen in his daily food; a woman 3,900 grains of carbon and 180 grains of nitrogen. In 1862, the workmen in the famishing cotton industries of Lancashire were actually reduced to just about this minimum. (Marx, Kapital, I, 642.) Death from starvation occurs in all vertebrates when the loss of weight of the body, produced by a want of food, amounts to between two-fifths and one-half of what it was at the beginning of the experiment. (Chossat, Recherches expérimentales sur l'Inanition, 184, 3.)]