SECTION CLXIV.. Wages.--Cost of Production of Labor.

WAGES.--COST OF PRODUCTION OF LABOR.

As the cheapening of the means of subsistence, when the circle of wants of the laboring class has not correspondingly increased, leads to a decline of wages, so an enhancement of their price must, when wages are already so low as only to be able to satisfy indispensable wants, produce an increase in the rate of wages. The transition in the former case is as pleasing as in the latter it is replete with the saddest crises.[164-1] The slower the rise in the price of the means of subsistence is, the more it is to be feared that the working classes will seek to meet it, not by emigration or by a diminished number of marriages, but by decreasing the measure of their wants, the introduction of a poorer quality of food, etc.[164-2]

However, all this is true only of permanent changes in the average price of the means of subsistence, such as are produced, for instance, by the development of agriculture, by taxation etc. Transitory fluctuations, such as result, for instance, from a single good or bad harvest, cannot have this result.[164-3] It is, in poor countries at least, one of the worst effects of a bad harvest, that it tends to positively lower the rate of wages. A multitude of persons who would otherwise be able to purchase much labor are now deterred from doing so, by the enhancement of the price of food.[164-4] On the other hand, the supply increases: many men who before would not work even for money, see themselves now compelled to do so. Those who have been workmen hitherto are compelled by want to make still greater exertions.[164-5]

In very cheap years, all this is naturally reversed.[164-6]

1287, 2s. 10-1/4d. 3d. 1315, 14s. 10-7/8d. 3d. 1316, 15s. 11-7/8d. 3-7/8d. 1392, 3s. 2-5/8d. 5d. 1407, 3s. 4d. 3d. 1439, 8s.-26s. 8d. 4-1/2d. 1466, 5s. 8d. 4-6d. 1505, 6s. 8d. 4d. 1575, 20s. 8d. 1590, 21s. 3-6d. 1600, 10d.]