SECTION CLXXII.. History of the Wages of Common Labor.--in Flourishing Times.

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.

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.)]

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.)]