SECTION CLXXV.. Wage Policy.--Set Price of Labor.

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]

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.]