This golden opportunity was used by the English laboring classes to both largely multiply marriages and to enhance the rate of wages. The number of marriages contracted in England yearly, from 1843 to 1847, was 136,200; from 1853 to 1857, 159,000. The number of births annually, from 1843 to 1847, was 544,800; from 1853 to 1857, 640,400. And wages, in a number of industries, rose, between 1839 and 1859, from about 18 to 24 per cent. (Quarterly Review, July, 1860, 86), while the prices of most of the necessaries of life declined. That, in the same time, the condition of English laborers was elevated, both intellectually and morally, is proved by many facts cited in Jones' and Ludlow's work on the social and political condition of the laboring classes in England. In Germany, the recent establishment of peace on a firm footing and the French war contributions have given the country an impulse which might be taken advantage of by the laboring class with the happiest results if they would accustom themselves to more worthy wants and at the same time preserve their accustomed industry.
[163-6] The cheapening of the necessaries of life, experience shows, is more likely to lead to an increase of population; that of luxuries, to a raising of the standard of life or of comfort.
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]
[164-1] According to McCulloch, Edition of Adam Smith, 472, the food of a day laborer's family constitutes between 40 and 60 per cent. of their entire support. In the case of Prussian field hands, it is generally 54 per cent. greatest in the province of Saxony, viz., 58 per cent. and lowest in Posen, 43 per cent. Compare Rau, Lehrbuch, I, § 191. This may serve as a point of departure, from which to measure the influence of a given enhancement of the price of corn. In opposition to Buchanan (Edition of Adam Smith, 1817, 59), who had denied the influence of the price of the means of subsistence on the rate of wages, see Ricardo, Principles, ch. 16.
[164-2] How easily English farmers have accustomed themselves to the consequences of momentary calamities, may be seen from John Stuart Mill, Principles, II, ch. 11, 5 seq.; Thornton, Population and its Remedy, 1846, passim. Malthus, Principles, sec. 8, shows in opposition to Ricardo, Principles, ch. 8, that it is not all one to the laboring classes whether their wages rise while the price of the means of subsistence remains the same, or whether the rate of wages remaining nominally the same, the commodities to be purchased decline in price. If for instance, potato-food, physiologically considered, was just as good as flesh-food and wheat bread, yet an unmarried workman or a father with a number of children below the average would be able to save less from the former for the reason that it possesses less value in exchange. (Edinburg Rev., XII, 341.) Thus, e. g., in Ireland, between A. Young and Newenham (1778-1808), the rate of wages increased more than the price of potatoes, but all other means of subsistence in a still greater ratio. (Newenham, A view of Ireland, 1808.) Compare Malthus, On the Policy of Restricting the Importation of foreign Corn, 1815, 24 ff.; contra. Torrens, on the Corn trade, 1820, 374 ff.
[164-3] Compare Garve in MacFarlan, On Pauperism, 1785, 77. Thus, in the United States, the same quantities of coffee, leather, pork, rice, salt, sugar, cheese, tobacco, wool, etc., could be earned in 1836 by 23.5 days' labor; in 1840, by 20.75; in 1843, by 14.8; in 1864, by 34.6. (Walker, Science of Wealth, 256.)