[164-4] The person who formerly consumed perhaps four suits of clothes in a year now limits himself to two, and forces the tailor to dismiss one journeyman. In Bavaria, the dear times, 1846-47, and probably also the disturbances of 1848-49, caused officials, pensioners, annuitants and professional men to discharge one-tenth of the female domestics they employed in 1840. (Hermann, Staatsw. Unters, II, Aufl., 467.)

[164-5] The labor of digging during the time of scarcity in England was paid one-third of the price usually paid in good years. (Porter, Progress of the Nation, III, 14, 454.) On the Slavic[TN 9] portions of Silesia, see Hildebrand's Jahrb., 1872, I, 292. According to Rogers, I, 227 ff., 315 ff., and the table of prices in the appendix to Eden, State of the Poor, the price in England of a quarter of wheat and a day's wages was, in—

1287,2s.10¼ d.3 d.
1315,14s.10-7/8 d.3 d.
1316,15s.11-7/8 d.3-7/8 d.
1392,3s.2-5/8 d.5 d.
1407,3s.4 d.3 d.
1439,8s.-26s.8 d.4½ d.
1466,5s.8 d.4-6 d.
1505,6s.8 d.4 d.
1575,20s.8 d.
1590,21s.3-6 d.
1600,10 d.

[164-6] Petty, Several Essays on Political Arithmetic, 133 ff. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8. Ricardo, Principles, ch. 9. In Hesse, in consequence of a series of many rich harvests from 1240 to 1247, no servants could be had at all, so that the nobility and clergy were obliged to till their own lands. (Anton, Gesch. der deutschen Landwirthschaft, 111, 209.)

SECTION CLXV.

WAGES.—THE DEMAND FOR LABOR.

The demand for labor, as for every other commodity, depends, on the one hand, on the value in use of it, and on the other, on the purchaser's capacity to pay for it (his solvability), These two elements determine the maximum limit of wages, as the means of support considered indispensable by the workmen determine the minimum. There are circumstances conceivable under which the rise in wages might entirely eat up rents; but there must always be a portion of the national income reserved to reward capital (its profit). If wages were to absorb the latter also, the mere owner of capital would cease to have any interest in the progress of production. Capital would then be withdrawn from employment and consumed.[165-1] Obviously, no man engaged in any enterprise can give more as wages to his workmen than their work is worth to him.[165-2] Hence the additional product in any branch of industry, due to the labor of the workman last employed, has a controlling influence on the rate of the wages which can be paid to his fellow workmen. If the additional products of the workmen successively last employed constitute a diverging series,[165-3] the last term in the series is the natural expression of the unsurpassable maximum of wages; if they constitute a converging series, men the employer can pay the last workman higher wages than the additional product due to him; provided, however, that the reduction which is to be expected in the case of the workmen previously employed to the same level still leaves him a sufficiently high rate of profit.[165-4] Hence the growing skill of a workman, in and of itself, makes an increase of his wages possible;[165-5] while, conversely, if he can be replaced by capital, which always relatively decreases the value in use of his labor, there is a consequent pressure on his wages.

[165-1] Storch, Handbuch, I, 205 seq.

[165-2] Higher wages promised, for instance, as a reward for saving a human life or some other very precious thing in great danger of being destroyed. In the case of material production, labor is worth to the party engaged in the enterprise, at most, as much as the price of the product after the remaining cost of reproducing it is deducted.

[165-3] Possibly in consequence of a better division of labor or of some other advance made in the technic arts.