[170-5] The salaries paid to the employees in the office of the minister of finance in France and the United States were as follows: to the porter, 1,500 and 3,734 francs; the lowest clerk, 1,000 to 1,800, and 5,420 francs; to the head clerk, 3,200 to 3,600, and 8,672 francs; the secretary general, 20,000 and 10,840 francs; to the minister, 80,000 and 32,520 francs. (Tocqueville, Démocratie aux États-Unis, II, 74.) In the treasury department, at Washington, of 158 employees, only 6 received less than $1,000 salary, but only 2 over $2,000. (M. Chevalier, Lettres sur l'Amérique du Nord, II, 151, 456.) Compare Büsch, Geldumlauf, IV, 34. In Russia, the wages of the higher classes of laborers as compared with those paid the commoner class is much higher than in Germany. (Kosegarten, in Haxthausen, Studien, III, 583.) On the other hand, in England, since 1850, the rate of wages for unskilled labor has risen relatively more than any other. (Tooke, Hist. of Prices, VI, 177.)
HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.—IN THE LOWER STAGES OF CIVILIZATION.
In very low stages of civilization, where there is scarcely any such thing as rent, and where capital is extremely rare, the wages of labor, notwithstanding its small amount absolutely speaking, must eat up the greatest part of the product.[171-1] With every further advance, the condition of the laboring class is modified, according as the natural decline in this relative amount of their wages is outweighed or counterbalanced, or neither outweighed nor counterbalanced, by the increase in the aggregate product; in other words, in the national income in general as compared with the number of workmen.
[171-1] Adam Smith, Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8. Thus in the case of nations of hunters. The wages of free laborers in Russia, at the beginning of this century, were so high that mowers, in the vicinity of Moscow, received a good half of the corn mowed by them, (von Schlözer, Aufangsgründe, I, 65.) As a rule, the natural relation of the three branches of income is here postponed by the intervention of slavery. (§ 76, 155.) But, for instance, since the negroes have been emancipated, in the southern states of the American Union, it has become necessary to promise them one-half of the cotton crop as wages, and for the employer to run all the risk of a bad harvest. (R. Somers, The Southern States since the War, 1871.) On the wretched pay of domestic servants in the middle ages, see Grimm, D. Rechtsalterth., 357.
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.
[172-1] Compare Hermann, Staatswirths. Unters., 241 ff.; J. S. Mill, Principles, ch. 3. As to how Carey confounds the rise and fall of the productiveness of labor with the rise and fall of wages, see J. S. Mill's views in Lange, 1866, 218 ff.