[172-2] In England, wages from 1400 to 1420, estimated in produce, were much higher than from 1500 to 1533. (Statist. Journal, 1861, 544 ff.) Later, a quarter of wheat was earned by day labor as follows: under Elizabeth, in about 48 days; during the seventeenth century, in 43 days; between 1700 and 1766, in 32 days; between 1815 and 1848, in from 19 to at most 28¾ days. (Hildebrand, Nat. Oek. der Gegenwart und Zukunft.) Since 1860, it has been earned in about 14 days. About 1668, the wages paid to English laborers and servants was one-third higher than twenty years before. (Sir J. Child, Discourse on Trade, p. 43 of the French translation.) D. Defoe, Giving Alms no Charity, 1704, draws a much more favorable picture of the time next succeeding. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8, shows how money-wages, in the eighteenth century, were higher and the price of corn lower than in the seventeenth century. Between 1737 and 1797, wages in most parts of England, except in the immediate neighborhood of the great cities, doubled. (Eden, I, 385.) In Scotland, about the year 1817, the wages of married farm servants, expressed in corn, were about 60 per cent. higher than in 1792. (Sinclair, Grundgesetze des Ackerbaues, 105.)
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 22½-45 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.)
[172-3] In the United States, the wages of carpenters and masons, about the end of the last century, were $0.62 and $0.75; in 1835, of the former from $1.12 to $1.25, and for the latter from $1.37 to $1.50. In 1848, the general wage was $0.75. The price of corn, in the meantime, did not rise, and the price of manufactured articles was much smaller. (Carey, Rate of Wages, 26 seq.; Past, Present and Future, 154.) In New York, as far back as 1790, wages were much higher (Ebeling, Geschichte und Erdbeschreibung von Nordamerika, II, 917); and between 40 and 50 years ago, a journeyman mason might earn over 700 thalers per annum. Agricultural laborers, in 1835, got $9 a month and their board, valued at $65 for the whole year. In the vicinity of large cities, both were higher. (Carey, 91.) The condition of the factory hands, in Lowell, is a very good one. In 1839, more than 100 of them had over $1,000 each in the savings banks, and pianos at their mess places. (Boz, Notes on America, 1842.) Most of them could save $1.50 a week. Colton, in his Public Economy (1849), says that a workman would consider himself in a bad way if he could not save half of his wages. Compare Chevalier, Lettres sur l'Amérique, II, 174, 122, 19; I, 221 ff.
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.)
[172-4] As to how many workmen in the eastern part of North America buy land in the west, and so threaten their employers with immediate emigration, see Brentano, Arbeitergilden, II, 131. However, in Massachusetts, women's wages are in many instances so low that, considering the dearness of the means of subsistence, it is almost impossible to understand how they exist. (Statist. Journal, 1872, 236 ff.)
HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.—IN FLOURISHING NATIONS.
A permanently[173-1] high rate of wages[173-2] is, both as cause and effect, very intimately connected with a flourishing condition of national life. It proves on the one hand, great productiveness of the public economy of the people generally: prudence, self-respect and self-control, even of the lowest classes, virtues, which, however, are found, on the whole, only where political liberty exists, and where the lowest classes are rightly valued by the higher.[173-3] On the other hand, it produces a condition of the great majority of that portion of the population who have to support themselves on the wages they receive, worthy of human beings, a condition in which they can educate their children, enjoy the present and provide for the future. Equality before the law and participation in the affairs of government are empty phrases, and even tend to inflame the passions, where the rate of wages is not high. When the lower classes are dissatisfied, in highly civilized countries, with the sensitiveness and mobility of the whole national life, there can be no certainty of the freedom of the middle classes or of the rule of the upper. Here, in other respects, also, the philanthropy of employers harmonizes remarkably well with their reasonable self-interest. According to § 40, only the well-paid workman can accomplish anything really good, just as, conversely, only the good workman is on the whole, and in the long run, well paid. This suggests the physiological law, that where muscular activity is great, nutrition must be great, likewise; and the rapid waste and repair of tissues strengthens the muscles and gives tone to the whole physical life. With a correct insight into the relations of things, antiquity described its greatest worker, Herakles, as a great eater also. A well-paid workman, who costs and accomplishes as much in a day as two bad ones, is cheaper than they. He works much more cheerfully and faithfully, is, hence, more easily superintended, is less frequently sick, and later decrepid. [173-4] His childhood costs less, and his burial is not so expensive. In cases of need, he can more easily bear the weight of taxation or a temporary lowering of wages.[173-5] We might say of the granting of holidays and of evening leisure something similar to what we have said of the rate of wages. They are indispensable requisites to the development of a desirable individuality in the working classes; and when used for that purpose are certainly no detriment to the product of labor or to employers.[173-6] [173-7] ]
In consideration of all the blessings attending a high rate of wages, we may well be induced to put up with a certain and frequently inconvenient external defiance of the lower classes which is wont to accompany it.[173-8] It teaches the upper classes many a moral lesson, and is surely a lesser sin in the lower, than the cowardly, malicious crimes of the oppressed. When wages are so low that they have to be supplemented by begging or public charity, the effect on morality is the same as when government officials, who cannot live on their salaries, resort to bribery or embezzlement.[173-9] [173-10]