| In | Tax
per capita of the population for support of the poor. | |
| Leeds, | 22—22½s. | 5s. 7d. |
| Gloucester, | 13—15¼s. | 8s. 8d. |
| Somerset, | 16¾—19¾s. | 8s. 9d. |
| Wilts, | 13-7/12—15-5/12s. | 16s. 6d. |
Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, 476. After an enthusiastic eulogy of high wages, McCulloch remarks especially that the English poor rates cost more than if the laborers were obliged to provide for themselves by getting higher wages. (Principles, III, 7.) Sad results of the system which came into vogue in the South of England in 1795, to supplement wages according to the price of corn and the number of children. Previously the laboring classes married only after the age of 25 and even at 35, and not until they had saved from £40 to £50. After the above mentioned system was adopted, even minors married. (Edinburg Review, LIII, 4, 7.)
[173-10] Von Thünen, Isolirte Staat., II, 1, 154, gives the following formula as the expression of ideal wages: √ap, in which a = the necessary requirement for maintenance of the workmen, and p = the aggregate product of his labor. von Thünen attached so much importance to this formula that he had it engraved on his tomb-stone. But even if it were possible to reduce capital-generating labor and wage-labor to a common denominator, it would not be possible nor equitable to maintain the same dividing measure when capital and labor contributed in very different amounts to the production of the common product. An artist, for instance, who could make costly vessels out of very cheap clay and with cheap fuel would get too little by von Thünen's law; a mechanic who used a very efficient and costly machine, too much. The fundamental defect in his theory, von Thünen himself seems to have obscurely felt. Compare the letter in his Lebensbeschreibung, 1868, 239 and Roscher, Geschichte der Nat. Oek., in Deutschland, 895 ff.
HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.—IN DECLINING COUNTRIES AND TIMES.
When, circumstances being otherwise unaltered, the aggregate income of a nation decreases, the wages of labor are wont to be lower in proportion as the points above mentioned, and which are unfavorable to the laborer in his competition, appear.[174-1] The worse distribution, also, of the national resources, when, instead of a numerous middle class, a few over-rich people monopolize all that is to be possessed, diminishes the wages of common labor and thus again produces a worse distribution than before.[174-2] In a similar way, wages must decline when the mode of life of the laboring class, or the quality of their work, has deteriorated. Some of these causes may exist transitorily even among otherwise flourishing nations; as, for instance, in war times,[174-3] or when population for a while grows more rapidly than national wealth. But among nations universally declining, they are all wont to meet, and one strengthens the other.[174-4] One of the saddest symptoms of such a condition is the low value here put upon the life and strength of workmen. The cheapness of labor has indeed a charm for enterprising spirits, which induces them to employ human labor even where machinery, beasts, etc., would economically be better adapted to the performance of the work.[174-5] Day-laborers are, on this account, more profitable to persons of enterprise (Unternehmer=undertaker) because they can more easily rid themselves of them. But such egotistic calculation should have no place even in the case of actual slaves.[174-6]
Besides, it not unfrequently happens, that the laboring class seek to oppose the decline of wages by increasing their industry, shortening their holidays and leisure, and by drawing their wives and children into their work. This may, under certain circumstances, result in an increase of the national income, and thus constitute a transition to the restoration of high wages, especially if beforehand there was reason to complain of the idleness of the working class. But if the other circumstances of competition are unfavorable to the working class, if especially they used their personally increased income to add to the population, it would not be long before they fell back to their previous state. In such case, the consequence is, that the same quantity of labor has become cheaper; that all permanent profit falls to the capitalists and landowners, and all that remains to the laboring class is only greater toil, a sadder home-life, and sadder children. The danger of such an issue is all the greater, because few things so much contribute to reckless marriages and the thoughtless procreation of children, as the industrial coöperation of wife and child.[174-7] [174-8]
[174-1] Hence Adam Smith says that it is not the richest countries in which wages are highest, but those which are becoming rich most rapidly.
[174-2] The classic lands of low wages and pauperism are especially the East Indies and China. A minister of Kienlong was punished after he had extorted about 20,000,000 thalers. (Barrow, II, 149.) In the confiscation of the well known Keschen, the authorities, according to their own accounts, found 682 pounds of gold and more than 6,000,000 pounds in silver. Considering the colossal[TN 12] banquets of the rich, embracing several hundred courses, of which Meyen, Reise um die Erde, II, 390, describes an example, the wretched food of the poor is doubly striking. Count Görtz relates that in Canton, rats and serpents are regularly exposed for sale. (Reise, 445.) The lowness of wages appears from the fact—one of many—that servants frequently get nothing but their board. (Haussmann, Voyage en Chine, etc.) In the cities, tradesmen with their tools run hither and thither about the streets begging for employment in the most imploring manner. Thousands live all their lives on rafts. Numberless instances of infanticide from want of food, (§ 251.) The influence of these circumstances on the morality of the people is best illustrated by the fact that Keschen, when he was ambassador to Thibet, preferred to confide his newly collected treasures to the escort of the French missionaries he persecuted rather than to the mandarins named by himself, so much more highly did he estimate European than Chinese honesty. (Edinburg Rev., 1851, 425 ff.) In the Chinese picture-writing, the word happiness was designated by a mouth well corked with rice. Chinese statisticians speak of mouths (Maul) where ours treat of the number of heads or souls. Ritter, Erdkunde, II, 1060. More favorable accounts in Plath, Münch. Akad., 1873, 784, 788 seq.
In the East Indies, a great many of the rejected castes live on carrion, dead fish, noxious insects, and even the middle class find wheat flour too dear, and therefore mix it with peas, etc. (Ritter, VI, 1143.) It is said that Bengal, in the famine of 1770, lost more than one-third of its inhabitants. (Mill, History of British India, III, 432.) Eloquent description of misery in Rickard, India, or Facts submitted to illustrate the Character and Condition of the native Inhabitants, II, London, 1832. An immense number of badly paid servants of whom it may however be said that each one accomplishes very little. The Pindaries may pass for an extreme of Indian pauperism, corresponding to the pirate-calamity during the later Roman Republic. (Quarterly Review, XVIII, 466 ff.; Ritter, VI, 394 ff.)