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, asthe 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 Capital would then be withdrawn from employment and consumed.[165-1]Obviously, no man engaged in any enterprise can give more as wages to his workmen than their work is worth to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, inand 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.
[165-4]Thus, for instance, in harvesting potatoes, if, after they have been ploughed up, only those nearest the surface are collected, a laborer can gather over thirty Prussianscheffelsin a day. But the fuller and completer the gathering of potatoes desired is, the smaller will be the product of one workman and of one day's labor. If, therefore, a man wants to gather even the last bushel in a potato field of 100 square rods, so much labor would be required to accomplish it that the workman would not gather enough to feed him during his work, to say nothing of supplying his other wants. Supposing that 100scheffelsof potatoes had grown on 100 square rods, and that of these were harvested—
When the number of men employedin gathering them wasThen the additional yield obtainedby the last workman employed is4,80scheffels,5,86.6"6.6 scheffels.6,91"4.4 scheffels.7,94"3 scheffels.8,96"2 scheffels.(von Thünen, Der isolirte Staat, II, 174 ff.)
[165-5]In Manchester, in 1828, the wages paid for spinning one pound of cotton yarn, No. 200, was 4s. 1d.; in 1831, only from 2s. 5d. to 2s. 8d. But, in the former year, the spinner worked with only 312 spools; in the latter, with 648; so that his wages increased in the ratio of 1274 to 1566. (Senior, Outlines.)
SECTION CLXVI.
WAGES.—PRICE OF COMMON LABOR.
In the case of a commodity as universally desired as human labor is, the idea of the purchasers' capacity to pay (solvability) must be nearly commensurate with the national income, or to speak more correctly, with the world's income.[166-1]In regardto the different kinds of labor, and especially to common labor, it is evident that the different kinds of consumption require very different quantities of them. Here, therefore, we depend on the direction which national consumption takes, and this in turn is most intimately related to the distribution of the national income.[166-2]If all workmen were employed in nothing but the production of articles consumed by workmen, the rate of wages would be determined almost exclusively by the ratio between the number of the working population and the amount of the national income. But, if this were the case, landowners and capitalists would be obliged to live just as workmen do, and their highest luxury would have to consist in feeding idlers. (§ 226). The effect must be much the same, when the wealthy are exceedingly frugal and employ their savings as rapidly as possible in the employment of common home labor; while, on the other hand, the exportation of wheat, wood, and other articles, which the working classes consume, in exchange for diamonds, lace, champagne, diminishes the efficient demand for common labor in a country.[166-3]
The assumption frequently made, that the demand for labor depends on the size of the national capital, is far from exact.[166-4]Thus, for instance, every transformation of circulating into fixed capital, especially when the labor used in effecting this transformation is ended, diminishes the demand for other labor. That principle is not unconditionally true, even in the case of circulating capital. Thus, for instance, the rate of wages is wont to be raised by the transfer of capital from suchbusinesses as require little labor into such as require much.[166-5]Only that part of circulating capital can have any weight here which is intended, directly or indirectly, for the purchase of labor and for the purchase of each kind of labor in particular.[166-6]The capital of the employer is, by no means, the real source[166-7]of the wages of even the workmen employed by him,It is only the immediate reservoir through which wages are paid out, until the purchasers of the commodities produced by that labor make good the advance, and thereby encourage the undertaker to purchase additional labor. Correlated to this is the fact, that other circumstances being the same, those workmen usually receive the highest wages who have to do most immediately with the consumer.[166-8]
[166-1]Seniordenies this. Let us suppose that agriculture in Ireland employs on every 200 acres ten working men's families, one-half of whom are used to satisfy the aggregate wants of the working people, and the other half in the production of wheat to be exported to England. If now the English market requires meat and wool instead of wheat, the Irish landowner will, perhaps, find it advantageous, of the ten laboring families, to employ one in stock raising, a second in obtaining food, etc. to support the laborers, and to discharge all the others. If, then, the increased net product is employed in the purchase of other Irish labor, all goes on well enough; but if, instead of this, the landowners should import articles of English manufacture, the demand for labor in Ireland would doubtless decrease, notwithstanding the increase of its income. (Outlines, I, 154.)Seniorhere overlooks two things: first, that in the supposed case, if eight-ninths of Irish laborers are thrown out of employment, spite of the increased income of the owners of landed estates, Ireland's national income is on the whole probably diminished (§ 146), and secondly, that, possibly, the demand for labor in England experiences a greater increase than the decrease in Ireland; since, with the addition to the world-income, there would be an increase in the world-demand for labor.
[166-2]CompareHermann, Staatswirthsch. Untersuch., 280 ff. Earlier yet,Malthus, Principle of Population, II, ch. 13.
[166-3]Thus,Thomas More, Utopia, 96, 197, thinks that if every one was industrious and engaged in only really useful business, no one would need to fatigue himself very much; while, as it is now, the few real laborers there are wear themselves out in the service of the vanity of the rich, are poorly fed and worked exceedingly hard.
[166-4]McCulloch, Principles, 104, seq. 2d ed.
[166-5]Thus, in France, during the continental blockade, distant ocean commerce declined, and manufactures flourished instead. (Lotz, Revision, III, 134.)
[166-6]Thus,Adam Smithdivides "the funds destined for the payment of wages" into two kinds: the excess of employers' income over their own maintenance, and the excess of their capital over the demands of their own use of it. (Wealth of Nat, I, ch. 8.)Seniorconsiders it a self-evident principle, that the rate of wages depends on the size of the "fund for the maintenance of laborers compared with the number of laborers to be maintained." (Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages, 1830, Outlines, 153, ff.) But what determines the quota of the aggregate national wealth and national income that is to constitute this fund?Carey, Rate of Wages, 1835, has a very exhaustive commentary onSenior.
[166-7]Watts, Statist. Journal, 1861, 500, asserts altogether too generally that an "increase of profit increases the future wages-fund, and consequently the demand for laborers;" and that therefore every new machine useful in manufactures must also be of use to the laboring class. The employer engaged in any enterprise who has grown richer,canpay more wages, but whether hewilldo it depends on other causes, and even his ability to do it, in the long run, on his customers. WhenJohn Stuart Mill, Principles, I, ch. 5, 9, says that only the capital which comes into the hands of labor before the completion of their work contributes to their support, it is as if he were to explain the phenomena of prices by demand and supply, and nothing else, denying the influence of the cost of production, of value in use, and of the deeper determining causes upon them. (Supra, § 107, note 1.) CompareRoesler, Z. Kritik der Lehre vom Arbeitslohn, 1861, 104 ff. In England, the superstition which to a great extent attached to the idea "wages-fund," was first questioned byF. Longe, Refutation of the Wages-Fund Theory of modern Political Economy, 1866. See alsoThornton, On Labour, II, ch. 1. EvenJohn Stuart Milldropped his earlier erroneous views on this subject. (Fortnightly Review, May and June, 1869.) Not, however, without exaggeration, as is proved by his well-known saying, that laborers needed capital but no capitalists. Still, even here, he tenaciously holds that a rise in wages which increases the price of some classes of commodities, must decrease the aggregate demand for commodities. But better paid workmen may now increase their demand for commodities to the same extent that the purchasers of labor who do not gain as much as before, or the consumers of the goods whose price has been enhanced diminish theirs. (Brentano, in Hildebrand's Jahrbb., 1871, 374.) Only, this increase need not affect the very commodities influenced by the decrease.
[166-8]Thus, the person who builds his own house is wont to pay his workmen better than a contractor or builder by profession; and the maker of the entire manufactured article, as a rule, suffers less frequently than the maker of only half of it. (Hermann, Staatsw. Unters., II, Aufl., 471.)
SECTION CLXVII.
DIFFERENCE OF WAGES IN DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF LABOR.
All the causes which make wages higher in some branches of labor; than in others, may be divided into three great categories.[167-1]
A. Rare personal acquirements. The supply of labor requiring rare personal ability will always be limited.[167-2]Such labor must, naturally, have great value in use, when a small supply of it is met by a great demand.[167-3]It sometimeshappens that a species of labor can be utilized only by a small circle of persons who demand it. But the wages for it is raised very high by the great solvability of those who do demand it. How frequently it happens, for instance, that a minister is paid a very high salary for the ability he possesses of making complicated and dry affairs of state attractive to the personal taste of his sovereign.[167-4]Here, particularly, the confidence which the workman inspires by his skill and fidelity enters as an element. Without this confidence, there are many kinds of business which would be crushed out entirely by the control it would be necessary to subject them to, and others would not be possible at all.[167-5]When, for instance, in a large manufacturing establishment, understrappers, workmen, foremen, subordinate superintendents, directors, etc., draw different salaries, their pay, if equitably graduated, should be in harmony with the principles laid down in § 148, The head of a manufacturing establishment, for instance, who has organized a more perfect division and coöperation of labor, himself, and by means of which ten men are enabled to performthe work before performed by twenty, may equitably retain, as the reward of his organizing power, a considerable amount of what was previously paid out in wages. Louis Blanc's proposition, that all should receive equal salaries is, as Bastiat remarks, equivalent to the assertion that a yard of cloth manufactured by a lazy or unskillful workman is worth as much as two yards manufactured by an industrious and skillful one.[167-6]
Such qualified labor, as is treated of here, may be most accurately estimated, the quality of which supposes a certain cost of acquisition. This cost may be considered as the outlay of so much capital, which, with interest,[167-7]should come back to the workman in his wages. Otherwise, others would be deterred from entering the same business by the example of his loss. Here, especially, it is necessary to take into account the long period of apprenticeship or tuition, and the large fees paid for the same; and this, whether they depend on the natural difficulties in the way of acquirement or on artificial obstacles opposed to freedom of competition.[167-8]The influence of these circumstances is particularly great inthose kinds of labor which require a "liberal" education.[167-9]Among the costs of production proper, peculiar to this labor-force, must be included, also, the necessary support of the workman, during the interval between the completion of his studies and the beginning of his full reward.[167-10]
When a species of work requires special current expenses to be made in order to its proper performance, these also should of course be made good to the workman in his wages. Most intellectual labor, for instance, requires quiet surroundings. The brain-worker cannot share his study with his family, and, therefore should receive wages or remuneration large enough in amount to enable him to arrange his dwelling accordingly. A similar circumstance, only in a much higher degree, enhances the price paid for diplomatic service.
[167-1]Excellent germs thereof inAdam Smith, Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 10, 1. Earlier yet, inGaliani, Della Moneta, I, 2.Cantillon, Nature du Commerce, 24 ff.
[167-2]Even in the case of mere manual labor, for instance, a skillful packer of goods is paid higher wages than a mere day laborer; a sower better than a plowman or a digger; a vintner, in general, better than an agricultural laborer: in the Palatinate of the Rhine, in the ratio of 36:24. Thus, almost anyone can paint a door or a house, while an artist possesses a species of natural monopoly.
[167-3]Thus, the Greek juggler, who understood how to throw lintels from a certain distance through the eye of a needle, was very appropriately rewarded by his king with a bushel of lintels. On the other hand, the high fee paid for an operation for cataract depends both on the great importance of the eye which cannot be replaced in any way, and on the rarity of the courage among doctors to pierce the eye of a living man. Very remarkable achievements, which it requires great education to understand, are generally paid for at a very low rate. (Stein, Lehrbuch, 123.)
[167-4]I need only recallRichelieuandMazarin, the last of whom left an estate worth 200,000,000 livres. (Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., ch. 6.) In Parisian industries, few workmen are as well paid as those who are skilled in rapidly effecting changes of form. The so-calledpremières de modesfrequently received more than 1,800 francs a year, while theapprêteusesreceived only from 15 to 20 sous a day. (Revue des deux Mondes, Sept. 15, 1850.) There are women there paid very well for making pin-cushions, pen-wipers, etc., each one of a different form; but as soon as any one form ceases to be a novelty, the wages paid for making it sinks to a minimum. (M. Mohl, Gewerbswissenschaftliche Reise durch Frankreich, 87.)
[167-5]Jewelers, lawyers, statesmen, generals.Seniorsays that of the income of £4,000 which a lawyer or a doctor draws, only £40 are wages for his labor; £3,000 are a rent paid for the possession of extraordinary talent, or for his good luck, and £960 as the interest on his intellectual capital, which is also the chief element of wealth. (Outline, 134.)
[167-6]On the sad experience of the tailors' association founded by Louis Blanc himself, at Clichy, and in consequence of which they soon gave up paying equal wages and returned to piece wages, see Journal des Economistes, Mars, 1850, 349.
[167-7]As the interest on land improvements assumes the character of rent, so also does that of the education of labor the character of wages. The rate of interest usual in a country, and the average duration of the life of the workman affect the capital thus invested as a species of annuity.
[167-8]Wages in the country are generally lower than in the cities. In the electorate of Hesse, for instance, on the supposition of steady employment, males, in the country, received 69 thalers, 23 silver groschens a year; females, 55 thalers, 9 silver groschens; in the cities, on the other hand, males, 88 thalers, 23 silver groschens, and females 61 thalers, 28 silver groschens. (Hildebrand,[TN 10]statistische Mittheilungen, 101, 137.) And so, according toColquhoun, Treatise on Indigence, 1806, the English agricultural laborers received, on an average, £31 per annum, and manufacturing workmen, £55. The reason of this is, besides the greater facility of learning how to perform agricultural labor, the greater dearness of living in cities, and in England also, because industry has developed much more rapidly than agriculture.
[167-9]The cost of bringing up a common laborer, in England, according toSenior, is £40; a gentleman, £2,040. (Outlines, 205.) The more expensive an education which one acquires for its own sake and without any special object beyond this in view, is, the less can the capital laid out in it affect wages. (von Mangoldt, V. W. L., 382.)
[167-10]If the salaries of clergymen are, on an average, lower than the income of a lawyer or a doctor, it is partly because theological candidates are provided for much earlier, and partly because of the lesser cost attending the study of theology. Thus, at the end of the eighteenth century, there were 350 students at the University of Tubingen who are maintained gratis, on foundation-money, and who had previously attended monastery schools, free of charge. (Nicolai, Reisebescreibungen, XI, 73.) The remarkable contrast between the high wages of the Athenian sophists and the low wages of modern abbés, Adam Smith accounts for principally by the many scholarships of modern times. In Saxony, in 1850 etc., the outlay by the state and of foundation-funds for the education of a student amounted to an average of nearly 140 thalers. (Engel.)
SECTION CLXVIII.
DIFFERENCE OF WAGES IN DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF LABOR.(CONTINUED.)
B. The great economic risk of the work. When a branch of labor necessary to a country is, notwithstanding, attendedby many chances of failure to the individual who devotes himself to it, a sufficient supply of the labor can be relied on only in case that the danger attending it is compensated for by a corresponding premium paid to success.[168-1]The choice of a profession or avocation, Adam Smith has compared to a lottery, in which the fortunate winners gain only what the unfortunate have lost. The greater the prizes, the greater also the number of blanks.[168-2]However, the surplus wages in risky kinds of labor are not sufficient to constitute a full insurance premium. This is connected with the vanity of men who, as a rule, over-estimate not only their talent but their good fortune,[168-3]and especially in youth, when they decide on the choice of a profession, etc. According to this, wages must be specially low where even complete failure does notendanger the living or the social position of the workman. Partly on this account are the industries carried on by women so poorly remunerated;[168-4]as also such work as is done by a large class of people to fill up their leisure hours.[168-5]
The prospect of frequent interruptions in any kind of labor must have the same effect on the wages paid for it as its economic or business risk.[168-6]Thus, for instance, a mason or roofer must earn at least enough, during the days he can work, to enable him to live during the time he is prevented working by bad weather. Hence, the highness of his wagesmay, in some respects, be called an apparent one.[168-7]Wages paid by the week more generally tend to equality than wages paid by the day, and more so yet wages paid by the year, for then winter and summer compensate the one for the other. When the workman must be ever ready to perform his task, account must be taken not only of the number of hours he is engaged, but also of fractions of his waiting hours, which must be paid for likewise.[168-8]Two half days cost almost everywhere more than one whole one.
The number of holidays plays a very important part here. In Protestant countries, the workman must, in about three hundred work days, earn enough to live on for about sixty holidays as well. In Catholic countries, before the time of Clement XIV., he had to earn enough in addition to supporthimself for about one hundred and fifty holidays, on ninety of which he performed no work whatever.[168-9]So large a number of holidays produces a higher rate of wages or necessitates a low standard of life among the working classes.[168-10]Something similar is true of evening leisure and rest;[168-11]i. e., of the time when labor ceases.
[168-1]The greater the preparatory cost of labor is, the more difficult it is for workmen to go from one kind of labor to another; but, at the same time, the more certain it is that, without the inducement of a premium paid, there will be no after increase or recruiting of labor-force.
[168-2]Thus, for instance, in the country, where doctors generally get along well enough, the most skillful never obtains any very distinguished position. But, in large cities, on the other hand, there is the greatest difference between first-class physicians and obscure practitioners. Great generals usually obtain a larger income and greater influence than great admirals; and so it is that prizes in the military lottery are greater, and there are therefore more blanks than in the naval lottery. The common soldier is almost everywhere worse paid than the common sailor. (Adam Smith.) To some extent, this depends on the prison-like life of the seaman in times of service, and in the absence of an attractive uniform. As to the extent that the lottery comparison is defective, seeMacleod, Elements, 215.
[168-3]Who, otherwise, would have anything to do with a lottery in which the mass of players were certain to lose, and the keeper of it to gain? And this accounts for the fact well known to all financiers, that the amount of the budget remaining the same, a greater eagerness to enter the military service of the country is inspired by endowing the higher positions munificently—provided they are attainable by all—and paying the lower ones in a very niggardly way, than when the pay is made more uniform. Something similar is to be observed in the ecclesiastical service of the Roman and Protestant churches, inasmuch as the former, considered from an economic point of view, offers more magnificent prizes, but also more blanks, while the latter divides its emoluments more equally.
[168-4]As most seamstresses are, when the worst comes to the worst, supported by their parents, connections by marriage, brothers, etc., the condition of those who have to live by their needle must be a pretty hard one. Who is not familiar with the refrain toHood'scelebrated song of the shirt: "Oh God, that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap!" There is a "distressed needlewoman's society" in London. They undoubtedly suffer from an overcrowding of their avocation, yet their chief desire is that the competition of all who do not live exclusively by the labor of their hands should be prohibited; for instance, that of seamstresses who are paid for their work outside of factories. (Edinb. Rev., 1851, 24.) In Paris, in 1845, the yearly earnings of women workers averaged 375 francs, their yearly wants 500 francs. (Journal des Economistes, X, 250.) This does not apply to female servants whose wages, especially in highly cultured localities as the vicinity of large cities (Holstein, Brandenburg), is very high. In England, the wages of female domestics is frequently higher than in the United States; and hence nearly two-thirds of all English girls between fifteen and twenty-five years of age serve as maids.Browning, Political and Domestic Condition of Great Britain, 413;Carey, Rate of Wages, 92. A remarkable indication that women thrive only in the family. (Compare § 250.)
[168-5]Thus, the darning of stockings in the sandy parts of North Germany, in the Highlands of Scotland, in the Faroe Islands, and formerly, even in the ante-rooms of the Russian nobility. (Schlözer, Anfangsgründe der Staatswirthsch, I, 126.) Flax spinning and linen weaving in Westphalia and Ireland, and wool weaving in the East Indies. Manufacturing industries must be in a very highly developed condition, and machinery carried to a high degree of perfection to compete in price with these accessory industries. Cheapness of many products manufactured in convents and monasteries.
[168-6]Among these interruptions, may also be reckoned the prospect the laborer has of being early incapacitated for work, and thus of seeing himself cut off from every other source of support. This is one of the principal reasons why opera singers are generally better paid than actors.
[168-7]In Leipzig, in 1863, mason and carpenter journeymen earned during the summer, from twenty silver groschens to one thaler, ordinary garden workmen, 20 silver groschens, while shoemaker journeymen did not make much more than 3½ thalers a week, and manual laborers, only from 10 to 15 silver groschens a day. The masons of Paris have the reputation of being the best patrons of the savings banks, and, on that account, are more exposed to being attacked by thieves than any other class. (Frégier, Des Classes dangereuses, II, 3, 1.) High wages paid for threshing in East Prussia, because, the workman during the winter can be employed in very few different kinds of labor, and therefore must earn his entire support by threshing. In Paris, of 101,000 persons engaged in industry in 1860, 6,400 had to calculate on no interruption of their work, the remaining number, however, lost with a certain degree of regularity, from 2 to 4 months a year. (Revue des deux Mondes, 15 Fév., 1865.) If the interruption can be so accurately estimated in advance that the workman may engage in some business for himself during the interval, as for instance when the workmen in the Bavarian breweries work during the summer as masons, its influence on wages decreases. (Storch, Handbuch, I, 192.) As to how, in Switzerland, since 1850, the guaranty of full employment to masons in winter is considered as an addition to the wages of summer, seeBöhmert, Arbeiterverhältnisse, I, 141.
[168-8]Commissionaires, hack-drivers,Extraposthalterin Germany, porters, nurses, guides, servants in watering places and countries visited by tourists. A London porter gets at least a shilling an hour. If employed by the day, he of course gets smaller wages. Image venders, who travel from house to house, sell their wares much lower at their own houses. The person who calls them in from the street is obliged to pay them not only for this one journey, but for several others which yielded them no profit.
[168-9]If we call the minimum daily need or the absolute requirement of the workman = m, the rate of daily wages in the former case must amount to at least m + m/6; in the latter, on the other hand, to m + m/4. A Bavarian holiday estimated at aminusof much more than 1,000,000 florins. (Hermann, II, Anfl., 192.)
[168-10]Von Sonnenfels, Polit. Abhandlungen, 1777, 332 ff.
[168-11]In a part of Lower Bavaria, in which there were 204 holidays in a year, among them the anniversaries of the consecration of 40 churches in the country about, and a feast day following each such anniversary, as well as target-shooting festivals, the celebration begins at 4 o'clockP. M.of the preceding day. (Rau, Lehrbuch, I, § 193.)
SECTION CLXIX.
THE DISAGREEABLENESS OF CERTAIN CLASSES OF LABOR.—ITS EFFECT ON WAGES.
C. Lastly, the personal disagreeableness of the work, which must be compensated for by higher wages. The uncleanness of a coal-worker's task, that of the chimney-sweep, and the repulsive labor of the butcher, demand high compensation, while other branches of business, themselves productive of pleasure, and therefore engaged in by many for pleasure's sake only, yield relatively little to those who engage in them as a regular industry.[169-1]
To this category belong the kinds of labor which require extraordinary effort,[169-2]or which put life or health in unusualjeopardy.[169-3]But, indeed, when the danger attending any kind of work is made glorious by the romantic light of honor, or by still higher motives, it ceases to have any influence on wages.[169-4]On the other hand, the disreputableness of a business in itself raises wages;[169-5]whereas, scholars, poets, etc., leaving the charm inherent in their occupations out of account, are for the most part remunerated only by the honor paid them, and, notunfrequently, only by fame after they have gone hence.[169-6]And yet their talents are so rare, the preparation so laborious, the economic risk so great! Nor is there for the really creative workman any such thing as evening rest. (Riehl.) Common intellectual labor is worse paid in our days than it was, comparatively speaking, a generation ago; because the increased average education makes it less burthensome to most people, and even seem positively agreeable to many. It would, indeed, be a dangerous retrogressive step towards barbarism, if it should come to such a pass, that labor preponderantly intellectual should be permanently more poorly remunerated than mere muscular labor.[169-7][169-8]
[169-1]Thus the chase, fishing in rivers (compareTheocrit., Idyll., 21), gardening, fine female manual labor, and literature.
[169-2]The high wages paid to mowers and threshers may be accounted for on this ground (§ 160). In countries that have a strong heavy soil, wages are frequently 20 per cent. higher than under circumstances otherwise similar where it is sandy or light. In Mexico, a digger gets about twice the wages of an agricultural laborer. (Senior, On the Value of Money, 56.)
[169-3]Almost every trade predisposes to some special disease. CompareHalfort, Enstehung, Verlauf und Behandlung der Krankheiten der Künstler und Gewerbetreibenden, 1845.Livy, Traité d'Hygiène publique et privée, 1850, II, 755. It has been noticed, in Sheffield, that thoughtless steel polishers look unfavorably on certain new inventions intended to protect workmen against inhaling small particles of stone and iron dust. They dread that if these inventions come into general use, their wages would be lowered in consequence; and prefer a short and merry life to one longer and more quiet.
In places in which nearly all kinds of work are dangerous, the danger cannot of course relatively raise the wages of anyone. Thus, in the Thuringian forest, the wages of the haulers of wood are very low. (Lotz, Revision, III, 151.)
[169-4]Missionaries! Besides the extremely small wages paid to common soldiers (in the German infantry only 36.5 thalers cash per annum, to which in Leipzig, for instance, rations, etc., add about 34 thalers more) is an outlay made by the government principally to effect a levy of the tax of the compulsory labor that lies in conscription. (Knies.) In the volunteer system, the difference between officers and men is wont to be much smaller. Thus,Gustav Wasapaid his German mercenaries as follows: 6 marks a month to captains, five to lieutenants and 4 to common soldiers. (Geijer, Schwed. Gesch., II, 125 seq.) Similarly in the case of the Greek hired troops. (Böckh, Staatshaushalt der Athener, I, 165 ff.) As to how little at the outbreak of a war, soldier earnest money is increased, and positions as officers most sought after, seeHermann, II, Aufl., 479.
[169-5]Thus, for instance, the skinning or flaying of dead animals is comparatively well paid, to which the rarity of the application of the work of executioners contributes. (J. Moser, Patr. Ph., I, No. 34.) The high wages of actors, singers, dancers, and especially of the female members of the stage, depends principally on the contempt with which they were formerly looked upon; excommunicated by the Catholic church, and a scarcely milder sentence passed upon them by the Protestant, until about the middle of the eighteenth century. (Schleiermacher, Christliche Sitte, 681.) Compare evenJ. J. Rousseau, Lettre sur les Spectacles à Mr. d'Alembert sur son Article Genève.
[169-6]Schiller's"Theilung der Erde."Blanquisays of the learned: "They are most frequently satisfied with a citizen-crown, and think themselves remunerated when justice has been done to their genius. Their magnanimity impels them, to their own injury, to diffuse their knowledge as rapidly as possible. Thus they are like the light of day which no one pays for, but which all enjoy, without thanking the giver as they ought." The reward of intellectual labor is called anhonorarium. (Riehl, Die Deutsche Arbeit, 1861, 232.) According toJ. B. Say, Traité, II, ch. 7, the poor wages of savants depends on the fact that they take to market, and all at once, a great quantity of what they produce, which cannot even be used up.
[169-7]In Switzerland, journeymen are often better paid than the clerks kept by the greater tradesmen. (Böhmert, Arbeiterverhältnisse, II, 168.) In England, also, since 1850, the wages for "unskilled labor" has risen, relatively, most. (Tooke, Hist. of Prices, VI, 177.) It would be a frightful peril to our whole civilization if school teachers and subordinate officials should be turned into enemies of the entire existing state of things by want.
[169-8]The high wages paid to engineers on railroads is accounted for by the wear, physical and mental, their employment entails, and also by their unavoidable expenses away from home; further, by the importance of the interests confided to their trust. On the Leipzig-Dresden Railway, locomotive engineers, for the most part previously journeymen blacksmiths, earned 900 thalers a year. Similarly, in the case of pilots. The high wages paid on board ships engaged in the slave-trade arose from the unhealthiness of the African coast, where formerly one-sixteenth of the crew died yearly (Edinburg Rev., 480), from the moral turpitude of the business, and from the severe penalties under which it was afterwards prohibited. On the other hand, the low wages paid to European mining laborers is largely the consequence of the certainty of being cared for in old age, of those so employed. Weavers' wages are low because the facility of learning the trade makes it possible for the business to be carried on at home; and hence there is a comparatively great pressure to engage in it. (Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture, 485 ff.)
According to the first annual report of the poor law commissioners (202), the weekly wages in Manchester of hod-carriers was 12s.; of hand-weavers, 7-15s.; of diggers, 10-15s.,; of pack-carriers, 14-15s.; of shoemakers, 15-16s.; of machine-weavers, 13-16-5/6s.; of white-washers, 18s.; of tailors, 18s.; of dyers, 15-20s.; of plasterers, 19-21s.; of masons, 18-22s.; of tinsmiths, 22-24s.; of carpenters, 24s.; of spinners, 20-25s.; of machinists, 26-30s.; of iron founders and power-loom tenders, 28-30s. In Belgium, the average daily wages for male labor was 1.18 francs for agricultural laborers; for those engaged in industry, 1.48 francs; in the manufacture of linen, 0.80[TN 11]francs; of cotton, 1.55; of woolens, 1.62; of silk, 1.25; of stockings, 1.14; of glass, 2.58; of coal, 1.33. All according to the Statistique générale de la B. In Athens, in the time of Aristophanes, a pack-carrier earned 4 oboli a day; a street sweeper, 3; a stone cutter on the public works, 6; a carpenter, 5; for roofing houses and taking down scaffoldings, each man, 6. The architects who superintended the building of the temple of Polias, on the other hand, got only 6 oboli per day, and the contractor 5. (Böckh, I, 165 ff.)
The Edictum Diocletiani of the year 301 after Christ contains the following provisions in relation to wages, besides "board:" shepherds, camel-drivers and muleteers, 20 denarii; agricultural laborers, water-carriers, scavengers, 25; bakers, masons, roofers, house-finishers and repairers of the inside, lime burners, wheelwrights and common clay moulders, 50; boatsmen, sailors, makers of marble or mosaic floors, 60; wall painters, 70; clay moulders for statues, 75; artistic painters, 150. (ed.Mommsen, cap. 7.) In slave countries, the price of different slaves is to be judged, mainly, by the above rules. Concerning the Greeks, seeBöckh, I, 95 ff.St. John, The Hellenes, III, 23 ff. It is a characteristic fact that the Romans, after the Syrian war, began to pay high prices for the hitherto much despised kitchen slaves. (Livy, XXXIX, 6.) Remarkable fixed prices for slaves byJustinian: Cod. VI, 43, 3; VII, 7, 1, 5. Thus, in the Lex Burgundionum, tit. 10, the compensation for the murder of a common laborer is fixed at 30 solidi; of a carpenter, at 40; of a smith, at 50; of a silversmith, at 100; of a goldsmith, at 150. Advanced civilization is wont to raise the price of slaves who perform work of a higher quality, just as it raises the wages of labor of a higher quality.
SECTION CLXX.
RATE OF WAGES.—INFLUENCE OF CUSTOM.
Custom always exerts a great influence where there is question of choosing an avocation with the intention of devotingone's self to it entirely and exclusively. There is a public opinion which fixes the gradation of the different classes of labor and their appropriate reward, which is slow to change, and which both determines, and is determined by the relation of supply and demand. There is an equilibrium between the pleasantness of work and the rate of wages only in the case of such kinds of labor as are on the same social footing. It frequently happens, however, that the most repulsive work has to be performed by those who are forced to accept any pay and to be satisfied with it.[170-1]There are many branches of labor those engaged in which still form a kind of exclusive caste; and the pay of the higher branches is maintained at a high rate, especially by the fact that the members of the castes to which they belong are provident in their marriages. The lower classes are not in a condition to meet the preparation necessary to engage in such professions, even if they were certain of being afterwards reimbursed with interest for the outlay.[170-2]One of the chief causes of the lowness of wages paid to women is, that so few branches of labor are traditionally open to them, that the few that are, are intended to supply luxuries, and are, besides, for the most part, over-crowded. The distribution of the aggregate wages earned by any industry, among the higher and lower classes of workmen who coöperate in it, depends very largely on their social position relatively to one another.[170-3][170-4]Here political forms and changes may exert the greatest influence.[170-5]
Thus, the artificial increase of the wages of masters effected by the former guild-system was produced, to say the least, as much at the cost of the journeymen and apprentices as of the public. And if, on the other hand, it cannot be said that the most recent marked rise in wages, in so many countries, is merely the consequence of the extension of the parliamentary right of suffrage, certain it is that the two phenomena are very closely related, and that both are at once the effect and the cause of the intensified feeling of individuality and of the consciousness of constituting a class in the community of the lower strata of society.
[170-1]At least where the supply of labor in general surpasses the demand. CompareJ. S. Mill, Principles, II, ch. 14, 3d ed. The dangerous industries in which lead, quicksilver, arsenic, etc. are manipulated or employed, should be and can be better paid than they actually are. In the Bavarian Palatinate, stone-cutters rarely reach their 45th year; and yet their wages are very low, because of the comparative over-population of the country. (Rau,Haussen'sArchiv., N. T. X., 228.) But the lowness of wages here is certainly and mainly caused by the little thought the workmen themselves give to considerations of health.
[170-2]The lower the rate of wages of any class sinks, the more difficult it becomes for parents to devote their children to another career.
[170-3]In Paris, 24,463 workmen with less than 3 francs daily; 157,216, with from 3 to 5; 10,393, with from 5 to 20 and even 3 to 5 francs. It is remarkable, however, how uniform the average wages in the different trades is:vêtements, 3.33 francs;fils et tissus, 3.42;boisellerie,vannerie, 3.44;garçons boulangers,bouchers3.50;arts chimiques et céramiques3.71;bâtiments, 3.81;carosserie, 3.86;peaux et cuirs, 3.87;ameublement, 3.90;articles de Paris, 3.94;métaux communs,3.98;métaux précieux, 4.17;imprimerie, 4.18. (Journal des Economistes, Janv. 1853, 111.)
[170-4]How the Roman advocates were given to all sorts of ostentation, and even borrowed costly rings in order to raise theirhonoraria, seeJuvenal, VII, 105, ff.
[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.) CompareBüsch, 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, inHaxthausen, 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.)
SECTION CLXXI.
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, seeGrimm, D. Rechtsalterth., 357.
SECTION CLXXII.
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 searchfor 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 rateof 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 economicdevelopment 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]CompareHermann, Staatswirths. Unters., 241 ff.;J. S. Mill, Principles, ch. 3. As to howCareyconfounds the rise and fall of the productiveness of labor with the rise and fall of wages, seeJ. S. Mill'sviews inLange, 1866, 218 ff.
[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.)Vaubanestimates 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 toMoreau 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. WhileA. 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. CompareBirkbeck, 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, asümmerof 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 tovon 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 byStrasburgerinHildebrand'sJahrb., 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 Prussiansheffelsof 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. CompareChevalier, 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.)