Chapter XVIII: Section CLXI: Wages of Labor.--The Minimum of Wages

Human labor cannot, any more than any other commodity, be supplied, in the long run, at a price below the cost of production.[161-1] [161-2] The cost of production here embraces not only the necessary or customary means of subsistence of the workman himself, but also of his family; that is, of the coming generation of workmen. The number of the latter depends essentially on the demand for labor. If this demand be such that it may be satisfied by an average of six children to a family, the rate of wages must be such as to support the workman himself and to cover the cost of bringing up six children.[161-3] Where it is customary for the wife and child, as well as for the father, to work for wages, the father does not need to earn the entire support of the family, and hence individual wages may be smaller.[161-4] But if it were to fall below the cost mentioned above, it would not be long before increased mortality and emigration, and a diminution of marriages and births would produce a diminution of the supply; the result of which would be, if the demand remained the same, a renewed rise of wages.

Conversely, it would be more difficult for the rate of wages to be maintained long much above that same cost, in proportion as the gratification of the sexual appetite was more generally considered the highest pleasure of sense, and the love of parents for their children as the most natural human duty. As Adam Smith says, where there is a great demand for men, there will always be a large supply of them.[161-5]

[Footnote 161-1: Compare _Engel's_ beautiful lecture on the
cost of labor to itself (_Selbstkosten_ = _self-cost_),
Berlin, 1866.]

[Footnote 161-2: _Wolkoff_ zealously and rightly argues,
that the minimum wages is not the _taux naturel_ of wages.
(Lectures, 118 ff., 284.) _von Thünen_ also divides wages
into two component parts--that which the workman must lay
out in his support in order to continue able to work, and
that which he receives for his actual exertion. (Isolirter
Staat., II, 1, 92 seq.)]

[Footnote 161-3: _Gasparin_ distinguishes five periods in
the career of a workman generally: a, he is supported by his
parents; b, he supports himself and is in a condition to
save something; c, he marries, and supports his children
with trouble; d, the children are able to work, and the
father lives more comfortably; e, his strength and resources
decline. (_Villermé_, Tableau de l'État physique et moral
des Ouvriers, 1840, II, 387.)]

[Footnote 161-4: _Cantillon_, Nature du Commerce, etc.,
1755, is of opinion that a day laborer, to bring up two
children until they are grown, needs about as much as he
does for his own support; and that his wife may, as a rule,
support herself by her own work. (42 ff.) In Germany, it is
estimated that, in the case of day laborers, a woman can
earn only from 1/3 to 1/2 of what her husband does; mainly
because she is so frequently incapacitated for work by
pregnancy, nursing, etc. (_Rau_, Lehrbuch, I, § 190.) In
France, in 1832, a man working in the fields earned, on an
average, 1-1/4 francs a day, the wife 3/4 of a franc (200
days to the year), the three children 38/100 francs (250
days to the year), an aggregate of 650 francs per annum.
(_Morogues._) In England, the average amount earned in the
country was for males, per annum, £27 17s.; (munications
relative to the Support and Maintenance of the Poor, 1834,
p. LXXXVIII.) The wife of an English field hand, without
children, earns 1/3 more than one with children. In the case
of mothers, a difference of fewer or more children is
unnoticeable in the effects on wages. (London Statist.
Journal, 1838, 182.) In the spinning factories in
Manchester, in 1834, children between 9 and 10 years of age
were paid, weekly, from 2s. 9d. to 2s. 10d.; between 10 and
12, from 3s. 6d. to 3s. 7d.; between 12 and 14, from 5s. 8d.
to 5s. 9d.; between 14 and 16, from 7s. 5d. to 7s. 6d.
(Report of the Poor Commissioners, 204.) Those manufactures
which require great physical strength, like carpet and
sail-cloth weaving, and those carried on in the open air and
in all kinds of weather, allow of no such family competition
and debasement of wages. (_Senior_ in the Report of the
parliamentary Committee on Hand Weavers, 1841.)]

[Footnote 161-5: Similarly, _J. Möser_, Patriot. Phant., I,
40. _Adam Smith_ infers from the following symptoms in a
country that wages are higher there than the indispensable
minimum, viz.: if wages in summer are higher than in winter,
since it is seldom that enough is saved in summer to satisfy
the more numerous wants of winter; if wages vary less from
year to year and more from place to place than the means of
subsistence, it they are high even where the means of
subsistence are cheapest. (Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8.)]