Chapter XXI: Section CLXIV: Wages.--Cost of Production of Labor

As the cheapening of the means of subsistence, when the circle of wants of the laboring class has not correspondingly increased, leads to a decline of wages, so an enhancement of their price must, when wages are already so low as only to be able to satisfy indispensable wants, produce an increase in the rate of wages. The transition in the former case is as pleasing as in the latter it is replete with the saddest crises.[164-1] The slower the rise in the price of the means of subsistence is, the more it is to be feared that the working classes will seek to meet it, not by emigration or by a diminished number of marriages, but by decreasing the measure of their wants, the introduction of a poorer quality of food, etc.[164-2]

However, all this is true only of permanent changes in the average price of the means of subsistence, such as are produced, for instance, by the development of agriculture, by taxation etc. Transitory fluctuations, such as result, for instance, from a single good or bad harvest, cannot have this result.[164-3] It is, in poor countries at least, one of the worst effects of a bad harvest, that it tends to positively lower the rate of wages. A multitude of persons who would otherwise be able to purchase much labor are now deterred from doing so, by the enhancement of the price of food.[164-4] On the other hand, the supply increases: many men who before would not work even for money, see themselves now compelled to do so. Those who have been workmen hitherto are compelled by want to make still greater exertions.[164-5]

In very cheap years, all this is naturally reversed.[164-6]

[Footnote 164-1: According to _McCulloch_, Edition of _Adam
Smith_, 472, the food of a day laborer's family constitutes
between 40 and 60 per cent. of their entire support. In the
case of Prussian field hands, it is generally 54 per cent.
greatest in the province of Saxony, viz., 58 per cent. and
lowest in Posen, 43 per cent. Compare _Rau_, Lehrbuch, I, §
191. This may serve as a point of departure, from which to
measure the influence of a given enhancement of the price of
corn. In opposition to _Buchanan_ (Edition of _Adam Smith_,
1817, 59), who had denied the influence of the price of the
means of subsistence on the rate of wages, see _Ricardo_,
Principles, ch. 16.]

[Footnote 164-2: How easily English farmers have accustomed
themselves to the consequences of momentary calamities, may
be seen from _John Stuart Mill_, Principles, II, ch. 11, 5
seq.; _Thornton_, Population and its Remedy, 1846, passim.
_Malthus_, Principles, sec. 8, shows in opposition to
_Ricardo_, Principles, ch. 8, that it is not all one to the
laboring classes whether their wages rise while the price of
the means of subsistence remains the same, or whether the
rate of wages remaining nominally the same, the commodities
to be purchased decline in price. If for instance,
potato-food, physiologically considered, was just as good as
flesh-food and wheat bread, yet an unmarried workman or a
father with a number of children below the average would be
able to save less from the former for the reason that it
possesses less value in exchange. (Edinburg Rev., XII, 341.)
Thus, e. g., in Ireland, between _A. Young_ and _Newenham_
(1778-1808), the rate of wages increased more than the price
of potatoes, but all other means of subsistence in a still
greater ratio. (_Newenham_, A view of Ireland, 1808.)
Compare _Malthus_, On the Policy of Restricting the
Importation of foreign Corn, 1815, 24 ff.; contra.
_Torrens_, on the Corn trade, 1820, 374 ff.]

[Footnote 164-3: Compare _Garve_ in _MacFarlan_, On
Pauperism, 1785, 77. Thus, in the United States, the same
quantities of coffee, leather, pork, rice, salt, sugar,
cheese, tobacco, wool, etc., could be earned in 1836 by 23.5
days' labor; in 1840, by 20.75; in 1843, by 14.8; in 1864,
by 34.6. (_Walker_, Science of Wealth, 256.)]

[Footnote 164-4: The person who formerly consumed perhaps
four suits of clothes in a year now limits himself to two,
and forces the tailor to dismiss one journeyman. In Bavaria,
the dear times, 1846-47, and probably also the disturbances
of 1848-49, caused officials, pensioners, annuitants and
professional men to discharge one-tenth of the female
domestics they employed in 1840. (_Hermann_, Staatsw.
Unters, II, Aufl., 467.)]

[Footnote 164-5: The labor of digging during the time of
scarcity in England was paid one-third of the price usually
paid in good years. (_Porter_, Progress of the Nation, III,
14, 454.) On the Slavic portions of Silesia, see
_Hildebrand's_ Jahrb., 1872, I, 292. According to _Rogers_,
I, 227 ff., 315 ff., and the table of prices in the appendix
to _Eden_, State of the Poor, the price in England of a
quarter of wheat and a day's wages was, in--

1287, 2s. 10-1/4d. 3d.
1315, 14s. 10-7/8d. 3d.
1316, 15s. 11-7/8d. 3-7/8d.
1392, 3s. 2-5/8d. 5d.
1407, 3s. 4d. 3d.
1439, 8s.-26s. 8d. 4-1/2d.
1466, 5s. 8d. 4-6d.
1505, 6s. 8d. 4d.
1575, 20s. 8d.
1590, 21s. 3-6d.
1600, 10d.]

[Footnote 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.)]