Chapter XXVIII: 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.

[Footnote 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, see
_Grimm_, D. Rechtsalterth., 357.]