Chapter XXXI: Section CLXXIV

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]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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 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.)]

[Footnote 174-3: Thus, in England, during the last great
war, wages rose less than the price of corn, and sank less
after it. About 1810, wages were nearly 100 per cent. higher
than in 1767; but, on the other hand, the price of wheat,
115; of meat, 146; of butter, 130, and of cheese, 153 per
cent. (Edinburg Rev., XL., 28.) If it has some times been
observed that crime, communistic machinations and
revolutionary movements grow less frequent in times of war,
the fact is not to be ascribed necessarily to a better
condition of the laboring class. It might possibly be the
consequence of the strongest and wildest elements of the
laboring class finding some other career.]

[Footnote 174-4: _Adam Smith_, loc. cit., on this point
describes China as a stationary country (according to _R.
Fortune_, Wanderings in China, 1847, 9, a decided decline
has been noticeable there for a long time), and Bengal as a
declining one. On the condition of wages among the Romans,
_Juvenal_, III, 21 ff., is one of the principal sources.
Hence the desire to emigrate because honest labor had no
longer any foothold (23 ff.). Poor dwellings of the laboring
class, dark, exposed to danger from fire (166, 190 ff.,
225), and yet comparatively dear (223 seq.). Numerous crowds
of robbers and beggars (302 ff.; IV, 116 ff.; V, 8; XIV,
134). On beggary, see _Seneca_, Controv., V, 33. De
Element., II, 6. De Vita beata, 25 ff. _Martial_, V, 81,
XIV, 1, complains of the absence of outlook among the poorer
classes. _Horace_, too, is rich in passages which might be
appropriately cited in this connection. Characteristic
question of the nabobs, in _Petron._, 48, 5: What on earth
is that thing called a pauper?]

[Footnote 174-5: Thus, in China, the East Indies, etc.,
people travel in palanquins borne by men; in a multitude of
cases, Chinese commodities are carried in wheelbarrows; and
a great many roads are constructed, in reference not to
wagons, properly so-called, but to this species of vehicle.
How heartless the Chinese, who, before they save a drowning
man, first higgle about the reward, and take pleasure in
pestilence, famine, etc., because those who survive profit
by them. See _Finlaison_, Journey of the Mission to Siam,
1826, 62 ff.]

[Footnote 174-6: Hence _Menander_ (342-290 before Christ)
says it is better to be the slave of a good master than to
live wretched in freedom. (_Stoboeus_, Flor., 62, § 7.
_Meinecke_, Fr. com. Gr., IV, 274.) _Libanios_, too, (Tom.,
483, Reiske), in his "Blame of Poverty," represents slavery
as better cared for, and freer from worry. Horrible
contracts made even in Cæsar's time, from want, by freemen,
to become gladiator-slaves. _Cicero_, pro Roscio, Am. 6;
_Horat._, Serm., II, 7, 58 ff.; _Petron._, 117; _Seneca_,
Epist., 37. And so by Justinian, cases of declined freedom
are supposed. (L. 15, _Justin._, Cod., VII, 2.) "_Dans une
armée on estime bien moins un pionnier, qu'un cheval de
caisson, parce que le cheval est fort cher, et qu'on a le
pionier pour rien. La suppression de l'esclavage a fait
passer ce calcul de la guerre dans la vie commune._"
(_Linguet._)]

[Footnote 174-7: _Sismondi_ is guilty, however, of a
philanthropic exaggeration when he says that the labor of
children is always fruitless to the laboring classes. (R. P.
I., 235.)]

[Footnote 174-8: The bringing into juxtaposition of the
rates of wages in different countries is doubtless one of
the most important objects of comparative statistics. Only
it is necessary not to confine it to the money amount of
wages, but to make it embrace the prices of the principal
means of subsistence. Thus, in France, before the outbreak
of the French Revolution, a French workman earned a cwt. of
bread on an average of 10.5 days; one of meat in 36.8; an
English workman, in 10.4 and 25.3 days. (_A. Young._) In the
interior of Russia, a female weaver earns, in a day, almost
one Prussian _scheffel_ of rye, in Bielefeld, only about
one-tenth of a _scheffel_; a table-cloth weaver, in the
former place, 18 silver groschens, while the _scheffel_
costs from 12 to 15 silver groschens. (_von Haxthausen_,
Studien, I, 119, 170.) According to _Humboldt_, the
money-wages paid in Mexico were twice as high, and the price
of corn two-thirds as dear, as in France. (N. Espagne, IV,
9.) According to _Rau_, Lehrbuch, I, § 180, the procuration
of the following means of subsistence required in day labor
in:

==============+============+=========+==========
| | | |
|_Manchester.|_Hanover.|_Hanover.|
| | | |
| 1810-20_ | 1700_ | 1827_ |
--------------+------------+---------+----------
Cwt. beef, | 26 | 33 | 35 |
" potatoes,| 1.85 | ---- | ---- |
" wheat, | 5.5 | ---- | ---- |
" rye, | ---- | 6.5 | 8.7 |
" butter, | 42.3 | 87 | 64 |
" sugar, | 96 | 181 | 128 |
==============+============+=========+==========
|_Upper | | |
|Canada. |_Brandenburg.| Gratz. |
| | | |
| 1830_ | 1820-33_ |1826-45_ |
--------------|--------+-------------+----------
Cwt. beef, | 6.6 | 34 | 36 |
" potatoes,| ---- | 1 | 2.68 |
" wheat, | 2 | 7.6 | 11 |
" rye, | 1.5 | 5.4 | 8.6 |
" butter, | 22 | 83 | 84 |
" sugar, | ---- | ---- | ---- |
==============+============+=========+==========

Estimated in silver, the East Indian laborer earns from £1
to £2 a year; the English, £9 to £15; the North American,
£12 to £20. (_Senior._) _Hildebrand_, Nat-Oek., I, 195 ff.,
assures us that the average rate of wages in Germany, in
1848, amounted to 400 thalers a year; in England, to 300
thalers; and that the prices of the means of subsistence in
the latter country were 1-1/2 times higher than in the
former. _Engel_, Ueber die arbeitenden Klassen in England,
1845, shows only the dark side of a real picture, and is
silent on the other, and is well corrected by _Hildebrand_,
I, 170 ff. Excellent statistics in _Sir F. M. Eden_, State
of the Poor, I, 491-589. On the more recent times, compare
the Edinburgh Review, April, 1851, April, 1862; Quarterly
Rev., Oct., 1859, July, 1860. _Ludlow_ and _Jones_, loc.
cit. On the situation in France, see _Blanqui's_ report in
the Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences morales et
politiques, II, 7. _Leplay_, Les Ouvriers des deux Mondes,
II, 1858. Very important are the "Reports from Her Majesty's
diplomatic and consular Agents abroad respecting the
Condition of the industrial Classes, and the Purchase-power
of money in foreign Countries." (1871.)]