Principles of Political Economy Part 5

[Footnote 160-7: _W. Thornton_, On Labour, its wrongful Claims and rightful Dues, its actual, Present and possible Future, 1869, II, ch. 1. _Harrison_, Fortnightly Review, III, 50.]

[Footnote 160-8: Just as the husband binds himself in marriage. While in concubinage there is apparent equality, it costs the woman a much greater sacrifice than the man.]

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 s.e.xual appet.i.te 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 Thunen_ 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. (_Villerme_, Tableau de l'etat 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 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 francs a day, the wife 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. Lx.x.xVIII.) 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 compet.i.tion and debas.e.m.e.nt of wages. (_Senior_ in the Report of the parliamentary Committee on Hand Weavers, 1841.)]

[Footnote 161-5: Similarly, _J. Moser_, 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.)]

SECTION CLXII.

COST OF PRODUCTION OF LABOR.

The idea conveyed by the expression necessaries of life is, within certain limits, a relative one. In warm countries, a workman's family needs less clothing, shelter, fuel and even food[162-1] than in cold countries. This difference becomes still more striking when the warm countries possess absolutely cheaper food as, for instance, rice, Turkish wheat, bananas etc. Here, evidently, other circ.u.mstances being the same, the rate of wages may be lower.[162-2] The cultivation of the potato has operated in the same direction; since an acre of land planted with potatoes yields, on an average, twice as much food as the same acre planted with rye.[162-3] In France, two-thirds of the population lived almost without animal food, on chestnuts, Indian corn, and potatoes (_Dupin_), while in England, malt, hops, sugar, brandy, tea, coffee, tobacco, soap, newspapers, etc. are described as "articles chiefly used by the laboring cla.s.ses." (_Carey_.)

The standard of decency of the working cla.s.s also has great influence here. The use of blouses in Paris has nothing repulsive, nor that of wooden shoes in many of the provinces of France, nor the absence of shoes in lower Italy; while the English workman considers leather shoes indispensable, as he did only a short time ago a cloth coat. Compare _infra_, -- 214.[162-4]

[Footnote 162-1: Explained since _Liebig's_ time by the fact that a part of food is consumed to preserve animal heat: means of respiration in contradistinction to means of nutrition. Recent research has shown that in cold weather more urea and also more carbonic acid are given off; hence the means of supplying this deficit should be greater in cold weather than in warm. This more rapid transformation is wont, when nutrition is sufficient, to be accompanied by more energetic activity. (_Moleschott_, Physiologie der Nahrungsmittel, 1850, 47, 50, 83.)]

[Footnote 162-2: This is opposed in part by the fact that a hot climate induces indolence, and that therefore he needs a greater incentive to overcome his disposition to idleness.

Thus, in the cooler parts of Mexico, the rate of wages was 26 sous a day, in the warmer, 32 sous. (_Humboldt_, N.

Espagne, III, 103.)]

[Footnote 162-3: According to _Engel_, Jahrbuch fur Sachsen, I, 419, on acres similarly situated and under similar conditions, the lowest yielded:

_Watery contents _Watery contents included._ excluded._

Of wheat, 1,881 lbs. 1,680 lbs.

" rye, 1,549 " 1,404 "

" pease, 1,217 " 1,095 "

" potatoes, 21,029 " 5,257 "

The dry substance of these products yielded:

_Azotized _Mineral Substance._ _Fecula._ Matter._

Wheat, 282 lbs. 879 lbs. 49 lbs.

Rye, 243 " 661 " 34 lbs.

Pease, 309 " 431 " 33 lbs.

Potatoes, 525 " 3,785 " 178 lbs.

In Saxony, from 1838 to 1852, the average prices stood as follows:

_Of Rye._ _Of Wheat._ _Of Potatoes._

One lb. of dry substance, 1 1.28 .95 One lb. of protein substance, 1 1.11 1.78 One lb. of fecula, 1 1.14 0.72

(loc. cit.) The high price of protein in wheat depends probably on the more agreeable appearance and pleasanter taste of wheat flour; the still higher price of potato protein on the exceedingly easy mode of its preparation.]

[Footnote 162-4: As regards food alone, the cost of the support of a plowman on Count Podewil's estate, reduced by _Rau_, Lehrbuch, -- 191, to the unit of rye, is annually 1,655 lbs. of rye. According to _Koppe_, it is 1,952 lbs.; to _Block_, 2,300 lbs.; to _Kleemann_, from 1,888 to 2,552 lbs.; to _Mollenger_, 2,171 lbs. The first three estimate the cost in meat at 78, 160 and 60 pounds. Compare _Block_, Beitr. Z. Landguterschatzungskunde, 1840, 6. Exhaustive estimates for all Prussian governmental districts in _von Reden_, Preussische Erwerbs, und Verkehrsstatistik, 1853, I, 177 ff., according to which the requirement, per family, varies between 71 thalers in Gumbinnen and 204 thalers in Coblenz, the average being 105 thalers. According to more recent accounts, a laborer's family in East Prussia, gangmen not included, get along very well on 177 thalers per annum.

(_von der Goltz_, Landl. Arbeiterfrage, 1872, 9 ff.) In Mecklenburg, omitting _Hofganger_, on 183 thalers. (Ann.

des. patr. Vereins, 1865, No. 26.)

The necessary outlay of the family of an agricultural day laborer in England, in 1762, was estimated as follows: for bread and flour, 6 10s. per annum; for vegetables and fruit, 1 1-2/3s.; for fuel, light and soap, 2-9-5/6s.; for milk, b.u.t.ter and cheese, 1 1-6-5/6s.; for meat, 1 6s.; for house-rent, 1-6s.; for clothing, bedding, etc., 2-16-1/3s.; for salt, beer and colonial wares, 1-16-5/6s.; for medicine, expenses attending confinement of wife, etc., 1-6s. (_J.

Wade_, History of the middle and working Cla.s.ses, 1853, 545.) Concerning 1796, compare _Sir F. M. Eden_, State of the Poor, I, 660, 1823; _Lowe_, on the present Condition of England. Compare on the receipts and expenses of ten working families in and about Muhlhausen, the tables in the Journal des Economistes, October, 1861, 50; and further _Ducpetiaux_, Budgets economiques des Cla.s.ses ouvrieres en Belgique, 1855. According to _Playfair_ in _Knop_, Agriculturchemie, I, 810, ff., different cla.s.ses of grown men need daily food.

===================+=========+========+========+========+======== GRAMMES. | _1._ | _2._ | _3._ | _4._ | _5._ -------------------+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------- Plastic material, | 56.70 | 70.87 | 119.07 | 155.92 | 184.27 Fat, | 14.70 | 28.35 | 51.03 | 70.87 | 70.87 Starch, | 340.20 | 340.20 | 530.15 | 567.00 | 567.00 ===================+=========+========+========+========+========

Here 1 stands for a convalescent who can bear only enough to preserve life; 2, the condition of rest; 3, moderate motion of from 5 to 6 English miles' walk daily; 4, severe labor = a walk of 20 English miles daily; 5, very severe labor = to a day's walk of 14 English miles, with a load weighing 60 lbs. If the fat be given in terms of starch, the aggregate need of both substances in the case of 1 is 6.6 times as great as the need of plastic substance; in the case of 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively 5.7, 5.2, 4.8 and 4.0 times as much.

A Dutch soldier doing garrison duty receives daily, in times of peace, 0.333 kilogrammes of wheat flour, 0.125 of meat, 0.850 of potatoes, 0.250 of vegetables, containing in the aggregate 60 grammes of alb.u.men. In forts, where the service is more severe, he receives 0.50 kilogrammes of wheat flour, 0.06 of rice or groats, with an aggregate amount of 116 grammes of alb.u.men. (_Mulder_, Die Ernahrung in ihrem Zusammenhange mit dem Volksgeiste, ubersetzt _von Molecshott_, 1847, 58 seq.) According to the researches of Dr. Smith, in order to avoid the diseases caused by hunger, a man needs, on an average, to take 4,300 grains of carbon and 200 grains of nitrogen in his daily food; a woman 3,900 grains of carbon and 180 grains of nitrogen. In 1862, the workmen in the famishing cotton industries of Lancashire were actually reduced to just about this minimum. (_Marx_, Kapital, I, 642.) Death from starvation occurs in all vertebrates when the loss of weight of the body, produced by a want of food, amounts to between two-fifths and one-half of what it was at the beginning of the experiment.

(_Chossat_, Recherches experimentales sur l'Inanition, 184, 3.)]

SECTION CLXIII.

WAGES OF LABOR.--POWER OF THE WORKING CLa.s.sES OVER THE RATE OF WAGES.

In this way, the working cla.s.ses hold in their own hands one of the princ.i.p.al elements which determine the rate of wages; and it is wrong to speak of an "iron law" which, under the control of supply and demand, always reduces the average wages down to the means of subsistence.[163-1]

For the moment, indeed, not only individual workmen, but the whole working cla.s.s is master of the supply of its commodity only to a very small extent; since, as a rule, the care for existence compels it to carry, and that without interruption, its whole labor-power to market.

But it is true that the future supply depends on its own will; since, with an increase or decrease in the size of the families of workingmen, that supply increases or diminishes. If, therefore, by a favorable combination of circ.u.mstances, wages have risen above the height of urgent necessity, there are two ways open to the working cla.s.s to take advantage of that condition of things. The workman either raises his standard of living, which means not only that his necessary wants are better satisfied, his decencies increased and refined, but also and chiefly, that the intellectual want of a good prospect in the future, which so particularly distinguishes the honorable artisan from the proletarian is taken into consideration. And it is just here that a permanent workingmen's union, which should govern the whole cla.s.s, might exert the greatest influence. Their improved economic state can be maintained only on condition that the laboring cla.s.s shall create families no larger than they hope to be able to support consistently with their new wants.[163-2]

Or, the laboring cla.s.s continues to live on as before, from hand to mouth, and employ their increased resources to gratify their s.e.xual appet.i.te earlier and longer than before, thus soon leading to an increase of population.

The English took the former course in the second quarter of the last century, when English national economy received a powerful impetus, and the large demand for labor rapidly enhanced the rate of wages. The Scotch did in like manner a generation later. The second alternative was taken by the Irish, when the simultaneous spread of the cultivation of the potato[163-3] and the union with England, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, gave an extraordinary extension to their resources of food. While the population of Great Britain, between 1720 and 1821, did little more than double, the population of Ireland increased from 2,000,000 to nearly 7,000,000 between 1731 and 1821. No wonder, therefore, that the average wages of labor was twenty to twenty-four pence per day in the former, and in the latter only five pence.

(_MCCulloch._)[163-4]

Naturally enough, this difference of choice by the two peoples is to be explained by the difference in their previous circ.u.mstances. The Irish people, robbed by violence of their own higher cla.s.ses, and, therefore, and on this account precisely, almost entirely dest.i.tute of a middle cla.s.s, had lost the check on increase they possessed in the middle ages, without having as yet a.s.similated to themselves the checks which come with a higher stage of culture. Their political, ecclesiastical and social oppression allowed them no hope of rising by temporary sacrifices and energetic efforts permanently to a better condition as citizens or gentlemen. Only the free man cares for the future. Hence, the s.e.xual thoughtlessness and blind good nature, the original tendencies of the Irish people, necessarily remained without anything to counterbalance them. It always supposes a high degree of intelligence and self-restraint among the lower cla.s.ses, when an increase in the thing-value, or the real value of wages, does not produce an increase in the number of workmen, but in their well-being. The individual is too apt to think that it matters little to the whole community whether he brings children into the world or not, a species of egotism which has done most injury to the interests in common of mankind. As a rule, it requires a great and palpable enhancement of wages to make workmen, as a cla.s.s, raise their standard of living.[163-5] [163-6]

[Footnote 163-1: Compare _La.s.salle_, Antwortschreiben an das Central Comite zur Berufung eines allg. deutschen Arbeitercongresses, 1863, 15; also _Turgot_, sur la Formation etc., -- 6. When _La.s.salle_ says that when a varied standard of living has become a national habit it ceases to be felt as an improvement, he says what is in a certain sense true. But is the man to be pitied who, absolutely speaking, is getting on well enough; relatively speaking, better off than before; but who is only not better off than other men?]