Principles of Political Economy Part 8

To this category belong the kinds of labor which require extraordinary effort,[169-2] or which put life or health in unusual jeopardy.[169-3]

But, indeed, when the danger attending any kind of work is made glorious by the romantic light of honor, or by still higher motives, it ceases to have any influence on wages.[169-4] On the other hand, the disreputableness of a business in itself raises wages;[169-5] whereas, scholars, poets, etc., leaving the charm inherent in their occupations out of account, are for the most part remunerated only by the honor paid them, and, not unfrequently, only by fame after they have gone hence.[169-6] And yet their talents are so rare, the preparation so laborious, the economic risk so great! Nor is there for the really creative workman any such thing as evening rest. (_Riehl._) Common intellectual labor is worse paid in our days than it was, comparatively speaking, a generation ago; because the increased average education makes it less burthensome to most people, and even seem positively agreeable to many. It would, indeed, be a dangerous retrogressive step towards barbarism, if it should come to such a pa.s.s, that labor preponderantly intellectual should be permanently more poorly remunerated than mere muscular labor.[169-7] [169-8]

[Footnote 169-1: Thus the chase, fishing in rivers (compare _Theocrit._, Idyll., 21), gardening, fine female manual labor, and literature.]

[Footnote 169-2: The high wages paid to mowers and threshers may be accounted for on this ground (-- 160). In countries that have a strong heavy soil, wages are frequently 20 per cent. higher than under circ.u.mstances otherwise similar where it is sandy or light. In Mexico, a digger gets about twice the wages of an agricultural laborer. (_Senior_, On the Value of Money, 56.)]

[Footnote 169-3: Almost every trade predisposes to some special disease. Compare _Halfort_, Enstehung, Verlauf und Behandlung der Krankheiten der Kunstler und Gewerbetreibenden, 1845. _Livy_, Traite d'Hygiene publique et privee, 1850, II, 755. It has been noticed, in Sheffield, that thoughtless steel polishers look unfavorably on certain new inventions intended to protect workmen against inhaling small particles of stone and iron dust. They dread that if these inventions come into general use, their wages would be lowered in consequence; and prefer a short and merry life to one longer and more quiet.

In places in which nearly all kinds of work are dangerous, the danger cannot of course relatively raise the wages of anyone. Thus, in the Thuringian forest, the wages of the haulers of wood are very low. (_Lotz_, Revision, III, 151.)]

[Footnote 169-4: Missionaries! Besides the extremely small wages paid to common soldiers (in the German infantry only 36.5 thalers cash per annum, to which in Leipzig, for instance, rations, etc., add about 34 thalers more) is an outlay made by the government princ.i.p.ally to effect a levy of the tax of the compulsory labor that lies in conscription. (_Knies._) In the volunteer system, the difference between officers and men is wont to be much smaller. Thus, _Gustav Wasa_ paid his German mercenaries as follows: 6 marks a month to captains, five to lieutenants and 4 to common soldiers. (_Geijer_, Schwed. Gesch., II, 125 seq.) Similarly in the case of the Greek hired troops.

(_Bockh_, Staatshaushalt der Athener, I, 165 ff.) As to how little at the outbreak of a war, soldier earnest money is increased, and positions as officers most sought after, see _Hermann_, II, Aufl., 479.]

[Footnote 169-5: Thus, for instance, the skinning or flaying of dead animals is comparatively well paid, to which the rarity of the application of the work of executioners contributes. (_J. Moser_, Patr. Ph., I, No. 34.) The high wages of actors, singers, dancers, and especially of the female members of the stage, depends princ.i.p.ally on the contempt with which they were formerly looked upon; excommunicated by the Catholic church, and a scarcely milder sentence pa.s.sed upon them by the Protestant, until about the middle of the eighteenth century. (_Schleiermacher_, Christliche Sitte, 681.) Compare even _J. J. Rousseau_, Lettre sur les Spectacles a Mr. d'Alembert sur son Article Geneve.]

[Footnote 169-6: _Schiller's_ "Theilung der Erde." _Blanqui_ says of the learned: "They are most frequently satisfied with a citizen-crown, and think themselves remunerated when justice has been done to their genius. Their magnanimity impels them, to their own injury, to diffuse their knowledge as rapidly as possible. Thus they are like the light of day which no one pays for, but which all enjoy, without thanking the giver as they ought." The reward of intellectual labor is called an _honorarium_. (_Riehl_, Die Deutsche Arbeit, 1861, 232.) According to _J. B. Say_, Traite, II, ch. 7, the poor wages of savants depends on the fact that they take to market, and all at once, a great quant.i.ty of what they produce, which cannot even be used up.]

[Footnote 169-7: In Switzerland, journeymen are often better paid than the clerks kept by the greater tradesmen.

(_Bohmert_, Arbeiterverhaltnisse, II, 168.) In England, also, since 1850, the wages for "unskilled labor" has risen, relatively, most. (_Tooke_, Hist. of Prices, VI, 177.) It would be a frightful peril to our whole civilization if school teachers and subordinate officials should be turned into enemies of the entire existing state of things by want.]

[Footnote 169-8: The high wages paid to engineers on railroads is accounted for by the wear, physical and mental, their employment entails, and also by their unavoidable expenses away from home; further, by the importance of the interests confided to their trust. On the Leipzig-Dresden Railway, locomotive engineers, for the most part previously journeymen blacksmiths, earned 900 thalers a year.

Similarly, in the case of pilots. The high wages paid on board ships engaged in the slave-trade arose from the unhealthiness of the African coast, where formerly one-sixteenth of the crew died yearly (Edinburg Rev., 480), from the moral turpitude of the business, and from the severe penalties under which it was afterwards prohibited.

On the other hand, the low wages paid to European mining laborers is largely the consequence of the certainty of being cared for in old age, of those so employed. Weavers'

wages are low because the facility of learning the trade makes it possible for the business to be carried on at home; and hence there is a comparatively great pressure to engage in it. (_Baines_, History of the Cotton Manufacture, 485 ff.)

According to the first annual report of the poor law commissioners (202), the weekly wages in Manchester of hod-carriers was 12s.; of hand-weavers, 7-15s.; of diggers, 10-15s.,; of pack-carriers, 14-15s.; of shoemakers, 15-16s.; of machine-weavers, 13-16-5/6s.; of white-washers, 18s.; of tailors, 18s.; of dyers, 15-20s.; of plasterers, 19-21s.; of masons, 18-22s.; of tinsmiths, 22-24s.; of carpenters, 24s.; of spinners, 20-25s.; of machinists, 26-30s.; of iron founders and power-loom tenders, 28-30s. In Belgium, the average daily wages for male labor was 1.18 francs for agricultural laborers; for those engaged in industry, 1.48 francs; in the manufacture of linen, 0.80 francs; of cotton, 1.55; of woolens, 1.62; of silk, 1.25; of stockings, 1.14; of gla.s.s, 2.58; of coal, 1.33. All according to the Statistique generale de la B. In Athens, in the time of Aristophanes, a pack-carrier earned 4 oboli a day; a street sweeper, 3; a stone cutter on the public works, 6; a carpenter, 5; for roofing houses and taking down scaffoldings, each man, 6. The architects who superintended the building of the temple of Polias, on the other hand, got only 6 oboli per day, and the contractor 5. (_Bockh_, I, 165 ff.)

The Edictum Diocletiani of the year 301 after Christ contains the following provisions in relation to wages, besides "board:" shepherds, camel-drivers and muleteers, 20 denarii; agricultural laborers, water-carriers, scavengers, 25; bakers, masons, roofers, house-finishers and repairers of the inside, lime burners, wheelwrights and common clay moulders, 50; boatsmen, sailors, makers of marble or mosaic floors, 60; wall painters, 70; clay moulders for statues, 75; artistic painters, 150. (ed. _Mommsen_, cap. 7.) In slave countries, the price of different slaves is to be judged, mainly, by the above rules. Concerning the Greeks, see _Bockh_, I, 95 ff. _St. John_, The h.e.l.lenes, III, 23 ff.

It is a characteristic fact that the Romans, after the Syrian war, began to pay high prices for the hitherto much despised kitchen slaves. (_Livy_, x.x.xIX, 6.) Remarkable fixed prices for slaves by _Justinian_: Cod. VI, 43, 3; VII, 7, 1, 5. Thus, in the Lex Burgundionum, t.i.t. 10, the compensation for the murder of a common laborer is fixed at 30 solidi; of a carpenter, at 40; of a smith, at 50; of a silversmith, at 100; of a goldsmith, at 150. Advanced civilization is wont to raise the price of slaves who perform work of a higher quality, just as it raises the wages of labor of a higher quality.]

SECTION CLXX.

RATE OF WAGES.--INFLUENCE OF CUSTOM.

Custom always exerts a great influence where there is question of choosing an avocation with the intention of devoting one's self to it entirely and exclusively. There is a public opinion which fixes the gradation of the different cla.s.ses of labor and their appropriate reward, which is slow to change, and which both determines, and is determined by the relation of supply and demand. There is an equilibrium between the pleasantness of work and the rate of wages only in the case of such kinds of labor as are on the same social footing. It frequently happens, however, that the most repulsive work has to be performed by those who are forced to accept any pay and to be satisfied with it.[170-1] There are many branches of labor those engaged in which still form a kind of exclusive caste; and the pay of the higher branches is maintained at a high rate, especially by the fact that the members of the castes to which they belong are provident in their marriages. The lower cla.s.ses are not in a condition to meet the preparation necessary to engage in such professions, even if they were certain of being afterwards reimbursed with interest for the outlay.[170-2] One of the chief causes of the lowness of wages paid to women is, that so few branches of labor are traditionally open to them, that the few that are, are intended to supply luxuries, and are, besides, for the most part, over-crowded. The distribution of the aggregate wages earned by any industry, among the higher and lower cla.s.ses of workmen who cooperate in it, depends very largely on their social position relatively to one another.[170-3] [170-4] Here political forms and changes may exert the greatest influence.[170-5]

Thus, the artificial increase of the wages of masters effected by the former guild-system was produced, to say the least, as much at the cost of the journeymen and apprentices as of the public. And if, on the other hand, it cannot be said that the most recent marked rise in wages, in so many countries, is merely the consequence of the extension of the parliamentary right of suffrage, certain it is that the two phenomena are very closely related, and that both are at once the effect and the cause of the intensified feeling of individuality and of the consciousness of const.i.tuting a cla.s.s in the community of the lower strata of society.

[Footnote 170-1: At least where the supply of labor in general surpa.s.ses the demand. Compare _J. S. Mill_, Principles, II, ch. 14, 3d ed. The dangerous industries in which lead, quicksilver, a.r.s.enic, etc. are manipulated or employed, should be and can be better paid than they actually are. In the Bavarian Palatinate, stone-cutters rarely reach their 45th year; and yet their wages are very low, because of the comparative over-population of the country. (_Rau_, _Haussen's_ Archiv., N. T. X., 228.) But the lowness of wages here is certainly and mainly caused by the little thought the workmen themselves give to considerations of health.]

[Footnote 170-2: The lower the rate of wages of any cla.s.s sinks, the more difficult it becomes for parents to devote their children to another career.]

[Footnote 170-3: In Paris, 24,463 workmen with less than 3 francs daily; 157,216, with from 3 to 5; 10,393, with from 5 to 20 and even 3 to 5 francs. It is remarkable, however, how uniform the average wages in the different trades is: _vetements_, 3.33 francs; _fils et tissus_, 3.42; _boisellerie_, _vannerie_, 3.44; _garcons boulangers_, _bouchers_ 3.50; _arts chimiques et ceramiques_ 3.71; _batiments_, 3.81; _carosserie_, 3.86; _peaux et cuirs_, 3.87; _ameublement_, 3.90; _articles de Paris_, 3.94; _metaux communs,_ 3.98; _metaux precieux_, 4.17; _imprimerie_, 4.18. (Journal des Economistes, Janv. 1853, 111.)]

[Footnote 170-4: How the Roman advocates were given to all sorts of ostentation, and even borrowed costly rings in order to raise their _honoraria_, see _Juvenal_, VII, 105, ff.]

[Footnote 170-5: The salaries paid to the employees in the office of the minister of finance in France and the United States were as follows: to the porter, 1,500 and 3,734 francs; the lowest clerk, 1,000 to 1,800, and 5,420 francs; to the head clerk, 3,200 to 3,600, and 8,672 francs; the secretary general, 20,000 and 10,840 francs; to the minister, 80,000 and 32,520 francs. (_Tocqueville_, Democratie aux etats-Unis, II, 74.) In the treasury department, at Washington, of 158 employees, only 6 received less than $1,000 salary, but only 2 over $2,000. (_M.

Chevalier_, Lettres sur l'Amerique du Nord, II, 151, 456.) Compare _Busch_, Geldumlauf, IV, 34. In Russia, the wages of the higher cla.s.ses of laborers as compared with those paid the commoner cla.s.s is much higher than in Germany.

(_Kosegarten_, in _Haxthausen_, Studien, III, 583.) On the other hand, in England, since 1850, the rate of wages for unskilled labor has risen relatively more than any other.

(_Tooke_, Hist. of Prices, VI, 177.)]

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 cla.s.s 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 Schlozer_, Aufangsgrunde, 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 emanc.i.p.ated, 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.]

SECTION CLXXII.

HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.--IN FLOURISHING TIMES.

When, where a nation's economy[172-1] is growing and flourishing, capital increases more rapidly than population, there is a search for employment by capital still greater than the search for employment by labor. The consequence is, of course, a decline in the rate of interest, and a rise in the rate of the wages of labor, although the latter may be compelled to surrender a part of its increase to rent, which also rises.

If simultaneously with these phenomena, there have been great advances made in national productive skill, especially in the cultivation of land; if, therefore, labor and the capital consumed have become more prolific, the condition of the laboring cla.s.s is improved in a two-fold manner; the condition of capitalists needs, to say the least, grow no worse, and the increase of rent paid to landowners may be avoided.[172-2]

This favorable development is most striking in the colonies of rich and highly civilized parent countries, where the labor, capital and social customs of an old and ripe civilization are found together with the overflowing natural forces inherent in a virgin soil, engaged in the work of economic production. Here the growth of national wealth is most rapid; and the rate of wages is here wont to be highest.[172-3] With the high rate of interest that obtains where capital is rapidly saved, and with the low price of land, it is not a matter of difficulty for good workmen to enter into the ranks of landowners and capitalists. In North America, and especially in the western part,[172-4] it is very frequently in the normal course of economic development for young people to begin to work on wages, then to work on their own account, and finally to become themselves employers of labor.

[Footnote 172-1: Compare _Hermann_, Staatswirths. Unters., 241 ff.; _J. S. Mill_, Principles, ch. 3. As to how _Carey_ confounds the rise and fall of the productiveness of labor with the rise and fall of wages, see _J. S. Mill's_ views in _Lange_, 1866, 218 ff.]

[Footnote 172-2: In England, wages from 1400 to 1420, estimated in produce, were much higher than from 1500 to 1533. (Statist. Journal, 1861, 544 ff.) Later, a quarter of wheat was earned by day labor as follows: under Elizabeth, in about 48 days; during the seventeenth century, in 43 days; between 1700 and 1766, in 32 days; between 1815 and 1848, in from 19 to at most 28 days. (_Hildebrand_, Nat.

Oek. der Gegenwart und Zukunft.) Since 1860, it has been earned in about 14 days. About 1668, the wages paid to English laborers and servants was one-third higher than twenty years before. (_Sir J. Child_, Discourse on Trade, p.

43 of the French translation.) _D. Defoe_, Giving Alms no Charity, 1704, draws a much more favorable picture of the time next succeeding. _Adam Smith_, Wealth of Nat., I, ch.

8, shows how money-wages, in the eighteenth century, were higher and the price of corn lower than in the seventeenth century. Between 1737 and 1797, wages in most parts of England, except in the immediate neighborhood of the great cities, doubled. (_Eden_, I, 385.) In Scotland, about the year 1817, the wages of married farm servants, expressed in corn, were about 60 per cent. higher than in 1792.

(_Sinclair_, Grundgesetze des Ackerbaues, 105.)

_Boisguillebert_, Traite des Grains, I, 2, estimates the wages in France, for agricultural laborers, at least from 7 to 8 sous, of present money, and at twice that amount in harvest time. In 1697, laborers in Paris received from 40 to 50 sous. (Detail de la France, I, ch. 1, ch. 7.) _Vauban_ estimates wages in large cities at 22-45 sous; for country manual laborers, at 18 sous; for agricultural laborers, 12-13-1/5 sous. (Project d'une Dime royale, 89 Daire.) On the other hand, _Chaptal_, De l'Industrie, Fr. I, 245, 1819, speaks of an average wage--25 sous. _Dureau de la Malle_, Economie polit. des Romains, I, 151, allows agricultural laborers, in 80 departments of France, only 20-25 sous. According to _Moreau de Joannes_, Journal des Econ., Oct. 1850, the average wages of a French agricultural family amounted per annum, in 1700, to 135 francs; in 1760, to 126; in 1788, to 161; in 1813, to 400; in 1840, to 500 francs. While _A. Young_, Travels in France, 1787-89, speaks of wages of 20 sous a day; _Peuchet_, Statist. elementaire, 1805, 361, a.s.sumes it to be 30 sous, although the price of corn was not much higher. Compare _Birkbeck_, Agricultural Tour of France, 13, who is of opinion even, that French laborers are better situated than the English (?). From 1830 to 1848, wages decreased about 30 per cent. (_L. Faucher_, Revue des deux Mondes, Avril, 1848.) _Leva.s.seur_, Histoire des Cla.s.ses ouvrieres en France, II, 1858.

General data for whole countries are obviously very doubtful. In Germany, for instance, economically active places have witnessed an undoubted elevation of the condition of the laboring cla.s.ses. Thus, in Hamburg and Lower Saxony, about the end of the eighteenth century (_Busch_, Geldumlauf, II, 56 ff.); while in Thuringia, in 1556, a _summer_ of rye was earned by 7 summer days' labor, and in 1830 ff. by 8. (_Lotz_, Handbuch, I, 404.) In Hessen, also, there has been but a very small increase in wages.

_(Hildebrand,_ Nat. Oek., I, 190.) According to _von der Goltz_, Landliche Arbeiterfrage, 1872, 84 seq., wages in the country during the last twenty or thirty years have increased on an average, 50 per cent. at least; in Bavaria about 100 per cent.; in the Rhine province, male wages, about 100; female wages, from about 75 to 100 per cent. The masterly investigations of the wages of typesetters in Jena and Halle by _Strasburger_ in _Hildebrand's_ Jahrb., 1872, I ff., show that from 1717 to 1848, there was scarcely any change in them. A million m's was paid for in 1717-40 with 26.93 Prussian _sheffels_ of rye; 1804-47 with from 24.80 to 28.80. Since then, a remarkable rise; so that in 1871, up to November, 76.26 was reached. The prices of food, dwellings, fuel, clothing, such as is in demand by such laborers, rose between 1850 and 1860, 16.7 per cent., and the wages for 1,000 m's in the same period of time rose about 14.3 and 43.7 per cent. In the industrious manufacturing vicinity of Moscow, wages in 1815 were four times as high as in 1670, while the means of subsistence rose relatively much less.

(_Storch_, I, 203.)]

[Footnote 172-3: In the United States, the wages of carpenters and masons, about the end of the last century, were $0.62 and $0.75; in 1835, of the former from $1.12 to $1.25, and for the latter from $1.37 to $1.50. In 1848, the general wage was $0.75. The price of corn, in the meantime, did not rise, and the price of manufactured articles was much smaller. (_Carey_, Rate of Wages, 26 seq.; Past, Present and Future, 154.) In New York, as far back as 1790, wages were much higher (_Ebeling_, Geschichte und Erdbeschreibung von Nordamerika, II, 917); and between 40 and 50 years ago, a journeyman mason might earn over 700 thalers per annum. Agricultural laborers, in 1835, got $9 a month and their board, valued at $65 for the whole year. In the vicinity of large cities, both were higher. (_Carey_, 91.) The condition of the factory hands, in Lowell, is a very good one. In 1839, more than 100 of them had over $1,000 each in the savings banks, and pianos at their mess places. (_Boz_, Notes on America, 1842.) Most of them could save $1.50 a week. _Colton_, in his Public Economy (1849), says that a workman would consider himself in a bad way if he could not save half of his wages. Compare _Chevalier_, Lettres sur l'Amerique, II, 174, 122, 19; I, 221 ff.

Apprentices in the United States, in almost every instance, begin to be paid wages as soon as their work begins to prove useful. The work of half-grown children, who had not yet left the parental roof, was so well paid that it was estimated that a child earned for his parents, on the whole, 100 more than he cost them. What an incentive to marriage!

(_Adam Smith_, Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8.) In Canada, agricultural laborers earn between 24 and 30 per annum and their board. In and around Melbourne, agricultural laborers got from 15 to 20 shillings a week and lodging; herdsmen, 35 to 40 a year; girls, from 20 to 45 (Statist. Journal, 1872, 387 ff.); female cooks, from 35 to 40; male cooks, from 52 to 156. In hotels, girls, from 30 to 35; female cooks, from 50 to 100; domestic servants, 39 to 52; carpenters, masons, etc., 10 shillings a day; the best tailors, from 60 to 75 shillings a week; shoemakers, from 40 to 55 shillings; bakers, from 40 to 60 shillings a week.

(Statist. Journal, 1871, 396 seq.) In San Francisco, a short time since, servant girls got $25 a month; Chinese, $1 a day; common laborers, $2; skilled artisans, from $3 to $5.

(_Whymper_, Alaska, 299, 326.) The wages of a European tradesman, in Rio Janeiro, was from I to 2 Spanish piasters a day. (_Martius_, Reise, I, 131.) In the English West Indies, a new-born negro was formerly worth 5. (_B.

Edwards_, History of the West Indies, II, 128.) The high wages paid in young colonies are frequently made temporarily still higher, by a large influx of capital in the shape of money, brought by emigrants, and by government outlays.

Thus, in Van Diemen's land, for instance, in 1824, carpenters, masons, etc. got 12 shillings a day; in 1830, 10; in 1838, only from 6 to 7, although between 1830 and 1838, the export trade of the island trebled while the population scarcely doubled. (_Merivale_, On Colonies, II, 225.)]

[Footnote 172-4: As to how many workmen in the eastern part of North America buy land in the west, and so threaten their employers with immediate emigration, see _Brentano_, Arbeitergilden, II, 131. However, in Ma.s.sachusetts, women's wages are in many instances so low that, considering the dearness of the means of subsistence, it is almost impossible to understand how they exist. (Statist. Journal, 1872, 236 ff.)]