Note 161-4 — Chapter III

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 ½ 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, 1¼ francs a day, the wife ¾ 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[TN 6] relative to the Support and Maintenance of the Poor, 1834, p. LXXXVIII.) 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 competition and debasement of wages. (Senior in the Report of the parliamentary Committee on Hand Weavers, 1841.)