Note 169-8 — Chapter III

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[TN 11] francs; of cotton, 1.55; of woolens, 1.62; of silk, 1.25; of stockings, 1.14; of glass, 2.58; of coal, 1.33. All according to the Statistique générale 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. (Böckh, 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 Böckh, I, 95 ff. St. John, The Hellenes, 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, XXXIX, 6.) Remarkable fixed prices for slaves by Justinian: Cod. VI, 43, 3; VII, 7, 1, 5. Thus, in the Lex Burgundionum, tit. 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.