Note 172-2 — Chapter III

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 28¾ 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, Traité 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. (Détail de la France, I, ch. 1, ch. 7.) Vauban estimates wages in large cities at 22½-45 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 Joannés, 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. élémentaire, 1805, 361, assumes 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.) Levasseur, Histoire des Classes ouvrières 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 classes. Thus, in Hamburg and Lower Saxony, about the end of the eighteenth century (Büsch, Geldumlauf, II, 56 ff.); while in Thuringia, in 1556, a sümmer 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, Ländliche 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.)