In the various branches of mechanical labor money payment is more usual, though Mr. Seymour Tremenheere, in his visits to the United States prior to 1850, found the practice of paying wages partly in commodities quite general;1 and in England money payments have only been secured by vigorous legislation and great vigilance in administration. Mr. Herries reports that in the sulphurmining districts of Italy "stores exist, under the direction of the administration, where the persons employed are provided with oil, wine, and bread, and other necessaries, under the 'tally' or 'truck' system.

2

Payment of the wages of mechanical labor otherwise than in the coin of the realm is forbidden in Germany by the Industrial Code of 1869. In France the artisan classes have always resented payment in commodities with a peculiar jealousy.

The multitudinous forms of payment other than in money may be rudely grouped for our present somewhat casual purpose as (1) rent, where cottages or tenements are provided for the laborer and his family by the employer, whether in agricultural or in mechanical industry; (2) board, mainly confined to unmarried laborers; (3) allowances, such as definite quantities of various kinds of food, drink, or fuel; (4) what we may call, in distinction from No. 5, perquisites, such as the hauling of the laborer's coal or peat by the employer's teams, the keep of a cow, the opportunity to take flour at miller's prices;"

1 Report on the Payment of Wages Bill (1854), pp. 103–5.

2 Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of Italy, 1871, p. 231.

3

In Devonshire and elsewhere a "grist-corn" perquisite is recognized, by which the laborer is allowed to have grain at a fixed price per bushel, whatever the market rate. The amount so allowed to be taken ranges from two or three pecks to a bushel every fortnight.Heath's English Peasantry, pp. 95, 96, 140, 141.

"In some counties, as Dorset, the farmer pays part of his men's wages in corn at 1 shilling per bushel below the market price."Mr. Purdy, Stat. Journal, xxiv. 329.

3

(5) privileges, like the gleaning of fields or the keeping a pig.

Thus Mr. T. Scott, of Roxburghshire, allows his workmen a free house and garden; food (say 4 weeks) in harvest; carriage of coal; permission to keep a pig, and the keep of a cow; 100 stones of oatmeal, 21 bushels of barley, 6 bushels of peas, 1600 yards of potatoes, 6 tons of coal at pit prices, £5 in money, in addition to extra earnings at harvest. 1 Another farmer gives his two ploughmen £27 and £26 severally per annum, free cottages and gardens, 6 bolls of meal, 3 bolls of potatoes, and "drives" their coal. Another in the highland part of Lanarkshire gives £18 annually, the keep of a cow, liberty to keep a pig, 65 stones of oatmeal, and 16 cwt. of potatoes. He places the total value of money wages, allowances, etc., at from £35 to £40. From the above it will readily be seen how difficult and how nearly impossible it is to reduce such various conditions to the uniform expression necessary for comparison. The "board" furnished may vary from the generous living characteristic of Cumberland and Westmoreland' in England, and of the United States generally, to the barest and coarsest subsistence allowed in less favored regions. The cottages thus given rent free may be "model cottages" or they may be of the character described in so many English official reports, early and recent, with reference to which the Earl of Shaftesbury said, "Dirt and disrepair such as ordinary

2

1 Fourth Report (1870) Commission on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, p. 58.

2 Ibid., p. 110.

3 See Mr. Tremenheere's Report for 1869.

4 The Hon. Edward Stanhope, Assistant Commissioner, says of the cottages in Shropshire: "The point especially deserving of attention in this' county is the infamous character of the cottages. In the majority of the parishes I visited they may be described as tumble-down and ruinous, not water-tight, very deficient in bedroom accommodations and in decent sanitary arrangements."-Report on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, 1868–9, p. xxxiv.

folks can form no notion of, darkness that may be felt, odors that may be handled, faintness that can hardly be resisted, hold despotic rule in these dens of despair."1 In respect to the other allowances, perquisites, and privileges, as we have classed them, which go so largely to make up the wages of the laborer in agriculture in all countries, there is perhaps not quite so great range as in the board or cottage rent furnished; yet differences in the quality of the articles allowed, or in their adaptation to the wants of the laborer, or in the generosity with which traditional or stipulated privileges are interpreted, may still go far to contract or expand the apparent wages. Thus Mr. Heath in his work, "The English Peasantry," charges that the hauling of turf for the laborer's fuel is often a delusion and a snare, the turf when cut and piled up on the moors frequently being spoiled by the rain before the farmer finds it convenient to lend the horse and cart; also that the oft-cited "grist-corn" perquisite is of little or of no value to the laborer, the corn for this purpose being frequently taken from the "rakings" of the field. It is upon the cider allowance, however, that Mr. Heath expends the main force of his indignation, and he quotes with effect the testimony of Mr. Austin, one of the Assistant Poor-Law Commissioners of 1813, as to the very inferior quality of the article supplied by the farmers of the western counties. "under the ironical name of cider."*

3

2

The "cow" and the "pig" as elements of wages deserve a brief mention. It will be noted that we have placed them under different heads in our classification. The entire "keep" of the cow is furnished by the employer over whose land she grazes; the food of the pig, on the other hand, is supposed to be furnished by the laborer himself, though a natural doubt on that point leads many em

1 Address as President Br. Soc. Sc. Association, 1833. Transactions, p. 9.

2 P. 94.

'P. 95, cf. 140, 141.

* Pp. 55, 56, 86, 87.

"For

ployers to refuse this highly valued privilege.' merly," said Mr. Inglis, writing of the peasants' rent in Ireland in 1834," the pig was sufficient for this; but the market has so fallen that something is wanted besides the pig to make up the rent." In England Mr. Heath assigns the pig a somewhat different function. It is at once "to the farm laborer a kind of savings-bank, in which he puts the few scraps he can save out of his scanty fare," and also “ kind of surety with the petty village tradesman. Poor Hodge could get no credit if he had not some such security as a pig affords."

66

a

The keep of a cow is of course a much larger concession from the employer, and is proportionally rare. Sir Baldwyn Leighton declares it to be not less than "the solution of the whole question of the agricultural laborer.” The net weekly profit Sir Baldwyn estimates at 5 or 6 shillings, the entire labor being performed by the wife and younger children. It will, of course, be urged that such a concession would amount simply to a proportionate reduction of money wages. This is a question which we shall perhaps be in a better position to discuss hereafter. The concession of "cow-land" is only mentioned here as one of the many ways in which, even in wealthy communities, laborers in agriculture are still paid, rendering it a work of extreme difficulty to reduce the wages prevailing in different sections to any thing like equal terms.

III. Nominal and Real Wages may further differ by reason of opportunities for extra earnings in some occupations and in some localities.

It has been said that the true measure of wages is to be

1" In Dumfriesshire even the keeping of a pig is often prohibited on the ground that it affords inducements to little acts of peculation." Fourth Report (1870) on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, p. 85.

2 A Journey throughout Ireland (4th ed.), p. 371.

3

English Peasantry, p. 113.

5 Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1872, pp. 395–8.

4

* Ibid., p. 115.

found not in the money received, but in the amount of the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life which that money will purchase. But it often happens that the amount of money received by the laborer as wages does not express the sum of his own earnings, while, again, the resources of the family-which, rather than the individual, ought to be the unit of income as it is of expenditure-may be, in many cases, largely augmented by the earnings of other members. Such opportunities vary greatly as among localities and as among occupations, and hence we may find a substantial equality of family income where a great difference in wages apparently exists; or, in other cases, the apparent difference may be much enhanced through the operation of the same cause.

1

An example of the first means of adding to real wages is found in the Allotment system, which already prevails to a considerable extent in England and has been highly ap proved by economists of reputation; though there are not wanting those who argue that this is merely another means of reducing money wages. By the Allotment system the laborer is enabled to rent a piece of ground large enough to employ him for but a portion of his time, with a view to its being carefully worked by spade culture as a garden.

An example of the second means of adding to real wages is given by Prof. Senior when he says, "The earnings of the wife and children of many a Manchester weaver or

1 H. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., pp. 254, 255. W. T. Thornton on Over Population, chap. viii.

The Commissioners of 1843 reported strongly in favor of the Allot ment system; they declared that it did not tend to reduce wages, but that all the proceeds of the land thus cultivated constituted " a clear addition to wages."

On the other side, Mr. Mill, in his Principles of Pol. Econ., wrote, 'The scheme, as it seems to me, must be either nugatory or mischievous." -I. 441, 442.

2 The industrial disadvantages of the employment of married women in factories will be spoken of hereafter. To their full extent, whatever that may be, the superiority claimed by Prof. Senior for the