Years of work at the extra rate. The loss of 1 lunar month's wages will require to make it up, 2 121 20 "The strike of the London builders in 1859 was for 10 per cent of time or its equivalent, 10 per cent of wages; and as it lasted 26 weeks, would, if successful, have required 10 years of continuous work at the extra rate to make up the loss of wages sacrificed. The amount in dispute between the weavers of Colne and their employers did not average more than 3 per cent, and had the strike been successful, would have required more than 28 years. continuous employment at the advance to make up the amount of wages lost, by which time the lost wages would, at 5 per cent (interest), have quadrupled." This Colne strike lasted 50 weeks; the great Preston strike, 38 weeks; the Padiham strike, 29 weeks. Computations like these do not of themselves show that strikes can not advantage the working classes, but they do show the necessity of taking such elements into account in reducing nominal to real wages. The joint effect of all the causes enumerated as affecting the regularity of employment is very considerable. Prof. Leone Levi, in his treatise on Wages,' estimates the lost time of all the persons returned as pursuing gainful occupations in England to be 4 weeks in the year, and deems this loss covered by the exclusion of all persons over 60 years of age, leaving those below employed full time. To this Mr. Dudley Baxter, in his admirable work on "National Income," rejoins that if this were so, there would be no able-bodied paupers in England. Mr. Baxter goes forward to show the inadequacy of Prof. Levi's estimate in terms which I shall do well to quote: "I will take a good average instance (and a very large * Pp. 41, 42. 1P. 5. one) of the way in which wages are earned in the building trades. These trades form a whole, and include carpenters, bricklayers, masons, plasterers, painters, and plumbers, and number in England and Wales about 387,000 men above twenty years of age. It is only the best men, working with the best masters, that are always sure of full time. These trades work on the hour system, introduced at the instance of the men themselves, but a system of great precariousness of employment. The large masters give regular wages to their good workmen, but the smaller masters, especially at the east end of London, engage a large proportion of their hands only for the job, and then at once pay them off. All masters when work grows slack immediately discharge the inferior hands and the unsteady men-of whom there are but too many among clever workmen-and do not take them on again until work revives. In bad times there are always a large number out of employment. In prosperity much time is lost by keeping Saint Monday and by occasional strikes. Let us turn to another great branch of industry, the agricultural laborers, whose numbers are: men, 650,000; boys, 190,000; women, 126,000; and girls, 36,000. Continuous employment has largely increased since the new Poor Law of 1834, and good farmers now employ their men regularly. But in many places such is not the custom. Near Broadstairs, in Kent, I was told that, on an average, laborers were only employed 40 weeks in the year. Mr. Purdy's figures of the influence of the seasons on agricultural employment show that the wages paid in the second quarter of the year, on a large estate in Notts, were 20 per cent more than in the first quarter. In the harvest quarter they were more than double. He also mentions the significant fact that the pauperism of the five most agrarian divisions of England is greater in February than in August by 425,000 against 370,000, or 55,000 persons. These 55,000 represent a great prevalence of the custom of turning off laborers at the slack season. So that even so far as the men are concerned, there must evidently be a large deduction for time out of work. But when we come to boys and women, the case is still stronger. I found in Kent and other places that boys' and women's employment is very irregular, and that they are not at work more than half their time; in fact, they are only employed as supernumeraries to the men, and only taken on at busy times." V. Still further, Nominal and Real Wages may be made to differ through the longer or shorter duration of the power to labor. We have seen that it is not what the laborer obtains for a single day of the week or a single month of the year which fixes his real remuneration, but that regularity of employment from month to month and quarter to quarter is a most important element in the wages problem. But neither is it what the workman receives in a single year or in a term of years which alone can determine the question of high or low wages. We need, besides, to know the total duration of his laboring power, that we may be able to compare the term of his productive with that of his unproductive life. It is evident, supposing two persons begin to labor productively at fifteen years of age, and continue actively at work, with the same rate of nominal wages, until death, that the one receives a higher real remuneration who lives the longer, since the cost of his maintenance during the first 15 years of helpless life must, in any philosophical view of the subject, be charged upon his wages' during 1 The cost, at contract prices, of raising an orphan child to the age of 11, is computed by Mr. Chadwick (Statistical Journal, xxv. 505) at £130, or the value of a team of four first-class farm-horses. The same eminent authority estimates the average loss of working ability, by premature deaths from preventible causes, to be at least 10 years (Stat. Journal, xxviii. 26). "In the production of dead machinery," says Dr. Edward Jarvis," the cost of all that are broken in the making is charged to the cost of all which are completed. . . . . So, in estimating the cost of raising children to manhood, it is necessary to include the number of years his period of labor. It is true that the expense was, in fact, borne by his parents, while he will himself bear the cost of the maintenance, in childhood, of his own offspring; but no one will, I believe, question that, in the economical sense, the support of each generation of laborers should be charged against its own wages,' just as truly as that a farmer, in solving the question whether a cow dying at a certain age had paid for herself, would set against the proceeds of the sales of her milk or butter the expense of rearing her. If this principle of estimating the wages of a lifetime be accepted as just, its great practical importance will not be denied. And first in comparison of nations. 2 In a paper on the Political Economy of Health, Dr. Edward Jarvis has given some most instructive tables which can not be better introduced than in the language of the British Poor-Law Commissioners of 1842: "The strength of a people does not depend on the absolute number of its population, but on the relative number of those who are of the age and strength to labor." 3 The following table shows the number of years spent under 20 for every 100 persons attaining that age: that have been lived by those that fell by the way with the years of those that pass successfully through the period of development.”. Report Massachusetts Board of Health, 1874, p. 340. l'amortisse 1" Le salaire d'un ouvrier doit comprendre ment du capital employé par ses parents, avec lequel il peut alimenter son enfant qui le remplacera un jour dans la société."-Jos. Garnier, Traité d'Économie Politique, p. 462. 2 P. 184. 3 Report Mass. State Board of Health, 1874, pp. 341, 342. Again, the Life Tables of the several States show the average number of years lived after the age of 20 to be as follows: "Thus the productive efficiency fell short of its fulness' 20.78 per cent in Norway; 23.7 per cent in Sweden; 25.08 per cent in the United States; 28.38 per cent in Germany; 28.9 per cent in England; 34.3 per cent in France, and 42.24 per cent in Ireland." Again Dr. Jarvis says, "Having the number that are lost in the maturing period and the number of years they have lived, and also the number that die in the effective stage and the duration of their labors, it is easy to draw a comparison between them and show the cost, in years, of creating and maturing human power, and the return it makes in labor in compensation. By this double measurement of life in its incompleteness and in its fulness it is found that for every 1000 years expended in the developing period upon all that are born, both those who die and those who survive the period from birth to 20, the consequent laboring and productive years are: In Norway, 1881 years; in Sweden, 1749 years; in England, 1688 years; in the United States, 1664 years; in France, 1398 years; and in Ireland, 1148 years." But it is not only between the populations of distinct countries that such differences in the duration of the economic force appear. Important differences in this respect are shown by mortuary statistics to exist between occupations. Thus the excessive mortality of the "dusty 150 years, i.e. from 20 to 70 years of age. |