HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.--IN THE LOWER STAGES OF CIVILIZATION.
In very low stages of civilization, where there is scarcely any such thing as rent, and where capital is extremely rare, the wages of labor, notwithstanding its small amount absolutely speaking, must eat up the greatest part of the product.[171-1] With every further advance, the condition of the laboring class is modified, according as the natural decline in this relative amount of their wages is outweighed or counterbalanced, or neither outweighed nor counterbalanced, by the increase in the aggregate product; in other words, in the national income in general as compared with the number of workmen.
[Footnote 171-1: _Adam Smith_, Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8. Thus in the case of nations of hunters. The wages of free laborers in Russia, at the beginning of this century, were so high that mowers, in the vicinity of Moscow, received a good half of the corn mowed by them, (_von Schlözer_, Aufangsgründe, I, 65.) As a rule, the natural relation of the three branches of income is here postponed by the intervention of slavery. (§ 76, 155.) But, for instance, since the negroes have been emancipated, in the southern states of the American Union, it has become necessary to promise them one-half of the cotton crop as wages, and for the employer to run all the risk of a bad harvest. (_R. Somers_, The Southern States since the War, 1871.) On the wretched pay of domestic servants in the middle ages, see _Grimm_, D. Rechtsalterth., 357.]
HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.--IN FLOURISHING TIMES.
When, where a nation's economy[172-1] is growing and flourishing, capital increases more rapidly than population, there is a search for employment by capital still greater than the search for employment by labor. The consequence is, of course, a decline in the rate of interest, and a rise in the rate of the wages of labor, although the latter may be compelled to surrender a part of its increase to rent, which also rises. If simultaneously with these phenomena, there have been great advances made in national productive skill, especially in the cultivation of land; if, therefore, labor and the capital consumed have become more prolific, the condition of the laboring class is improved in a two-fold manner; the condition of capitalists needs, to say the least, grow no worse, and the increase of rent paid to landowners may be avoided.[172-2]