“ In proportion as social conditions become more equal, wages rise; and as wages are higher, social conditions become more equal. ”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1840). copy citation
| Author | Alexis de Tocqueville |
|---|---|
| Source | Democracy in America |
| Topic | wages human condition |
| Date | 1840 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Henry Reeve |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm |
Context
“When these laborers come to offer their services to a neighboring landowner or farmer, if he refuses them a certain rate of wages, they retire to their own small property and await another opportunity.
I think that, upon the whole, it may be asserted that a slow and gradual rise of wages is one of the general laws of democratic communities. In proportion as social conditions become more equal, wages rise; and as wages are higher, social conditions become more equal. But a great and gloomy exception occurs in our own time. I have shown in a preceding chapter that aristocracy, expelled from political society, has taken refuge in certain departments of productive industry, and has established its sway there under another form;”
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