Wage

“ If we accept the Assessments as representing the actual wages earned by the ordinary labourer we can estimate with approximate accuracy the total income of a labourer’s family, for we have defined the wage-earner as a person who depended wholly upon wages and excluded from this class families who possessed gardens. ”

“ In the other, the wage earner is viewed primarily as a member of an occupational group or class, whose wages should be regulated by the standard of life of his group or class, rather than by strict measurement 142 of his own individual capacity. ”

“ Important decisions in 1888 and 1889 showed this belief Meaning of “wages.” to have been ill-founded. The essential point lies in the definition of the word “wages” as the “recompense, reward or remuneration of labour,” which implies not necessarily any gross sum in question between employer and workmen where there is a contract to perform a certain piece of work, but that part of it, the real net wage, which the workman was to get as his recompense for the labour performed. ”

“ The United States census for 1880 reports that there are in the United States 16,200,000 wage workers. These are the persons who, by their industry, create all the wealth of this country. And now before I say anything further it may be necessary in order to clearly understand what I am going to state further on, for me to define what I mean and what is meant in the labor movement by these words, wage worker. ”

“ The scheme of wage relationship must recommend itself as just to the wage earners and the community in general. The ultimate distributive question to be met is the division of the product between profit and wages. ”

“ If the numbers in any group of wage earners are high relative to the uses in which the employment of the members of that group results in a considerable addition to the product of market values, the wages of that group will be low, and vice versa. The need of the productive system for any kind of labor, relative to the supply available to fill that need is an important factor in determining the reward paid for that labor. ”

“ Wage in the broad sense is the income due to labor, in distinction from that due to the control of material agents. The uses of material agents, studied under the subject of rent, are sometimes called "material services." ”

“ These weekly wages are obtained by dividing the annual wage by 52. Often the weekly rate is much higher, but for many weeks the workers are unemployed; the only fair estimate is that which is based upon the annual wage.
Have we any right to be content with conditions like these? Is the average wage of the average worker, as it is here indicated, all that he ought to ask? Should society wish him to be content with such an income? ”

“ When we are all in the business working together, we all ought to have some share in the profits--by way of a good wage, or salary, or added compensation. And that is beginning now quite generally to be recognized. ”

“ And his pay is a wage; a wage often insufficient for his daily needs, almost always unequal to the value of his work. His hands can multiply the employer's capital three fold, four fold, but not so his own pay. ”

“ The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave labour, and one based on wage labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer. ”

“ If the wages of all classes or groups of wage earners are to be increased when the profits return in industry as a whole is above the approved level, the question arises as to the best way to calculate the wage increases, and the 255 most satisfactory basis for distributing them among the different groups of wage earners. ”

“ Further, even a small amount saved may place the holder in a position to get a better market for his labour; he can wait when another man cannot. Rent may be high, but by co-operation that too may be reduced. Other points are obvious and need not be mentioned. It is evident that while the amount of wage is important, still more important is its use. In use it has a large expansive value. (2) Supplementation of Wage.—The exchange between skill and wage must be free if it is to be valid. ”

“ The wage-payer, being directly in contact with the purchasing consumer, claims that he must have a result in production equal in every way to the wages paid, while the wage-earner contends that he must have a wage equivalent to his contribution in time, energy and skill, to the article produced. ”

“ When I say that wages fall as rent rises, I do not mean that the quantity of wealth obtained by labourers as wages is normally less, but that the proportion which it bears to the whole produce is necessarily less. ”

“ Every employer, they think, ought to give sufficient wages; and if he does it not willingly, should be compelled to it by general opinion; the test of sufficient wages being their own feelings, or what they suppose to be those of the public. ”

“ Wages paid by an employer Production is always the mother of wages. Without production, wages would not and could not be. It is from the produce of labour, not from the advances of capital that wages come. Wherever we analyse the facts this will be found to be true. For labour always precedes wages. This is as universally true of wages received by the labourer from an employer as it is of wages taken directly by the labourer who is his own employer. In the one class of cases as in the other, reward is conditioned upon exertion. ”

“ The lag of wages behind prices varies in degree in different industries and occupations, for neither prices nor wages go up uniformly. The general direction of wage change is marked, but there is nevertheless considerable variation in the amount 93 of wage change. ”

“ If, for instance, I devote my labour to gathering birds' eggs or picking wild berries, the eggs or berries I thus get are my wages. Surely no one will contend that in such a case wages are drawn from capital. ”

“ He writes, "The wages paid to a group of workers in a given industry and a given area depend, in fact, very often not on the conditions obtaining in that industry in other areas, but on the conditions obtaining in that area in other industries." ”

“ But we are often reminded that but a small percentage of the laborers of this country are organized; and the wages of those thus unprotected are often lamentably small. Many attempts have been made to find out what is the average wage of the average workman ”

“ the more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. ”

“ The bases of assessment for men and women should be those discussed and approved in the preceding section. The living wage that is fixed should be subject to reconsideration and revision at definite periods ”

“ Thirdly, the mere fact that they exist makes them the most convenient basis for the very careful process of comparison and calculation involved in any attempt to establish gradually a scheme of wage relationships based upon principles. ”

“ The positive, although hazy, belief which ordinarily underlies the scientific management theories of wages can be perceived in the following quotation from a speech of one of the leading advocates of the movement. "There are two ways in which wages can be advanced. ”

“ If I hire a man to gather eggs, to pick berries, or to make shoes, paying him from the eggs, the berries, or the shoes his labour secures, there can be no question that the source of the wages is the labour for which they are paid. ”

“ What is here meant, however, by wages, is the labourer's real scale of comfort; the quantity he obtains of the things which nature or habit has made necessary or agreeable to him: wages in the sense in which they are of importance to the receiver. In the sense in which they are of importance to the payer, they do not depend exclusively on such simple principles. ”

“ I dwell on this obvious fact that labor always precedes wages, because it is all-important to an understanding of the more complicated phenomena of wages that it should be kept in mind. And obvious as it is, as I have put it, the plausibility of the proposition that wages are drawn from capital—a proposition that is made the basis for such important and far-reaching deductions—comes in the first instance from a statement that ignores and leads the attention away from this truth. ”

“ Why do you talk of wages? The money with which you pay the wages of the laborers remunerates them for only a few years of the perpetual possession which they have abandoned to you. Wages is the cost of the daily maintenance and refreshment of the laborer. You are wrong in calling it the price of a sale. The workingman has sold nothing ”

“ Paid sometimes by the day, oftener by the week or month, occasionally by the year, and in many branches of production by the piece, the payment of wages by an employer to an employee always implies the previous rendering of labour by the employee for the benefit of the employer. ”

“ Thus although the employer wishes to pay as little as possible, and the employee to receive as much as possible, wages will be fixed by the value of such labor to the laborers themselves. If wages are temporarily carried either above or below this line, a tendency to carry them back at once arises. ”

“ In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. ”

“ There is, therefore, in the politico-economic sense of the term wages no distinction as to the kind of labour, or as to whether its reward is received through an employer or not. Wages means the return received for the exertion of labour, as distinguished from the return received for the use of capital, and the return received by the landholder for the use of land.
The man who cultivates the soil for himself receives his wages in its produce, just as, if he uses his own capital and owns his own land, he may also receive interest and rent. ”

“ We know what wages are now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that’s the wages of to-day. We know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago ”

“ How, I ask once more, can you adjust satisfactorily the comparative wages or remuneration of the multitude of avocations, so unlike and so incommensurable, which are necessary for the service of society? In our day the market rate determined the price of labor of all sorts, as well as of goods. The employer paid as little as he could, and the worker got as much. ”

“ Chapter III Wages and capital The cause that produces poverty in the midst of advancing wealth is evidently the cause that exhibits itself in the tendency, everywhere recognized, of wages to a minimum. ”

“ But in Political Economy the word wages has a much wider meaning, and includes all returns for exertion. For, as political economists explain, the three agents or factors in production are land, labour and capital, and that part of the produce which goes to the second of these factors is by them styled wages.
Wages in the economic sense Thus the term labour includes all human exertion in the production of wealth, and wages, being that part of the produce which goes to labour, includes all reward for such exertion. ”

“ The money wages of labour are a compound result of two elements: first, real wages, or wages in kind, or in other words, the quantity which the labourer obtains of the ordinary articles of consumption ”

“ Under these very peculiar circumstances of higher money wages with a lower price of necessaries, the wages of labour would be in an unusual state, and would shortly revert to the old standard, when profits would feel the benefit. ”

“ When an occupation is carried on chiefly by persons who derive the main portion of their subsistence from other sources, its remuneration may be lower almost to any extent, than the wages of equally severe labour in other employments. ”

“ It ought to be clear, however, that the high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity of work. ”

“ Wages, which include all returns received from labour, vary not only with the differing powers of individuals but, as the organization of society becomes elaborate, they vary also largely as between occupations. Nevertheless, there is a certain general relation between all wages, so that we express a clear and well-understood idea when we say that wages are higher or lower in one time or place than in another. In their degrees, wages rise and fall in obedience to a common law. ”

“ Under the head of Wages are to be considered, first, the causes which determine or influence the wages of labour generally, and secondly, the differences that exist between the wages of different employments. ”