Wages

“ Wages defined.—Hence it is fair to define wages as a stipulated sum, paid at stipulated times, for stipulated services, measured either by the number of distinct services or by the time of service. A wage-earner must therefore be one who sells his powers, whatever they may be, for the use of another, bringing his own services rather than the products of those services to the best market he can find. ”

“ The payment of wages, therefore, always implies the previous rendering of labour. Now, what does the "rendering" of labour in production imply? Evidently the production of wealth, which, if it is to be exchanged or used in production, is capital. ”

“ In treating of wages, we have hitherto confined ourselves to the causes which operate on them generally, and en masse; the laws which govern the remuneration of ordinary or average labour: without reference to the existence of different kinds of work which are habitually paid at different rates, depending in some degree on different laws. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wages, in public discussions, both oral and printed, being looked upon from the point of view of the payers, much oftener than from that of the receivers, nothing is more common than to say that wages are high or low, meaning only that the cost of labour is high or low. The reverse of this would be oftener the truth: the cost of labour is frequently at its highest where wages are lowest. ”

“ The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. ”

“ “There is this difference— where a man works for himself, or where, when working for an employer, he takes his wages in kind, his wages depend upon the result of his labor. Should that, from any misadventure, prove futile, he gets nothing. When he works for an employer, however, he gets his wages anyhow—they depend upon the performance of the labor, not upon the result of the labor.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore, the payment of wages presupposes production by labour for which wages are paid. And as the employer generally makes a profit, the payment of wages is, so far as he is concerned, but the return to the labourer of a portion of the wealth he has received from labour. So far as the employee is concerned, it is but the receipt of a portion of the wealth his labour has previously produced. As the value paid in wages is thus exchanged for a value brought into being by labour, how can it be said that wages are advanced by capital? ”

“ 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. ”

“ That portion of the capital or wealth of a country which the employers of labor intend to or are willing to pay out in the purchase of labor, may be much larger at one time than another. But whatever may be its absolute magnitude, it obviously forms the only source from which any portion of the wages of labor can be derived. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When wages are paid in kind—that is to say, in wealth of the same species as the labor produces; as, for instance, if I hire men to cut wood, agreeing to give them as wages a portion of the wood they cut, a method sometimes adopted by the owners or lessees of woodland, it is evident that no capital is required for the payment of wages. ”

“ The analysis previously given of real wages shows that logically all these improvements in the conditions of labour, by diminishing the “quantity of labour” involved in work, are equivalent to a real rise in wages. Experience has also shown that the state may advantageously interfere in regulating the methods of paying wages. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 scientific management theories of wages based on a misconception of the relation between the productive contribution of labor and wages. These theories merely an elaboration of one method of wage payment. They have perceived one important truth, however. ”

“ The wages of labor vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honorableness or dishonorableness of the employment. A journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom earns so much in twelve hours as a collier, who is only a laborer, does in eight. ”

“ It has been adopted in many branches of labour, both skilled and unskilled, in which the usual wages, when compared with the usual cost of living, are worth decidedly less than the wages of the larger and better-paid trades in this country. ”

“ If, then, leaving rent out of the question, we inquire in what it is that the advances of the capitalist, for purposes of production, consist, we shall find that they consist of wages of labour.
A large portion of the expenditure of every capitalist consists in the direct payment of wages. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as respects the labourer, is that they will consist in a sum of money which will at any time procure for him at least as much labour as he has given, rather more than less. And this equity or justice of payment is, observe, wholly independent of any reference to the number of men who are willing to do the work. ”

“ Wages in various occupations If we turn from simple social states to the complex phenomena of highly civilized societies, we shall find upon examination that they also fall under this law.
In such societies wages differ widely but they still bear a more or less definite and obvious relation to each other. ”

“ If each laborer in performing the labor really creates the fund from which his wages are drawn, then wages cannot be diminished by the increase of laborers, but, on the contrary, as the efficiency of labor manifestly increases with the number of laborers, the more laborers, other things being equal, the higher should wages be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The question however, was reopened by the change in theory which led economists to regard wages as depending primarily on the productivity of industry, and secondarily (and within comparatively narrow limits) on the relative power of bargaining as between the labourers or groups of labourers and the organizers of labour. ”

“ Oek, 181, calls the costliness of labor to the purchaser of labor, "givers' wages," their purchasing power to the laborer himself, "receivers' wages," and is of opinion, that as civilization advances, the former declines and the latter rises. ”

“ In other words, the actual rate of wages obtained in any particular occupation depends partly on causes affecting that group compared with others, and partly on the general conditions which determine the relations between labour, capital and production over the whole area in which the industrial competition is effective. ”

“ The effect of all the circumstances which give rise to the differences between wages in different occupations may be included as supply and demand, and it is perfectly correct to say that the wages in different occupations will vary relatively according to differences in the supply and demand of labor—meaning by demand the call which the community as a whole makes for services of the particular kind, and by supply the relative amount of labor which, under the existing conditions, can be determined to the performance of those particular services. ”