managers, too often take the places of truth, fairness, and justice.

In a practical examination of the question of wages, there are a few underlying principles that must be recognized at the outset. First, The amount of wages depends on the class and kind of employment. Second, It must depend on community and locality, the state of the country, and the times.

The wages of modern times have increased with the wants of civilization-with its enlarged list of necessities-nay, with the changed physical conditions of climate and shelter that accompany its progress. When civilization is being transferred to a new country, and that country is being developed like the United States and Australia, the wages there will differ from those of old and crowded countries. And so it will be found where an activity of civilization is carried from its home into a stagnant though old community. This is the spirit of railroads and telegraphs. It acts when the citizen retires to the village or the farm; it will act when the novel, expanded, and far-reaching activity of Europe and America enter by the avenues now opening into the old kingdoms of Japan and of China.

Third. We must bear in mind that the masses of both the employés and the employers are fair. The workman really does not want to be paid too much, nor does the employer wish to pay too little, as a general thing. The real question between them, and the one we are examining, is, what are just and fair wages. There are incompetent, unreasonable, worthless, lazy and vicious workmen, as well as grasping, cruel, mean, ill-tempered and tyrannical employers, but in all practical social questions, and especially those of political economy, as strictly as in mathematical and philosophical ones, the wonderful doctrine of averages must be used. A lucky or an unlucky speculation, an honest, or alas, a dishonest contract, a war, an undiscovered theft or swindle, a local rise in property, a pandering to extravagance or vice, a price of fancy or necessity, the finding of a diamond or of an oil-well, a rich marriage, and the marvellous results of comprehensive, financial and commercial combination, are occurrences comparatively few in number, and like floods

and earthquakes, Borgias and Catilines, do not affect the general result.

Fourth. This is the great question of value; and all value has relation solely to man individually or socially: What is any thing worth to any man or to men? As all right of property comes to the first possessor by his adding his own labor to it in collecting it or digging it up, or culti vating, or making, or ornamenting it,-and to all successive possessors by their labor in fighting for and taking it by force, or by exchanging their own labor-values for it,—so labor is the source of all value. This last trite principle is practically and directly connected with this question of wages, and "strikes," and "boss-unions."

Fifth. The question and the opposition are really not be tween labor and something else, but between the rights of labor of different kinds, and in the different shapes, original, bought, or accumulated. The ability to employ others, whether arising from the possession of knowledge and skill, or money, is but one shape of labor: capital is a shape of labor.

Look how the principle of fairness lies at the bottom of the workman's seemingly unreasonable demands. He allows that his employer has a perfect right to an article of his own make, or a gift, or what he has exchanged his property for, or what he has bought with his own property in the shape of representative money, but he complains that the employer receives more than his proportion of the value or price of the goods manufactured; or, as the slang of the demagogue words it, "the capitalist grinds too much enormors profit out of the wages of the poor oppressed laborer." Mere words. We have no doubt he does sometimes; nor have we any doubt that the laborer often charges twice as much as his work is worth, and slights it at that, or twice as much for his time, and idles it away besides.

The employer has rights-but the fatal crime of the times, and it would seem of all modern nations, is, to legislate and to write and to speak, to excite obedience against authority, ignorance against knowledge, what they call lower classes against the higher, inferiors against superiors

in station, subjects against controlling government, the individual against restraining society and authority, the poor against the rich, the criminal against the law. And this crime takes the sacred name of progress, and misleads the cheated people. The true liberty on which only a nation can be happily founded, is an intelligent liberty that sees and guards all classes with an equal eye and arm. Have not false patriotism and legislation for votes gone far enough, and would it not be statesmanship to recognize the fact?

If the principle of acquired property in another's labor, which can be accumulated, or transferred by purchase like other property-and the fact of its always entering into the value of a structure built, or an article manufactured or sold, and of the products or results of labor in general, bodily and mental, both by making a part of the claim for wages by the workman, and also a part of the claim for profit by the em ployer-if, we say, this principle and these facts could be known and practically felt by the employed and the employer, the hard thoughts, the questions at issue, the quarrels, and the ill-temper and evil of protective unions, and masters' unions, and of strikes and combinations, would be done away with.

The laborer should know and feel that his daily work represents not only the value of what he does that day himself, but it represents also in part the labor or property of his parents and of himself in his childhood and youth; what it cost them or him while he was growing up large enough to work, and also while he was learning how to work, and all that learning cost them or him. Then he can calculate and claim all his rights and the full and proper amount of his wages. And the employer (the laborer probably of the year before), making the same calculations in his case, it will be seen that he has the represented labor, with its claims to be paid, of others, perhaps of many, who lived before him, and which claims have become his property in some way under the name of capital, accumulated and transferred, perhaps through several persons. He can now explain it and make his fair claims. It is only an arithmetical question of divi

sion, what amount of labor the employer, and what amount the employed is to be paid for, in its different shapes.

With the above principles to guide us, let us now search for a practical answer to the plain question, What is at this time in the United States, a fair day's wages for a fair day's work? We will first take the simplest form, what is called uneducated labor, which does not require special instruction or apprenticeship.

In the United States, the man who has only his labor is born with the claim that his labor shall give him "life," his physical wants, food to keep him in good working condition, sufficient comfortable and decent clothing, and comfortable shelter; liberty, that is, his proportion of taxes for the support of a government-of statesmen but not of politiciansadministration of justice at home and foreign protection; and the pursuit of happiness, which also appears in the shape of taxes for all the public expenses of social life and civilization, roads, schools, hospitals, etc. More than that, he is entitled to the interest at current rates, not to the principal, on account of the impossibility in the aggregate, say seven per cent. per annum, upon that sum which it cost his parents as a gift to him, or himself if he had to support himself in his boyhood while he was growing up.

We find all this can be readily calculated upon the single, simple datum of the price of board for the different classes of occupations. This price will upon examination be found. to be nicely graduated upon a sliding scale, that takes in the occupation, the times, the locality, the season. We find also that the clothing required by any condition always bears a stated proportion to the board, say one-third. And so does his spending money for his improvement and amusement, the latter as much a necessity as the former, or to express it more broadly and philosophically, for the harmonious action and development of all his faculties. This item is less exact than the others, but it may be put down as equal to that for dress, one-third of the board. So much for his current claims.

From the same data it will be easy to calculate the amount of represented and accumulated expense of child

hood, 14 years, and youth, 6 years, from birth up to the age of wages, say 20 years: children are boarded at half price till 14, and at full price afterwards. Such are the natural claims which stop with the individual; but the world must be replenished with men and women; half the children die before 5 years of age-two children would keep up the population, but even mothers allow it the chance of increaseso that we may allow the average of four children born to each man and woman, especially as the wife's proportion of such expenses will in like manner be calculated and allowed as her wages, and we must calculate the cost of bringing up the two children that will live, to the age of work. The man's proportion of this item will be four-sevenths, considering the woman's necessary withdrawal from work. And now come in the data of vital statistics, slightly used before; and our inquiries take a more scientific turn. We must now know how long the uneducated laborer will live to want wages, or support; here the Census Tables show us, so as to know how long he will require the above expenses of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

We must also know what will be the annual price or premium of what is called an endowment life policy of assurance, or one payable at a certain age selected, (or at death if it happen before that age is reached,) so as to furnish enough money to meet the laborer's above weekly expenses during the rest of his life, between the age at which he can no longer work, which age we must also know from vital statistics, and the age at his death. In the class of labor first to be discussed, the laborer in town or city can work during his whole average life, and will on an average be sick only about 13 weeks of that time.

We must also know how many days in a year on an average he can work. In this class it will be, say three hundred. The difference is in indoor and outdoor work.

At the manufactories of the beautiful painted porcelain wares, the painters are not permitted to work at their trade more than seven years, on account of the deleterious effects of the materials they use for their colors. The poison of the compound used by the friction match factories forbade,