WAGES AND COST OF LIVING.
It is natural to suppose in hard times, as lately, that the relative cost of living and wages had changed in such a manner as to operate against the workingman. This may be true in individual cases, but industrial history goes to show that the reverse is true. A short time ago a table of wages and the cost of living was published. This gave in detail a statement with the prices of staple articles of commerce, covering a period of over six hundred years, up to the present time. In this table we are informed that in the thirteenth century the average wages did not exceed fifty cents a week, and the highest class of mechanics did not receive eighty cents a week. During the next century the increase was not fifteen cents. Since that time the increase has been graded until the last century, when the average wages reached $1.90 a week. At present the average labor in the same countries reaches $4.00 per week. This refers more particularly to farm work, which may be taken as an indication of other vocations. Going back again to the thirteenth century, we find that the price of wheat averages seventy-one cents a bushel, or an equivalent for eight and a half days' labor. At present wheat at wholesale is worth in Europe about $1.50, or two and a half days' labor. Meat has trebled in price during the past six centuries, while wages have increased sevenfold, and this applies not only to meats, wheat, etc., but also to other articles of commerce, many of which were in those days so dear as to be regarded as luxuries, but which now are considered necessaries, and within the reach of the poorest in the land. It also shows that these changes are more marked in countries where there is the greatest tendency to produce labor-saving machinery.