Wages in California by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 27, 1879

Wages in California.

By Editor

SOME time since we published a newspaper item, saying that labor is well rewarded in California, for which a correspondent severely took us to task. We had then no means for fully verifying the statement, but now we have. The daily Alta of Nov. 20 contains an article on this subject. From it we take the following table and remarks. The places indicated are Germany, Brussels, England, New York, and San Francisco:—

This is per week. The farmers and housemaids are boarded; the others board themselves.

"These are astounding figures, but we have no reason to doubt their accuracy. The authorities from which we derive our information are the best, or at least have not been questioned publicly. While the mechanic gets 50 per cent. more in San Francisco than in New York, 150 per cent. more in England, 250 per cent. more in Brussels and 400 per cent. more in Germany, he can get his flour, mutton, beef, potatoes, cheese, sugar, coffee and tea, cheaper than in any of the other places mentioned. The prices of such articles are less here than in New York, where, according to Porter, they are on the average more than 25 per cent. cheaper than in Brussels. Thus a pound each of average bread, beef, veal, mutton, pork, lard, butter, cheese, coffee and sugar, costs $2.06 in Brussels and $1.43 in New York; while here the price would not exceed $1.30.

"The Chinamen in California receive about $5 a week, so that their labor cannot be considered cheap as compared with farm labor in the Atlantic States, much less in Europe.

"Besides the higher wages, the laborer in San Francisco has the advantage of living in a climate which is never too cold, and not more than a dozen days in a year too warm for comfort while working out in the open air. We have neither ice nor snow, and, consequently, building and street work are not interrupted, and we have none of that intense cold which causes a large part of the suffering among the very poor. On the other hand, there is a larger proportion of unemployed labor here than in the Atlantic States or Europe, business generally is more depressed, and the future is uncertain because of a foolish Communistic agitation, which, though undertaken under the pretence of aiding the laboring men, is really depriving them of employment and reducing their wages. In a country where the wages are high, and where the experience of the past and all the reasonable expectations of the future indicate a decrease in the rate of wages, even of a very slow one, the worst course the laboring men can pursue is to threaten and alarm capital."

If Kearney wishes to agitate effectively let him go to Ireland, where his country-men are starving by reason of oppression. He knows he can threaten to burn and murder with more safety in San Francisco than in Dublin or Cork.