or any employment not requiring long training, may find a footing to a moderate extent without greatly affecting the normal rate of wages of a district. Such at least has been the experience of the lead-mining districts of the North of England.

In illustration of what has been advanced may be quoted the daily pay of the labourers on an Indian tea plantation, who, as well as the workmen at a small blast furnace adjacent, receive only five pence a day. In this case the furnacemen's wages, although higher perhaps than those of the ordinary agricultural labourer, do not exceed those of the tea cultivator.

On the shores of the Mediterranean, between Malaga and Gibraltar, the rate of agricultural wages was given me in 1872 as equal to 1s. Ojd. per day; but the labourer was able to keep himself on 4d., his daily nourishment consisting of about 2 lbs. of bread and one ounce of olive oil, with a little salt, boiled into the national dish gaspacho.

The workmen at a charcoal iron furnace, situate between these two towns, were being paid as follows:-Iron ore miners, 1s. 3d.; furnace keepers, 2s.; slag men, 1s. 54d. for one day's work.

In the event of a new industry being established on a small scale, the wages earned by the workmen continue to be regulated more or less by the rates previously current in the country. Thus in another part of Spain I visited furnaces making 280 tons of iron per week, where the head keeper was paid 4s. 4d. for his day's work, and assistants and slagmen from 2s. 2d. to 2s. 10d. The blast engineman for three furnaces had only 2s. 10d., and his fireman 1s. 10d. One-third of the workpeople were women, who received 1s. 5d. Partly owing to less perfect arrangements than are found at the latest erected works in Great Britain, and partly no doubt owing to the inferior living, there were nearly one-half more people employed at the establishment in question, for very little more than half the iron produced, as compared with the best Cleveland furnaces. The average earnings of the workpeople, all told, were under 2s. per day, or less than one-half the rate paid in England; notwithstanding which, for the reasons already assigned, the cost for labour per ton of iron was about the same as that incurred in the district with which the comparison has been made.

Old as is the iron trade in Sweden, its relative extent, and that of manufactures in general, as compared with agriculture, is not such as

to have greatly affected the price of labour, as determined by the rates paid for cultivating the soil. The same may be said of the Austrian dominions.

It is some years since these rates were obtained in the two countries just mentioned; but a Government Report1 prepared for the Paris Exhibition gives 1s. 3d. to 2s. 6d. as the earnings in 1878 of an Austrian coal hewer.

Having thus shown in general terms that on the first appearance of manufacturing enterprises in an agricultural country they have their rate of wages determined in a great measure by the value of agricultural labour, we will now proceed to review the circumstances attending a more advanced state of development as applied to the iron trade.

The cost of food is an all-important element in considering the question before us, for it is to the labourer what wages are to the ironmaster. In both cases we have to deal with the chief expense in producing that article which the workman has to sell and the manufacturer has to buy, viz. labour.

Some remarkable changes have taken place in later years in the nominal value of objects of daily consumption. Often however, in cases where there has been an increase in apparent value, the alteration is due to the greater abundance of the precious metals; and on the other hand, where prices have fallen, the difference is generally the result of improved methods of production or in the conveyance of material. At other times these two opposing forces, so to speak, may have a tendency to counterbalance each other in the effect upon the commodity.

The cost of the food previously mentioned as consumed by an agricultural labourer in Spain at the present day, appears to correspond

1 Die Mineralkohlen Oesterreichs, 1878, p. 66.

in amount with that of his predecessor in England 200 years ago; for, according to Sir William Petty, a countryman's wage was then fourpence per day with his food, or eightpence if he found himself in victuals.

Macaulay, in his History of England, quotes beer and butcher meat being much cheaper in 1685 than it was when he wrote, about thirty years ago. Yet the price of meat, 3d. to 31d. per lb., was such that thousands of families, he says, scarcely knew the taste of it. On the other hand, according to this author, the produce of tropical countries and the produce of the mines was positively dearer than at present. Under such a condition of things the labourer in 1685 would have to pay more for such absolute necessaries as sugar, salt, coals, candles, soap, shoes, stockings, and generally all articles of bedding. At the same time Macaulay gives it as his opinion that blankets and garments in the older time were not only more costly, but less serviceable than they are in our own.

There is no more important item of household consumption of the working classes than flour; yet Macaulay mentions that during the last twelve years of the reign of Charles II. wheat was 50s. per quarter. Bread, he says, such as now is given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then seldom seen even on the trencher of a yeoman or a shop-keeper. The great majority of the nation lived almost entirely on rye, barley, and oats. The average price of wheat during the last five years ending 1879 has fluctuated between 41s. 7d. and 54s. 7d., the average being 48s. 1d., or 4 per cent. lower than it was two centuries ago, irrespective of the greater value of money in former times. This therefore is a case where improved agriculture and ameliorations in transport have countervailed and much more than countervailed the enormous depreciation in the circulating medium.

With the facts and figures just enumerated before us, and with the knowledge that the lowest wages in the agricultural districts contiguous to our great centres of industry are at least four times as high as they were two hundred years ago, no one can deny an immense improvement in the condition of the labouring population of our time, as compared with that of their predecessors. As has been shown above, the purchasing power of money in the reign of Charles I. was much greater than it is at the present time; but so far as wheat, which forms now so

important an ingredient in the workman's food, is concerned, as much can be bought for a shilling to-day as could be obtained for that coin, two hundred years ago.

Labouring men at present live in better houses, eat better food, have better clothing, and are able to command enjoyments utterly beyond the reach of their forefathers. Their employers on the other hand receive a larger amount of labour, afforded with greater ease by those who produce it than the lesser quantity by the badly paid, badly housed, badly fed, and badly clothed workmen of two centuries ago. Indeed, for an illustration of the connection of good wages with good work, we do not require to go back two hundred years; for our own times afford us the means of comparing the condition and value of well paid men with those who are the reverse.

It matters little however, in a comprehensive view of the labour question, how well a man is paid, unless some consideration is given to the purchasing power of the money he receives.

This purchasing power of the workman's earnings is evidenced of course by the prices paid for the usual articles of domestic consumption; and any advantages in this respect would necessarily permit a workman to dispose of his labour more cheaply than one less favourably situated could afford to do. There is no doubt that forty years ago the foreign workman was able to command the necessaries of life on much easier terms than were our own countrymen. I have myself remarked this at the time, when on visits to Continental iron works; but it has also come within my observation that since 1840 a remarkable alteration in this respect has taken place, many articles being now supplied in Great Britain at much cheaper rates than were formerly paid, while in France, Germany and elsewhere the same commodities have greatly risen in price. The adoption of Free Trade in this country, and the facilities afforded to transport both on land and water by the introduction of steam as a propelling power, have placed the United Kingdom in economical correspondence with foreign seaports.

The actual weight of weekly food, required for a family of two adults and four or five children, does not amount to 50 lbs. Under such conditions, a very few pence per week will represent the extent of the disadvantage of the British workman, as compared with the foreigner, supposing the former were exclusively fed on produce grown near the home of the latter

The Continental farmer has thus found in the British consumer a customer for produce rarely if ever sent from his own neighbourhood in former days. Such a development of our relations with foreign nations has of course tended to equalise prices here and abroad—the increased demand on the Continent has raised the prices there, while the increased supply with us has had an opposite effect-greatly to the benefit of the producer abroad and to the consumer in the British Isles. As examples of this, I would mention that at the time of a journey undertaken in 1847, butcher meat was being sold in France and Germany as low as 4d. per lb. I made no memorandum of the prices charged in the North of England at that time; but it would probably be one-half more at least than the figure just named.

Twenty years after this, viz. in 1866 and 1867, I find the following quotations in my note books, for animal food:

These prices, show an increase of about 75 per cent. as compared with 1847, and were only about 10 per cent. cheaper than the rates prevailing at the same time in the mining districts of Durham and North Yorkshire.

As a further instance of the levelling tendency in prices in recent years, may be quoted the fact that Continental Europe as well as ourselves is now drawing large supplies of provisions from the United States. American cheese and American bacon are now to be found in many parts abroad; with this difference however that they are usually saddled with an import duty, from which legislation has fortunately relieved the British subject. The advantage, from a consumer's point of view, of the legislation for which we are mainly indebted to Villiers, Cobden, and Bright, is conspicuously seen in comparing the prices of wheat, given a few pages back, with those which obtained before the change in our Corn Laws just referred to.