10 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



economist, is also the authority for tlie statement that the aver- 

 age daily wages of work-women in France engaged in the manu- 

 facture of clothing, lace, embroideries, laundry-work, and the 

 like, increased 94 per cent between the years 1844 and 1872. In 

 the cotton-mills at Miilhausen, Germany, the rates of increase in 

 wages between 1835 and 1880 range between 60 and 256 per cent, 

 the increase in the later years, as in other countries, having been 

 particularly noticeable. 



Accepting the wage statistics of France (and they are offi- 

 cial), it would, therefore, appear that the rise of wages in that 

 country during the years above reviewed was greater than was 

 experienced in either England or the United States. 



One factor which has undoubtedly contributed somewhat to 

 the almost universal rise of wages during the last quarter of 

 the century has been the immense progress that has been made 

 in the abolition of human slavery — absolute, as well as in its 

 modified forms of serfdom and peonage — which thirty years ago 

 existed unimpaired over no inconsiderable areas of the earth's 

 surface, and exerted a powerful influence for the degradation of 

 labor and reduction of average wages to a minimum. 



Kelation of Wages to Living. — All conclusions as to the 

 effect of changes in the rates of wages in any country are, how- 

 ever, incomplete, unless accompanied by data which permit of a 

 conversion of wages into living, and these, in the case of the 

 United States and for the period from 1860 to 1885, have been 

 furnished by Mr. William M. Grosvenor, through a careful 

 tabulation of the prices of two hundred commodities, embracing 

 nearly all those in common use. From these comparisons it ap- 

 pears, that, if the purchasing power of one dollar in gold coin in 

 May, 1860, be taken as the standard — or as one hundred cents' 

 worth — the corresponding purchasing power of a like dollar in 

 the year 1885 was 26'44 per cent greater. The artisan in Massa- 

 chusetts in this latter year, therefore, could either " have largely 

 raised the standard of his living, or, on the same standard, could 

 have saved one third of his wages." Similar investigations in- 

 stituted in Great Britain (and which had been before noticed) 

 indicate corresponding results. 



Another conclusion of Mr. Atkinson would also seem to be 

 incapable of contravention, namely : That the greatly increased 

 product of the fields, forests, factories, and mines of the United 

 States which has occurred during the period from 1860 to 1885 

 " must have been mostly consumed by those who performed the 

 actual work, because they constitute so large a proportion — sub- 

 stantially about ninety per cent — of the whole number of per- 

 sons by whom such products are consumed," and that " no other 

 evidence is needed to prove that the working man and woman of 



