EARNINGS AND THE LAY 223 



industry, but upon the financial success of the undertaking in 

 which their employer had engaged them to take part. 



The question here is whether such a change in the alloca- 

 tion of the risks of the industry was accompanied by a corre- 

 sponding change in the relative proportions of profits and 

 wages. Did the whaling entrepreneurs, having divested them- 

 selves appreciably of the most important functions for which 

 business profits constitute a reward, sufi^er also a reduction in 

 the percentage of the net proceeds available as profits? Did 

 the laborers, having assumed in part the burdens of business 

 risk, secure an appropriate increase in the percentage of the net 

 proceeds going to wages? 



Unfortunately the available material does not lend itself 

 to a neat and conclusive answer. It may be stated with some 

 assurance, however, that the total wages bill for the industry, 

 as indicated by the gross lays, did not increase relatively to the 

 total amount of profits in the same degree as did the risks of 

 the workers in proportion to the risks assumed by the profit- 

 takers. Evidence tending to support such a viewpoint may be 

 found in the fact that approximately seventy per cent of the 

 net proceeds of the average voyage went to owners and agents, 

 leaving only thirty per cent for the crew, including captain and 

 mates J in the slow but steady decrease of the fractional lay 

 throughout the first half of the nineteenth century j in the 

 common occurrence of ludicrously small money laysj and in 

 the notorious system of extortionate charges for advances of 

 goods and of cash which reduced still further the real wages.^ 



It is necessary to recall also that then, as now, the factor 

 of industrial risk was ignored or underestimated by workers in 

 making their wage demands. The resulting tendency toward 

 the under-payment of risk-bearing by laborers was greatly 

 strengthened in whaling by the lack of bargaining power, either 



* Warrant for these statements was found in the collection of manuscript 

 account-books now in the New Bedford Public Library. The percentages for 

 profits and wages were corroborated, too, by two contemporary writers. See 

 Williams, J. R., in an article published in the North American Revieiv for 

 January, 1834, XXXVIII, p. 105 ; and Grinnell, Joseph, "Speech on the Tariff, 

 With Statistical Tables of the Whale Fishery," p. 9. The latter was published 

 in booklet form in 1844. 



