746 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE EVOLUTION OF HIGH WAGES FROM LOW COST 



OF LABOR.* 



By EDWARD ATKINSON. 



IIsT dealing with tliis subject I sliall not submit many statistics. 

 For data sustaining this thesis reference may be made to my 

 own published works notably to the Distribution of Products: yet 

 more to the Senate Report on Prices and Wages for Fifty-two Years, 

 compiled by Commissioner Wright. The figures give conclusive 

 proof that in every branch of industry, esjDecially in all the arts which 

 have been most fully developed by the application of science and 

 invention, there has been a progressive advance in the rate of wages 

 or in the earnings of all who are occupied on the farm, on the rail- 

 way, in the factory, or in the workshop. This advance has been 

 subject to temporary reductions during periods of commercial crises, 

 usually very moderate. In such periods there is apt to be un- 

 employment for a portion of the working force rather than any con- 

 siderable reduction in established rates of wages. These periods are 

 usually of short duration and from each small decline wages have 

 taken a speedy upward trend. This advance in all rates of wages has 

 been coupled with a general decline in the prices of nearly all 

 products. In some branches of industry the advance in the rate of 

 wages has been less than in others. When each of these cases is 

 dealt with, usually one of two causes will be found. In many arts 

 the progress of invention has lessened the demand for individual skill 

 and aptitude in the workman. For instance in the making of a steel 

 plow a few years since nearly all the workmen were of necessity 

 skilled mechanics, earning relatively very high wages, yet such has 

 been the application of machinery to the production of the plow that 

 laborers may be called in from the adjacent fields who, if possessed of 

 ordinary intelligence, may in three months or less become expert 

 attendants upon the machines on which the separate parts that con- 

 stitute the plow are made. Their wages are now as high as those of 

 the skilled mechanics of a former generation, Avhile the men of the 

 present generation who correspond to the skilled plow makers of a 

 former day have gone up into employments requiring even a higher 

 type of individuality at higher relative rates of wages. 



The same rule may be observed in the textile factory. It has 

 often been remarked that there seemed to be a deterioration in the 

 quality of the factory operatives at the present time as compared to 



* Read before Section I of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 Tuesday, August 23, 1898. 



