482 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



recorded when a general statistical account of the wages-earning 

 classes of a people has to be built up. So little have such matters 

 been studied, however, that I doubt the existence of aoy com- 

 parison of wages in different countries which is even formally 

 complete. No country has, as yet, a tolerably complete account 

 of its own wages in which attention is given to all these points ; 

 much less is there any possibility of international com- 

 parisons. 



As the primary records are, however, sometimes used for 

 such comparisons, and we get such statements based on them 

 as that wages are 50 or 100 per cent higher in the United 

 States, say, than in England, special attention may be drawn 

 to the failure of the comparison in point of logic. In the 

 absence of any account of length of the working day and con- 

 tinuity of employment, no proper comparison can be made. 

 This applies specially to a comparison between wages in out-of- 

 door trades in a country like the United States, with a severe 

 climate, and wages in the same trade in England. Wages in 

 the former country may well be higher per nominal day or 

 week of actual work, and yet the difference not be so great 

 when the earnings and hours of labour of the whole year in 

 England are reckoned. 



What I would most desire to direct attention to, however, is 

 the statistical importance of a somewhat different point. This 

 is the distribution of the population according to remuneration. 

 It is quite conceivable that in one of two countries the earnings, 

 and still more the nominal wages, may be higher than in the 

 other in every single employment which can be enumerated 

 and comjDared, and yet the average earnings of the average 

 wages-earning man may be higher in the latter country than 

 the former, the reason being the different chstribution of the 

 people according to earnings. This can be shown very clearly 

 in a theoretical comparison. Take first a community of 1,000 

 wages-earners, with the people distributed according to eai'nings,. 

 in the following classes — A, B, C, D, and E — as follows : — 



FIRST COMMUNITY. 



Total. 



£25,000 



12,000 



7,000 



8,000 



9,000 



Total 1,000 £61,000 



Average per head, £61. 



And compare this with another community of equal numbers, 

 in which there are also five grades, each remunerated at a lower 

 rate than the corresponding grade in the first community, bu*"! 



