STATISTICAL COMPARISONS. 483 



in which the average of the whole is higher because of the 

 different distribution of the people among the grades : — 



SECOND COMMUNITY. 



Class. 

 A. Earnings 

 B. 

 C. 



s- 



E. 



Total 1,000 £69,000 



Average per head, £69. 



In a comparison of rates of wages merely according to the 

 nature of the employment, the wages in the first community 

 would obviously appear higher than in the second, and this 

 would be strictly true in a sense ; but the inference would be 

 untrue that the average earnings of the wages-earning classes 

 in the first community, striking a true average, would be higher. 



The principle of this theoretical comparison I believe helps to 

 explain the actual facts as between an agricultural new country 

 like the United States or Australasia, and an old country like 

 England. In the former agricultural wages are higher than in 

 England, and almost every sort of employment, subject, how- 

 ever, to some qualifications, such as length of day and con- 

 tinuity of employment, is better paid than in England ; but it 

 is a non sequitur, not at first apparent, that the average earnings 

 all round are also higher, the truth being that owing to the 

 larger proportion of artisan classes in England the average 

 earnings of the working classes may be as high or higher 

 in England than in the United States, or at any rate 

 not very far short. The mode of comparing wages in two 

 countries is thus a most critical question. I have been often 

 puzzled myself to explain how it is that we arrive in England 

 at comparatively high figures for the aggregate income of the 

 nation when most of the rates of wages are apparently so much 

 lower— employment for employment—than they are in the 

 United Slates or Australasia, and to a large extent I believe the 

 solution I have now suggested is the true one. It is not 

 enough, then, to compare employment with employment, bu-t 

 mass must be compared with mass. 



Other dangers in these international statistical comparisons, 

 such as differences in the purchasing power of money in 

 different places may be suggested. But I should not be dis- 

 posed to lay so much stress on any other point as upon that of the 

 relative importance of different employments in diffei-ent 

 countries. In these days of cheap freights and rapid transit, 

 the equalisation of prices in all countries has been carried very 

 far indeed, the most important differences that remain being, 

 I believe, artificial, ai'ising from the protection of food products 

 in countries like Germany and France, and the like causes. The 

 different distribution of populations according to employments 

 remains, however, an enduring cause of differences in their re- 

 lative aggregate earnings and average earnings per head. 



