854 



WAADTLAND- WAGES. 



before the w in German, as hwil, at present welle 

 (wave,) hwelcher, at present welcher (Scotch whilh, 

 who.) This was done particularly in Anglo-Saxon. 

 At a later period, the A was put after the 10, though 

 the pronunciation remained hw, for when is pro- 

 nounced /nc> a. It is a peculiarity of some German 

 vulgar dialects to put m instead of w, and say mir 

 for uwV, and Morsing for Wining. W is a letter 

 peculiar to the alphabets of the Teutonic and 

 Sclavonic languages : those of Latin origin have it 

 not, except in proper names of foreign persons. 



WAADTLAND, OR DIE WAADT ; German 

 names for the Pays de Vaud. See Pays de Vaud. 



WAAL ; a branch of the Rhine. See Rhine. 



WABASH, a river of Indiana, waters the mid- 

 dle and western parts of the state, and flows into 

 the Ohio thirty miles above Cumberland river. It 

 is upwards of 500 miles long, and affords good 

 steam-boat navigation, for most of the year, 150 

 miles, to Vincennes, and for smaller boats '250 miles 

 farther, to Ouiatan. Very small boats ascend to 

 within eight miles of the Maumee. It receives se- 

 veral large rivers, and meanders through a valley of 

 remarkable fertility. The Little Wabash is one of 

 its principal branches, and unites with it only a few 

 miles from the Ohio. This stream may be rendered 

 navigable, for a long distance, by removing a few 

 obstructions. It is eighty yards wide where it joins 

 the Wabash. It rises in Illinois, about forty miles 

 south-east of the Kaskaskia. 



WAD, OR WADDING, in gunnery ; a stopple 

 of paper, hay, straw, old rope-yarn, or tow, rolled 

 up like a ball, or a short cylinder, and forced into a 

 gun, to keep the powder close in the chamber, or 

 put up close to the shot, to keep it from rolling 

 out. 



WAD BLACK. See Manganese. 



WAFER. (See Cements, and Sealing- Wax.) 

 We only add here, that an antiquarian of the eigh- 

 teenth century, Mr Spiess, a German, says, that the 

 oldest seal with a red wafer, which he had ever 

 found, is on a letter written at Spire, in 1624, to 

 the government at Bayreuth. See Beckmann's His- 

 tory of Inventions and Discoveries (London, 1797). 

 The use of sealing wax is universally considered 

 more polite than that of wafers, because the latter 

 is easier and less formal, hence more appropriate for 

 the business style. 



WAGENAAR, JOHN, historiographer to the city 

 of Amsterdam, where he was born in 1709, and 

 died 1773, is one of the most distinguished scholars 

 of his country, and, in particular, one of the best 

 historians of Holland. His principal work, De Vu- 

 derlandsche Historic vervattende de Geschiedenissen 

 der P'ereenigde Nederlanden, or History of the 

 United Netherlands until 1751, was published at 

 Amsterdam, in 21 vols. (174960). In 1788, a 

 continuation of this work, from 1776 to 1802, ap- 

 peared at Amsterdam, under the title of Vervolg 

 van Wagenaar Vaderlandxche Historic (48 vols.), 

 and, in 1789, volumes 22, 23, and 24, containing 

 the history of the period from 1751 to 1774. His 

 other works are a description of the United Pro- 

 vinces (12 vols., 1739), and a Description of Am- 

 sterdam (3 vols., folio, 1760), and some polemical 

 treatises on theological subjects. 



WAGERING POLICIES. See Insurance. 



WAGES. The cost of an article is made up of 

 that of the materials consumed, and the compensa- 

 tion for the use of the land, buildings, and imple- 

 ments employed, and the labour, skill, and superin- 

 tendence requisite in its production, with interest 



on these outlays until the product is completed and 

 ready for the market. When we inquire respecting 

 the rate of wages, we are first to consider what ex- 

 tent we give to the term ; whether we comprehend 

 the compensation given for skill and industry, of all 

 descriptions, employed in the production, distri- 

 bution, and even use and consumption, of all sorts 

 of commodities ; for wages are paid to a servant 

 who waits at a table, or a coachman who drives a 

 pleasure coach, as well as to a miller, teamster, or 

 seaman, though the former are not like the latter, 

 employed in giving additional value to any article, 

 by producing or transporting it. If we divide the 

 whole annual value produced in a community into 

 three parts, and assign one to pay rent, another to 

 pay for the use of capital, and a third for wages, 

 taking wages in its most comprehensive sense, as in- 

 cluding all that is paid for industry and skill of all 

 descriptions, then the first material consideration 

 is, What is the mass of the products in proportion 

 to the land, capital, and labour employed ? for the 

 same quantity and quality of land, capital, and la- 

 bour will yield a greater annual product in one com- 

 munity than in another. What is the aggregate 

 mass or fund out of which the dividend is to be 

 made ? The aggregate productiveness of England, 

 for instance, will vastly exceed that of Spain in all 

 these particulars ; for the lands are made more pro- 

 ductive, the labour is more skilfully applied, and 

 the capital is more rapidly carried through the dif- 

 ferent forms of production, and transported through 

 the different places in its way to that of final con^ 

 sumption ; and, consequently, the same capital is 

 more effective, or, in other words, contributes to a 

 greater mass of production in the same time. We in- 

 stitute this inquiry as to the aggregate mass of annual 

 production in comparing the condition of one com- 

 munity with that of another. One community may 

 have twice as great a fund to divide as another, from 

 the same aggregate means of production ; and if the 

 distribution is made in precisely the same proportions 

 among the several interests, the compensation will 

 be twice as great in one case as in the other. This 

 effectiveness of the labour and means of production 

 in a community, is a matter of the most weighty 

 consideration, and goes far in determining the con- 

 dition of the population. This gives us two 

 modes of comparison, as to the rate of wages in 

 any two communities, the results of \vh:ch may be 

 very different. If we ask whether labour and skill, 

 taking the whole mass of both, of all descriptions, 

 be better rewarded in Britain or Spain, the answer 

 may be, that a greater quantity of corresponding 

 articles go to compensate the same labour and skill 

 in Britain, but that a greater proportion of the 

 whole mass of annual products goes to compensate 

 labour and skill in Spain. To make the distinction 

 more plain a labourer in Britain may earn a yard 

 of cloth, and one in Spain but half a yard, of the 

 same quality in a day ; so that the British labourer 

 gets absolutely twice as much compensation as the 

 Spanish. But, owing to greater skill and ad- 

 vantages, the British labourer may produce four 

 times as much cloth, or materials for cloth, as the 

 Spanish labourer in the same time. Therefore, 

 though the British labourer gets twice as great a 

 quantity, the Spaniard gets twice as great a pro- 

 portion of the whole product. The wages of one 

 will accordingly be twice as great as that of the 

 other, and vice versa, according as we make the 

 comparison in one or the other way. The ordinary 

 mode of comparison has reference to the absolute 



