26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



men so much as by engineers and stokers. It would seem that, as a 

 class, the new men all round are paid better than the able seamen, but 

 I should not press this point ; it might well be the case that steam- 

 ships as a whole could be worked by an inferior class of laborers as 

 compared with sailing-ships, and yet the fact that inferior labor is 

 sufficient for this special trade would be quite consistent with the fact 

 that the whole conditions of modern labor require more skill than the 

 conditions fifty years ago, so that there is more labor relatively at the 

 higher rates than used to be the case. 



The comparison, except for seamen's wages, where it has only been 

 possible to go back for about thirty years, is made between a period 

 about fifty years ago and the present time only. It would have com- 

 plicated the figures too much to introduce intermediate dates. I may 

 state, however, that I have not been inattentive to this point, and 

 that, if we had commenced about twenty to twenty-five years ago, we 

 should also have been able to show a very great improvement since 

 that time, while at that date also, as compared with an earlier period, a 

 great improvement would have been apparent. A careful and exhaustive 

 investigation of the records of wages I have referred to, in comparison 

 with the numbers employed in different occupations, as shown by the 

 census reports, would in fact repay the student who has time to make 

 it; and I trust the investigation will yet be made. 



The records do not include anything relating to the agricultural 

 laborer, but from independent sources — I would refer especially to the 

 reports of the recent Royal Agricultural Commission — we may per- 

 ceive how universal the rise in the wages of agricultural laborers has 

 been, and how universal at any rate is the complaint that more money 

 is paid for less work. Sir James Caird, in his " Landed Interest " 

 (page 65), puts the rise at 60 per cent as compared with the period 

 just before the repeal of the corn -laws, and there is much other evi- 

 dence to the same effect. The rise in the remuneration of labor in 

 Ireland in the last forty years is also one of the facts which has been 

 conspicuously brought before the public of late. In no other way is 

 it possible to account for the stationariness of rents in Ireland for a 

 long period, notwithstanding the great rise in the prices of the cattle 

 and dairy products which Ireland produces, and which, it has been 

 contended, would have justified a rise of rents. The farmer and the 

 laborer together have in fact had all the benefit of the rise in agricult- 

 ural prices. 



The next point to which attention must be drawn is the shortening 

 of the hours of labor which has taken place. While the money wages 

 have increased as we have seen, the hours of labor have diminished. 

 It is difficult to estimate what the extent of this diminution has been, 

 but, collecting one or two scattered notices, I should be inclined to 

 say very nearly 20 per cent. There has been at least this reduction 

 in the textile, engineering, and house-building trades. The workman 



