36 



WAGES AND EMPIRE 



comparative shortage or superfluity of land exerts in 

 this case a hundred per cent, influence on Hving. The 

 wages of North America and Australasia are what the 

 present state of knowledge permits, achieved because 

 in those countries there is no recourse to inferior soils. 

 While in Europe, although there is as much good soil 

 as in the other parts of the world, living is beaten down 

 by the cultivation also of inferior soils. 



Table No. IX 

 Comparative table of wages in the principal countries 

 of Europe and of the New Worlds. 



But low as the wages in Europe are they are not 

 so low as they might be and have been. It is possible 

 for a human being to live on wages of two or three 

 shillings a week, and in countries where overcrowding 

 has reached great limits this is the scale of living of 

 a large part of the people. When this is the case it 

 is not uncommon to hear the low scale of subsistence 

 attributed to any but the true cause — the shortage 

 of land. It is usually mistakenly attributed to an 

 inferiority of the workmen. But that this is not the 

 case is proved when the workmen of such countries 

 come into equal competition with those of the 

 supposedly superior class. When Chinese and Indians, 



