OTHEK BRANCHES OF INDUSTEY. 305 



and our forests are so extensive and convenient to the market, 

 that Ave can make our lumber as cheap as that made elsewhere. 

 We have extensive fisheries and they must be developed. We 

 must build our own houses, and construct our own roads, rail- 

 ways, mining-ditches, and flumes. We now import all our 

 hardware, glassware, porcelain, stationery, silks, cottons, fine 

 w^oollen goods, and nearly all our clothing, boots, shoes, and 

 fine furniture, and many of our agricultural implements, me- 

 chanical tools, wagons, and carriages. 



There has been a gradual fall in the wages of labor since 

 1849. For instance, in that year the wages of good carpen- 

 ters were sixteen dollars per day; in 1851, ten dollars; in 

 1853, seven dollars; in 1856, five dollars; and now four dol- 

 lars; and there* has been a similar decrease of w^ages in all 

 those branches of labor much in demand. Tailors, shoemakers, 

 and cabinet-makers have never received high wages, because 

 httle is done in their trades. ]Millers, calkers, and sLip-wrights 

 now get from four to six dollars per day ; bricklayers, stone 

 masons and plasterers from four to five dollars ; boiler-makers, 

 machinists, and pattern-makers four dollars ; carpenters, black- 

 smiths, and carriage-makers from three to four dollars ; house- 

 painters, papei^hangers, and stevedores three dollars; hod- 

 men and washerwomen two dollars ; common laborers one dol- 

 lar and seventy-five cents. Of such persons as are hired by 

 the month and boarded, ^•ardeners i^ret thirtv-five dollars : farm- 

 ers, teamsters, w^aiters, sailors, chambermaids, and seamstresses 

 twenty-five dollars. Clerks in stores get from thirty to sixty 

 dollars with boarding ; from fifty to one hundred dollars with- 

 out boarding. The best miners, of the class called " drifters," 

 who cut and blast tunnels and dig shafts, get four dollars per 

 day ; common miners get fifty dollars a month and boarding. 

 The w^ages of labor in California are now higher than in any 

 other pait of the w^orld. 



§ 228. Z/imibering. — Lumbering, or the preparation of forest 

 timber for industrial purposes, is an important branch of the 

 industry, and the sale of lumber is an important branch of the 



