186 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



dollars; in 1853, seven dollars; in 1856, five dollars; and 

 now four dollars ; and there has been a similar decrease of 

 wages in all those branches of labor much in demand. Tail- 

 ors, shoemakers, and cabinet-makers have never received high 

 wages, because little is done in their trades. Millers, caulkers, 

 and shipwrights now get from four to six dollars per day; 

 bricklayers, stone masons, and plasterers, from four to five dol- 

 lars ; boiler-makers, machinists, and pattern-makers, four dol- 

 lars ; carpenters, blacksmiths, and carriage-makers, from three 

 to four dollars; house-painters, paper-hangers, and steve- 

 dores, three dollars ; hodmen and washerwomen, two dollars; 

 common white laborers, one dollar and seventy-five cents ; and 

 Chinamen, from eighty cents to one dollar and a quarter. Of 

 such persons as are hired by the month and boarded, garden- 

 ers get thirty-five dollars; farmers, teamsters, waiters, sailors, 

 chambermaids, and seamstresses, twenty-five dollars. Clerks 

 in stores get from thirty to sixty dollars, with boarding ; from 

 fifty to one hundred dollars without boarding. The best 

 miners, of the class called " drifters," who cut and blast tun- 

 nels and dig shafts, get three or four dollars per day ; com- 

 mon miners get fifty dollars a month and boarding. 



The policy of fixing wages so high that manufactures of 

 home production cannot compete with those imported, that 

 laborers cannot obtain steady employment, and that immi- 

 grants are frightened off by the cry that this is no country 

 for a poor man, is the most pernicious one possible for the 

 State as a whole, and for laborers as a class. Irregularity and 

 uncertainty of employment are the greatest evils that can be- 

 set poor men ; and inability to furnish employment to poor 

 men, with profit to himself, is one of the most unfortunate 

 conditions for a rich man. The general interest is best pro- 

 moted when the poor man's labor and the rich man's money 

 are always in active demand at a fair price ; and then poor 

 men of intelligence, skill, and credit, will frequently become 

 employers, and by their influence and example keep up a kind- 

 ly feeling between the two classes. 



