Agricultural Wages 115 



lower than wages in other industries that 

 involve similar hardships and require 

 similar skill. So universal is this relative 

 depression of agricultural wages, that in the 

 matter of economic laws or tendencies it 

 ought to take the first place. The tendency 

 to depressed wages in agriculture is 

 certainly much less liable to be counter- 

 acted, than the celebrated tendency to 

 diminishing return in agricultural pro- 

 duction. 



I will quote a few significant facts from 

 the history of wages in England over a 

 period of more than six centuries. It must 

 be borne in mind that when we are dealing 

 with wages over very long periods there 

 are several difficulties to be overcome. 

 Money wages, especially in the earlier 

 centuries, are only part earnings. Rogers, 

 in his great work, and in his popular 

 exposition of the more important results, 



