98 Rents y Wages, and Profits in Agriculture 



though most likely more was needed in 

 the earlier period. 



Thus in money, rent had risen twenty 

 times, profit (aggregate) ten times, and 

 wages only two - fold. After 1770 there 

 was a very great increase in both rent 

 and profit, but real wages fell. 



The position of the labourer had thus 

 become relatively less prosperous, compared 

 with the two other parties interested in 

 land, and, as we have already seen, also 

 absolutely worse reckoned in food. 



During these four centuries there had 

 been great national progress. In spite of 

 this, however, not only had the condition 

 of the labourer, as a food consumer, 

 become worse, but apparently also he had 

 lost in various social utilities (to use the 

 general economic term), which are not so 

 easy of expression in measurable quantities. 



Adam Smith, writing about the same 



