290 Timehri. 
Kingdom and Belgium to see how cost of living equalizes natural factors, 
enabling Belgium, with its comparatively infertile soil but a low rate of 
cost of living, to compete with the States in wheat production, where 
prairie lands and labour-saving appliances barely keep the balance with 
a high labour rate. 
To show how the means of prices in labour and food keep step we 
may turn a few ages back and compare wages and foodstuffs. 
In the 14th century the price of wheat was about 4s. a quarter, of a 
sheep 1s., of an ox 10s. to 12s. A labourer at this period was well 
paid at 3d.-4d. per day, the rate which appears from account books of 
that period to have been current. 
In the early part of the fifteenth century wheat was about 6s. per 
quarter, oxen fetched about 12s to 16s., 25 eggs 1d., cheese $d. per 
Ib. At this period the best paid labourer got 5d per day, a ploughman 
18s. 4d. per annum with food and lodging, for ordinary labour 34d. per 
day seems to have been an average. 
In 1784 the labourer’s wages had risen to 12s. per week, but he was 
not better paid than those we have named for the purchasing power of 
his money only amounted to a coomb of wheat in 10 to 12 days while 
the fourteenth zentury labourer’s pay was equal to the same quantity in a 
week. Nor is the labourer of the present day, with much higher wages, 
better off than his fifteenth century prototype, who, with his bushel of 
wheat for 9d. and his 16 lb. of beef for about 6d. had still nearly half 
his week’s pay in hand to meet other necessities. Still there is a constant 
tendency for wages to come level with other values and all the strikes 
and difficulties between capital and labour are just symptoms of the 
struggle for adjustment. 
When it comes to a question of competing for a place in the world’s 
market, the statesmen of a country must take into their calculations the 
average cost of production the world over, which now determines the 
price of every commodity. If a country is to compete successfully it 
must have advantages of some kind, such as a fertile soil, a population 
proportioned to the extent of its industry and of at least average 
efficiency, cheap labour either by nitural or mechanical agencies, and, if 
the former is relied on, then such an administration of its economy as 
will secure cheap food. This latter because a given amount of food is as 
necessary to produce a unit of man or animal power as a given amount 
of fuel is necessary to produce a unit of mechanical power, and the cost 
of the fuel is a final determinant of the cost of the unit. 
It is curious in view of the extreme importance of the relations with 
which we are dealing that the subject has to such a very small extent 
engaged the attention of those engaged in staple industries here. While 
the increase of labour reserves by immigration from one source or 
another, sources of supply of labour and most other phases have received 
. 
