Business Economics

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1915. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIX Economic Progress Peogress In The Field Of Labor At the conclusion of a study of this character we are inevitably led to summarize our deductions and to try to answer the question as to what the lessons of the past have taught us. In what direction are the forces of economic life taking us? The conclusion of this book is that they are making for economic progress, and it will be worth while to justify as far as possible this belief. It is, however, impossible to do this except in very general terms, for definite data for measuring this improvement do not exist, and economic progress itself is a somewhat vague conception. Even such comparatively simple facts as the rate of wages or the hours of labor can be stated only very generally. But both of these show a decided improvement in the condition of the working class. A careful investigation for Great Britain by Mr. A. L. Bowley 1 shows that if wages for the decade 1890-1900 be represented as 100, then the course of wages during the nineteenth century would have run somewhat as follows: i Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century. Without investigating the validity of the figures too closely, it may safely be affirmed that the movement of wages has been distinctly upward and that the rise was certainly not less than 50 per cent. For the United States the increase has not been so great, probably because wages started at a higher level. According to the Aldrich report, if wages and prices in 1860 in the United States be taken as 100, relative wages in 1840 were 82.5 and relative prices 98.5; in 1880 they were respectively 143 and 103.4; in 1903 they were 187 and 103. That is to say, relative wages showed a marked advance and real wages, owing to the fact that general prices remained almost stationary, an even gre...