and pay for washing them at ld. the pair. Similar contracts are made at 4s. in 1573; at 48. 8d. in 1577; at 4s 3d. in 1578. These prices represent the highest increases of any, for I find that in 1562 the average price of labour was 4s. 91d. the week; in 1563, 4s. 01d.; in 1570, 48. 7d.; in 1573, 4s. 114d.; in 1577 48. 10d.; and in 1578, 4s. 8d.; these average rates of wages, taken from eight different kinds of labour, five artizans and three ordinary or unskilled, being only a very little in excess of the amounts for which Elizabeth contracted in the same years to board her artizans at the docks.

Elizabeth soon discovered that one of the causes which was impoverishing her people was making her also poor. The rents and dues of the Crown, the subsidies, tenths and fifteenths, all the revenues of the Crown, except, perhaps, customs, were fixed in amount. The purchasing power of the revenue had fallen to about one-third of its ancient capacity, and the Queen strove to meet the difficulty by declaring that the new currency should run at only two-thirds its nominal value-i. e., that the shilling should be current at 8d., and so on. But the proclamation, though drafted, was not issued, probably because the Queen's advisers feared that the step would be unpopular, and would suggest that the Crown was trying arbitrarily to enhance its right against its debtors.

The enactment and development of the English poor law, unique among legislative enactments, must be treated in a separate chapter. But I must remind my reader that it by no means follows that population had increased because there was a virtual decline in wages. Low wages may be the concomitant of a scanty population, high wages of an abundant one. Nay, unhappily, society may make notable progress in wealth, and wages may remain low, misery may be general, and discontent may be imminent. The mass of English workmen are far better off now than they were two generations ago, though population has greatly increased. But relatively speaking, the working man of to-day is not so well off as he was in the fifteenth century, when the population was not one-tenth of it what it is now.

CHAPTER III.

WAGES OF LABOUR AFTER THE RISE IN PRICES.

Corn Prices should be Estimated over a wide Area-Bad Harvests in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries-Estimate of a Labourer's Real Wages in 1495, 1533, 1563, 1593, 1597, 1610, 1651, 1661, 1682, 1684, 1725-The Consequence of the Assessment of Wages System-the Extension of Conspiracy to Workmen's CombinationsPrinciples of a Trade Union- Mr. Mill on Unions-The Artizan from 1725 to 1750-Arthur Young's Notes on Wages-The Rise from 1750 to 1770-Wages of Manufactures-The Dear Years from 1780 to 1820The Speenhamland Act of Parliament-Tooke on Prices, from 1800 to 1815-The Rise in 1853-Concluding Remarks on Trade Unions.

examination of the rise which was effected in the price

ON during the last sixty years

of the sixteenth century enables us to see clearly what was now become the condition of those who lived by wages. If we look at the money value of most articles, we shall see that, with very few exceptions, it keeps steadily increasing during each successive decade. This is not, it is true, precisely the fact with regard to wheat and other kinds of grain, for the money value of this produce is affected in each decade by the occasion of years of special scarcity and plenty. Hence in the case of wheat or similar kinds of grain, it becomes necessary, if we would exactly interpret the change which had come over money values, to take a longer period, during which cheap and dear years neutralize each other. But the course of the seasons during the period which intervenes before prices have reached their true level and go on steadily rising, on the whole, for half a century, is striking and exceptional.

The issues of base money put into circulation by Henry were in the years 1545 and 1546. Those of Edward's guardians were in 1549 and 1551. In 1560 the currency was restored. It is

important to remember these dates in estimating prices, and the immediate effect of the issue on them. There must have been, I conclude, some general impression at first that these moneys would be redeemed, and, under these circumstances, it appears that they did not produce the immediate effect which such a proceeding invariably does sooner or later. Now the harvest of 1545 must have been a very bad one, for the price of wheat was higher than it had been in any year since 1316, the great famine of Edward the Second's reign, though it was soon to be surpassed. But for the next three years wheat is decidedly cheap in 1547 very cheap, the price being lower than it had been since 1510. Then follow three dear years and two comparatively cheap ones, Mary Tudor having come to the throne in the last year. Then follow three dear years, the third being dearer than in all previous experience, wheat being nearly five times the average price for the 280 years, 1261-1540, and standing, during the spring, at a price which must have indicated the worst anticipations of famine. In the next two years it is cheap again, a cheap year being now about double the old price. The years 1563 and 1573 are also dear. After the latter year, the ordinary price becomes about three times the old rate. The next dear year is 1586, when the price again goes beyond previous experience. But the harvest of 1588, the Armada year, was very abundant. Five years successively, 1594-98, are very dear, the last but one, 1597, being a veritable famine, the price being ten times what it was in the early period and not being paralleled till 1648 and 1649. By this time, however, the average price had reached from five to seven times that at which it had previously stood for more than two centuries and a half. The price of wheat in 1649 was reached again in 1674, in 1661-2, in 1709, and 1710, and not again till 1767, 1774, and 1795.

Now up to the year 1540, the average wages of an artizan in the country were 3s. a week; of a labourer in husbandry, working by the day, 2s. a week. Such wages, in some cases rather more, are allowed by 11 Hen. VII., cap. 22 (1495), to which I shall presently refer. The labourer in harvest time, when working by the day, received the same wages as the artizan; and, in harvest time, the wages of the women labourers were only a little

less than those of men. It should be remembered that this Act of Henry VII. is one which was intended to carry out the Statute of Labourers, and that therefore the minimum rate would be prescribed and, as far as possible, enforced. The price of wheat in 1495 was 48. 03d.; of malt, 2s. 4d.; of oats, 18. 74d.; and of oatmeal, 5s. 4d. a quarter. An artizan, therefore, earned nearly a bushel of wheat by a day's labour, and an ordinary labourer three-quarters of a bushel. A week's work would enable an artizan to purchase more than a quarter of malt, and a little more than seven days' work would supply the farm labourer with a quarter of malt. In so cheap a year as this, the peasant could provision his family for a twelvemonth with three quarters of wheat, three of malt, and two of oatmeal, by fifteen weeks of ordinary work; an artizan could achieve the same result in ten weeks. Such wages were regularly paid, and even more, particularly in London.

In 1533, a large proportion of Henry's artizans got 48. a week even during the winter months, the labourers earning, as before, 28. In 1533, the price of wheat was, relatively speaking, high, 7s. 8d. a quarter, while malt was 5s. 54d., oatmeal 8s., and oats 28. 9 d. the quarter. In this case, then, the farm labourer would have had to give nearly double the labour in wheat and oats, and more than double in the case of malt, though a good deal less than double in that of oatmeal, to make such a provision as his ancestor did in 1459; while the artisan at 3s., would have had to give between fourteen and fifteen weeks' work for a similar store. The first-named year is an exceedingly cheap one; the latter, though less advantageous to the labourer, is one in which he might still be able, as we see, to maintain his family, and lay by a considerable margin from the charges of his house hold, from a fourth to a half of his earnings.

In June 1564, the Rutlandshire magistrates met in order to carry out the provisions of the Act to which I have several times referred, and which had just been passed. The schedule of wages to which I am about to refer is printed by the royal authority among the proclamations of the Queen, and is preserved in the great collection of Elizabeth's instruments which was begun by Burleigh and continued by Cecil. It is without doubt a typica

list, intended by the fact of the publication to be a guide to the other Quarter Sessions throughout the country. The list is drawn up "on consideration of the great prices of linen, woollen, leather, corn, and other victuals." The ordinary artizan is to have 9d. a day in summer, 8d. in winter; the heads of the craft, who are to be competent draughtsmen of plans, to have 18. The labourers are to have 7d. in summer, except in harvest time, when they have 8d. to 10d., and in winter 6d. The summer is from Easter to Michaelmas, the winter from Michaelmas to Easter. In 1563-4, wheat was 19s. 93d. a quarter; oats, 78., malt, 10s. 8d. The price of oatmeal has not been found, but it could not have been less than 258. the quarter. The Rutlandshire schedule is a little lower than the prices actually paid in Cambridge and Oxford, as far as regards artizans' labour, for the artizan is paid, as a rule, not less than 1s. or 10d. a day. The wages of ordinary labour are those of the magistrates' schedule. Now the price of food is more than three times the old average, though malt, as we might expect, when wheat was at a scarcity price, is less than the corresponding price, being actually cheaper than barley. Now if we suppose the ordinary labourer to get 38. 6d. a week through the year, by adding his harvest allowance to his winter wages, it would have taken him more than forty weeks to earn the provisions which in 1495 he could have got with fifteen, while the artizan would be obliged to have given thirty-two weeks' work for the same result.

In 1593, the magistrates of the East Riding of York met on April 26th, and fixed the wages of artizans and labourers in husbandry. The mower is to have 10d., the reaper 8d. a day, or by the acre 10d. for meadow and 8d. for corn, it being clear that a man was supposed to mow an acre of corn or grass in a day. The winter wages of labourers are to be 4d., in summer 5d. Ordinary artizans are to have 8d. and 7d. The price of wheat in 1593 is 188. 44d.; of oatmeal, 29s. 4d.; of malt, 12s. 31d. The work of a whole year would not supply the labourer with the quantity which in 1495 the labourer earned with fifteen weeks' labour. The artizan could procure it with forty weeks' labour. In the same year, the mayor and others in the city of Chester fixed the wages of artizans and labourers who dwelt within their