especially in making comparison of the wage scale in different industries and among different peoples or different classes of laborers, account must be taken of the number of hours which constitute a day's labor.

The same nominal wage paid to two men is not really the same if one man works eight hours a day, and the other ten or twelve hours. Nor will the total wage gained by the family be the same where there are restrictions put on certain members of the family in regard to their labor.

Many states have laws relative to the number of hours of labor of women and minors. In some states, sixty hours are prescribed as the maximum number of hours per week for the labor of this class of workers. Recently several states have taken active steps in the regulation of such labor, as follows: Ohio and New Jersey prescribe 55 hours a week for the labor of women and minors; Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 56; New York, Michigan, and Delaware, 54; Kansas, Oklahoma, and North Dakota, 48; Maine, 58.

With regard to adult labor in general nothing has been done by state legislatures. There is a tendency to make eight hours the maximum of hours of labor per day, but it is opposed, on the one hand, by many employers whose product would be thereby considerably limited, and on the other hand, by many of the laboring class for whom it would mean a reduction of wages and a restriction of their earning capacity. Progress has been made in this direction, however, in certain localities, where the eight-hour law has been adopted in regard to government employees and workers in specified kinds of labor, mining for example.

(8) Standard of Living. Attention should also be paid to the nature of the things which the wages of the laborer must procure for him; in other words, to the standard of living of the laborer.

In different countries, the standard of living is very different, and the need of commodities varies considerably. It would be impossible to define a standard of living that would be the same

for all laborers. The standards of the various peoples will depend on long-continued custom, on climate, on social requirements. Even in the same country, as, for example, in the United States, the standards of living are different for different classes of laborers, and although there is a tendency for all to reach the same standard, it takes some time before the tendency is fulfilled. The newly arrived immigrants, who have been used to a low standard of life at home, continue for years perhaps to be content with the same standard here. The Japanese, the Chinese, and the natives of many European countries are not easily or rapidly assimilated, and they preserve their native mode of life for a long period.

It is conceded that the standard of living is higher in the United States than in foreign countries. The normal life of the American laborer demands certain things in the matter of food, lodging, clothing, and recreation, which cannot well be eliminated. There is in truth a danger that the standard aspired to by the American laborer is unreasonable and extravagant. The customs of the country, which bring rich and poor into such close intercourse, tend to promote desires and habits and modes of life among the poorer classes far above the power of their incomes to supply.

There is, however, a reasonable plane to which the laborer may rightly aspire, and it must be admitted that in our country this plane is higher than abroad. The things required by the higher standard will necessitate a greater outlay of money, and this expenditure, surpassing that of laborers in other lands, and reasonably required by the customs and the social conditions of the country, must be estimated in any comparative study of wages.

Theories of Wages.

There is no problem so difficult as to find the law of wages, and none that has called forth so great an amount of literature. The law of wages should formulate the principles which determine the rate of payment for hired labor, and should indicate the causes of its rise and fall. We shall give the principal theories which seek to explain these facts.

General Law of Supply and Demand. The general law of supply and demand determines the price of commodities. An article will be valued according to the supply of that article in the market and the demand that exists for it in the same market.

The demand remaining the same, the price of the article will be in inverse ratio to the supply; the supply increasing, the price will decrease; the supply decreasing, the price will increase.

In similar manner, the supply remaining the same, the price. will be in direct ratio to the demand; the demand increasing, the price will increase; the demand decreasing, the price will decrease.

Any change in the interrelations of demand and supply will have a corresponding influence on the price of the commodity. An increase in both the demand and supply may preserve the relative positions of the two, and leave the price unchanged. An increase in the one factor, accompanied by a decrease in the other, will intensify the ultimate result of the correlations.

This law is applied to labor and to the price of labor, i.e. to wages. The price of labor will depend on the demand for and the supply of labor. Labor is conceived as a commodity, and it follows the same law as any other commodity.

The laborer may possess nothing else in the world, but he has his labor, his ability to do manual or mental work of some kind. As he must live, he offers what he has in himself in exchange for the necessaries of life. He has something for sale on the market, his labor. The thousands of other laborers offer the same commodity, and the aggregate of all these offers constitutes the supply of labor.

Just as there are different grades of excellence in a staple offered on the market, so there are different grades of excellence in labor. Labor may be unskilled labor or skilled labor, and the skilled labor may embrace numberless grades of efficiency dependent on the various trades and industries operative in the great scheme of production. The values of labor of different kinds will be affected by the supply of these different kinds of labor.

Factors affecting Supply of Labor. — There are several factors which affect the supply of labor; namely, the increase of the population by natural means and by immigration, the employment of women and children, and the influence of labor unions. Population tends to increase itself by natural means in geometrical progression, and, from this fact alone, there is the prospect that the supply of labor is gradually tending to become so great that the value of labor will gradually diminish, and wages will fall to a low level. The calamitous tendency is counteracted by the facts that production may as gradually increase, and thus increase the demand for labor, and that the increase of population is arrested by death, disease, famine, and accidents. Adherents of the Malthusian doctrine would advocate that the positive checks to overpopulation are not sufficient to counteract this tendency, and that a negative check, moral restraint with regard to marriage and the procreation of children, should be practiced. (This doctrine has already been discussed, and its impracticability and moral danger pointed out, on pages 86, 87.)

Immigration, especially in a new and prosperous country, is an abundant source of the increase of the supply of labor. The population of the United States has increased greatly through this source. The opening up of new industries, the unbounded wealth of the country, which gave a wide field for the successful investment of capital, have attracted the labor of foreign lands and have filled the labor markets. Legislative measures have been taken in this country to restrict the importation of skilled labor, so as to prevent the reduction of the value of such labor in the market.

Another factor which affects considerably the supply of labor is the admission of the labor of women and children. Since the introduction of machinery into factory work, many employments not requiring a great amount of muscular strength can be filled by women and children. The several states of the United States have passed laws restricting the previously unlimited employment of women and children.

The labor unions have an effect on the supply of labor in cases where they set limitations upon the persons who shall be engaged by employers, determine the hours of labor, or restrict the output.

"The restriction of the output of individual workers is accomplished in several ways: by adopting a normal day and discouraging or prohibiting overtime; by limiting the daily task or the earnings of piece workers; by discouraging or prohibiting the grading of time workers, and thus leveling wages; by forbidding piece work, time work, contract jobs, or the butty system; and, in some cases, by encouraging the go-easy system of secret loafing or the 'adulteration of labor.'" (International Encyclopedia, "Trade-Unions," by R. T. Ely and T. S. Adams.)

Demand for Labor. The demand for labor is represented immediately by the call of the employers for laborers to carry on the various industrial enterprises in which they are engaged. The employers desiring labor apply in the labor market, and seek to get labor at the lowest price at which the laborers are willing to sell. The demand will depend on the state of trade, on the degree of prosperity existing in the productive industries. When there is exceptional prosperity, there will be great demand for labor; when trade languishes, there will be a falling off in the demand.

Rate of Wages. The rate of wages will depend on the relations existing at different times between demand and supply. Any circumstances which affect these two factors, demand and supply, will affect wages. Where competition is wholly unrestricted, wages will naturally tend to reach the lowest level of valuation which will furnish the mere subsistence of the laborer. When the supply of labor is abundant, there will always be found large numbers who will be willing to offer their labor at very low prices, and these will tend to make a general low average rate of wages.

The rate of wages will not, however, be the same throughout the extent of even one country, for, while there is a certain