18: Advantages to the Wages Class
Having considered various situations that are unfavorable to labor, Walker now turns to consider situations that are favorable.
Of note: there are situations that are favorable to a business in general, to which the profits of financier, employer, and laborer are all increased. What he means to focus on in this chapter are the situations in which the wage-earner is advantaged compared to his partners and receives a greater portion of the revenue of the operation.
Disadvantages Revisited
The previous chapter enumerated the disadvantageous situations for the laborer, but within many (if not all) such situations there is the potential for circumstances to turn these to the worker's advantage.
For example, it was indicated that the debasement of currency disadvantages the laborer, but its appreciation has the opposite effect: the coin in which he is paid fetches more goods than he had expected because the currency improved (or that of other markets was debased), the worker who rents equipment from an employer may make more from this arrangement, a company store offers merchandise cheaper than independent merchants, etc.
In truth, these situations would be highly unusual, and the circumstances tend to disadvantage the worker, though it is not necessarily so.
Frugality
Frugality is an advantage to the worker as it contributes to his personal wealth. Just as the farmer who grows more than his family needs to eat may profit from the surplus, so may the wage-earner who earns more than his family needs to spend amasses wealth in the surplus.
A worker can do little to increase his wage, but has a great deal more control over the manner in which he spends it. In some instances, it is in fact true that a worker can barely afford what he needs for subsistence out of his wage and has little to nothing left over. But it can also be observed that workers tend to be reckless in their spending, and there is a great deal of unnecessary and wasteful expense.
In another sense, there is frugal use of time: as many waking hours are wasted in idle pursuits rather than put to productive user. It is often seen that the "peasant proprietor" of land can always find something to do with his time, and invests it in making improvements to his income or living conditions. But in manufacturing communities, workers are seldom seen to do anything productive outside of working hours.
He spends a bit of time preaching temperance, as it was "the great foe to frugality in the working classes" of his time - aside of being a poor use of money, drunkenness renders a man unfit to be productive and decreases his income. The amount of money squandered on alcohol, by his estimate, would provide to build a house for every family in Britain within six years.
There's also a bit about whether the savings of people are better kept in money or invested in property, which seems to have been an argument in the author's time. He does conceded that land is not mobile, and an individual who invests in land is hampered from being able to relocate himself until he is able to liquidate his investment, but considers it to be unimportant.
Knowledge and Will
If ignorance is a disadvantage, than knowledge its an advantage: the worker who knows his worth is in a better position to negotiate a higher wage with an employer than one who does not. And a worker who knows of many opportunities, in his location or in others, is better fit to take the best opportunity available to him.
To know of better opportunities in other locations or professions, however, is insufficient if the worker is unwilling to make a change. If he insists on being a carpenter when he would earn better pay as a mason, or insists on living in one town when he would earn better pay in another, then the knowledge of these opportunities profits him nothing.
It's mentioned that "false information" has often made workers skittish: all have heard of instances in which the promise of a better wage was unfulfilled, and are therefore wary that a legitimate offer they are presented may be false. Skittishness and superstition are difficult to overcome.
Restraint on Reproduction
Self-restraint in terms of reproduction is obviously functional in that the income of the head of household must suffice for the needs of his family, and the larger his family the thinner his wages are spread, such that his wealth is (literally) consumed.
But having a family, particularly at a young age, places restrains on the mobility of the laborer in terms of his ability to invest in his skills or change his location. It is particularly important for a man seeking his fortune to remain unencumbered until he has settled into a career - to experiment, freely abandon one avocation to pursue another, and to be mobile rather than "tied down by the cares of his family."
(EN: Further details is given in favor of delaying marriage, including statistical correlations to per-capita income, but it all comes from the author's time.)
Laws Favoring Labor
Whereas the laissez-faire approach to markets is to refrain from interfering, there are instances in which legislation can be beneficial to the individual laborer, albeit at the cost of others (other laborers, investors, employers, or customers).
Trade restrictions are often configured in favor of domestic labor: to prohibit the import of a foreign good creates a shortage of supply and increases the price of domestic goods, which provides a higher income to those who produce them. This is at the expense of the customer, but preserves the livelihood of a laborer whose trade is threatened by foreign competition.
Restrictions that prevent competition in the local labor market likewise prevent competition among workers. It may be forbidden for foreign workers to immigrate and displace domestic workers, women and children may be forbidden from working in certain jobs and displacing men, the requirement of licensing to practice a trade, and other state interference reduces the number of individuals who might be hired into a given position, and increases wages.
Regulations that specify a minimum pay for workers of a given kind also tends to favor the workers by ensuring that they cannot be paid less than that amount. This is also borne by the customers, as well as increasing the cost of labor overall, as employers must compete to retain workers in other positions. It also tends to reduce the income of skilled or productive workers toward the minimum amount.
There's an extended consideration of "interference in the hours of labor" in which legislation specified a maximum shift for workers of given kinds - which is advantageous to unemployed labor in terms of the number of individuals who must be hired, but disadvantageous to employed labor because their opportunity to earn overtime pay is restricted. Examples are provided of such restrictions, though they are largely based on restricting the amount of hours children may be required to work.
Community Sympathies
The notion that community sympathy could be supportive of workers has been the subject of ridicule and rebuke from economists, but when the sympathies of the public impact their willingness to purchase products, employers must accommodate them.
In particular, when the public sides with the laborers and demands that they be paid better wages, and are so motivated to support the workers as to boycott products, then the manufacturer must accommodate public sympathies to preserve demands for their products.
Sidebar: Women's Wages
In Walker's day, the wages of women were the cause of some public consternation, so he means to address it as a topic of interest. (EN: And I'm skipping it altogether, as it is a political argument and not an economic one.)