Wages in these regions are what
we should call high.
An agricultural laborer will earn perhaps
fifteen dollars a month and his board, and a town laborer will earn
a dollar a day. A dollar may be taken as representing four
shillings, though it is in fact more. Food in these parts is much
cheaper than in England, and therefore the wages must be considered
as very good. In making, however, a just calculation it must be
borne in mind that clothing is dearer than in England, and that
much more of it is necessary. The wages nevertheless are high, and
will enable the laborer to save money, if only he can get them
paid. The complaint that wages are held back, and not even
ultimately paid, is very common. There is no fixed rule for
satisfying all such claims once a week, and thus debts to laborers
are contracted, and when contracted are ignored. With us there is
a feeling that it is pitiful, mean almost beyond expression, to
wrong a laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to
tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we
speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of
insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there
in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the
domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will
not willingly take either goods or labor without payment; and it
may be hard to prove that he who takes the latter is more dishonest
than he who takes the former; but with us there is a prejudice in
favor of one's washerwoman by which the Western mind is not
weakened.
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