Wages

Wages, the part of produce which goes to the labourer. The 'wages-fund' theory formulated by Mill is that as there is at any given time in a country a determinate amount of capital available for the payment of labour, therefore the average wage depends on the proportion of this fund to the number of persons who have to share in it. Ricardo's 'iron law of wages,' taken in connection with his theory of Rent (q.v.), is generally somewhat exaggerated by socialists into the doctrine that wages cannot exceed what is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the labourer (see LASALLE); really his teaching was that the labourers cannot for any considerable time earn more than is necessary to enable their class to live in the degree of comfort which custom has rendered indispensable, and to perpetuate their race. But for the controversies on wages, reference must be made to the works cited at POLITICAL ECONOMY, to MARX and SOCIALISM, to Walker's Wages Question (1877), and to Leonc Levi's Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes (1885). See also ARRESTMENT, CAPITAL, LABOUR, MASTER AND SERVANT, TRADE UNIONS, TRUCK-SYSTEM.