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PDF------- Result: General average | | weekly wages higher in | 45.60 | 48.28 Massachusetts by per cent | per cent. | per cent. ------------------------------------------------------------
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The two first columns of the table are simply illustrative of the method applied to a single industry, exhibiting the highest average, lowest average, and average weekly wages, whether to men, women, young persons, or children, in the particular business of “machine-making,” together with the general average wages paid to all the employes in such industry. The general average weekly wages in this industry are thus shown to be 45.6 per cent. higher in Massachusetts than in Great Britain.
The 3d and 4th columns of the table consolidate all the twenty-four industries, and yield, in similar terms, as in the case of machine-making, an average comparison applying to the whole group of industries under examination, giving, as a grand result, that the general average weekly wages of Massachusetts are higher by 48.28 per cent. than those of Great Britain.
It is, however, explained that the British wage returns were made in three different ways, viz., for a definite number of employes, by percentage returns, and by general returns; both of the latter being for an indefinite number of employes. Where more than one wage-basis was given, the highest figure was used in the calculations, and, this being the case in eighteen out of the twenty-four industries, its effects on the grand result are considerable; for, by crediting Great Britain with the average instead of the high weekly wage, the average percentage in favor of Massachusetts rises from 48.28 per cent. to 75.94 per cent.
In order truly to indicate the higher percentage of average weekly wages in Massachusetts, we must, therefore, agree upon a figure somewhere between these two extremes, viz., that of 48.28 per cent., derived from tables in which Great Britain is credited with the high wage, and that of 75.94 per cent., derived from those tables in which she is credited with the average of the returns made upon the different bases. The mean of these figures is 62.11 per cent., which is considered to be the result of the investigation, and may be formulated as follows: The general average weekly wages paid to employes in twenty-four manufacturing industries common to Massachusetts and Great Britain is 62 per cent., higher in the former than the general average weekly wages paid in the same industries in the latter country.
But the question of wages forms only one side of the working man’s account; on the other stands the cost of living, and no comparisons of prosperity, in given industrial communities, are of any value which omit to take into consideration the relative ease with which such communities can procure the means of subsistence. Table C presents a summary of prices, gathered in 1883, of the chief items in a working man’s expenditure, and their cost in Massachusetts and Great Britain.
