Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/93

 employed laborer has changed but a trifle from 1800 to 1907.

Money wages, to be sure, have increased quite largely. They fell during the period of depression from 1890 to 1894 from 101 to 97.7, or more than 3 per cent, but from then on they grew steadily, until in 1907 they reached the figure indicated by 122.4, or almost 25 per cent.

The prices of the necessaries of life, on the contrary, fell more rapidly than wages during the period from 1890 to 1896, the decrease being from 102.4 to 95.5, or about 7 per cent, so that the purchasing power of a week's wages did not fall as fast as the money income. Actual wages, in the period from 1890 to 1896, fell only from 98.6 to 98, or only .6 of one per cent, while money wages had fallen around 3 per cent. From 1894 to 1896 money wages rose from 97.7 to 99.5, while the cost of living fell still faster. So it was that in 1896 the purchasing power of the wages of an average laborer reached the point indicated by 104.2.

His money wages have never since been able to purchase an equal amount. In spite of all prosperity actual wages are And this is what they call a slow but sure rise of the laborers!

It is equally worthy of notice that in the very highest intoxication of business, when the capitalists were grabbing their fattest profits, the actual wages of labor did not even hold their own, but had already begun to sink. To be sure, the index number indicating money wages increased from 1906 to 1907 from 118.5 to 122.4, almost 4 per cent, but the price of the necessities of life moved even more swiftly upward from 115.7 to 120.6, or nearly 5 per cent, so that the purchasing power of a week's wages actually sank one per cent. In reality the relation was much worse. American statistics are not ordinarily fixed up so as to make existing conditions blacker than the facts justify.

All this gives rise to a foreboding that after the passage