Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/46

 the calculation confines itself to a few branches of labor, all of which, with the exception of the farm laborers, are extremely well organized economically. The author has then, without further consideration, concluded that the condition of the whole laboring class has risen at the same average rate as that of these organized laborers which, even in England, did not include at the highest calculation more than one-fifth of all laborers. So it is not without interest that we observe the changes in wages in each of these categories of labor:—

We see that the increase in wages of 40 per cent from 1860 to 1891 that Bowley calculates for the whole laboring class of England, does not even hold for the whole aristocracy of labor. With the exception of the cotton workers who have not vainly been the conservatives of England and the model children of all dreamers of "social peace," the average of 1891 was only exceeded by the gas workers, the sailors and the miners. The gas workers owe their increase, in