Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/49

 Rh 1860. Some of the men may have taken a shilling less than the current rate till the expiry of the contracts they were working on, but the current rate for all these trades was 15s. a day in 1856, and continued 15s. till 1860. It fell in that year, and stood from 8s. to 10s. till 1872, when it rose to 10s. as a minimum, and has remained at that figure ever since. The fall in 1860 had nothing to do with the shortening of the hours; it was due to the redundancy of labour of which I have spoken, and to the great fall that had taken place since 1856 in the cost of living. The Registrar-General of the colony published figures in 1861 showing the effect of this cheapening of the necessaries of life on the working man's budget. He estimated the wages and expenditure of the Melbourne artizan to be as follows in the years 1854, 1857, and 1861:—

Though his money wages, therefore, had fallen, his real wages had, in fact, materially risen, and as the cost of living has gone on cheapening ever since, and has, according to the evidence given by working men before the Tariff Commission, not even been affected by the protective duties, what the working men of Melbourne have been experiencing has been a constant rise in their real wages. But this rise has not come from the shortening of the hours or the employing of the unemployed, but obviously from other causes.

Blacksmiths got the eight hours day in 1859, just before the general fall of wages in 1860, but this shorter day had no influence in saving them from that fall. Their wages, which were 13s. a day in 1859, sunk to 11s. in 1860, and settled at from 8s. to 10s. in 1863, rising again, with those of the other trades, in 1872, to from 10s. to 12s. We have figures for only some of the trades which obtained the eight hours day in 1883 and the following year, but these figures show the same result. The wages of those trades have neither risen nor fallen. The bookbinders, who got the eight hours day in 1883, had from £2 to £3 a week in the years 1880-83, and they had still £2 to £3 a week in the year 1885-87. The coopers, who obtained the boon the same year, had 10s. a day in 1880-83, and still had 10s. a day in