Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/41

Rh When you begin seriously to consider the question referred to in my second letter, of the essential, and in the outcome inviolable, connection between quantity of wages, and quantity of work, you will see that "wages" in the full sense don't mean "pay" merely, but the reward, whatever it may be, of pleasure as well as profit, and of various other advantages, which a man is meant by Providence to get during life, for work well done. Even limiting the idea to "pay," the question is not so much what quantity of coin you get, as—what you can get for it when you have it. Whether a shilling a day be good pay or not, depends wholly on what a "shilling's worth" is; that is to say, what quantity of the things you want may be had for a shilling. And that again depends, and a great deal more than that depends, on what you do want. If only drink, and foul clothes, such and such pay may be enough for you; if you want good meat and good clothes, you must have larger wage; if clean rooms and fresh air, larger still, and so on. You say, perhaps, "every one wants these better things." So far from that, a wholesome