THREE HALFPENCE A DAY FOR LABOUR.
Labour is cheapest in India, where the wages of the labouring classes average something like three halfpence a day. A fairly skilled journeyman can earn abdut twelvt shillings a month, and a good mechanic about sixteen, or twice the pay of a native soldier. Domestic servants may be had so cheaply, both as regards food and wages that a family who in England could only keep one or two servants could in India keep a whole retinue. In many parts of South America Indian labour is to be had for about twopence a day, but after all the lowest level would appear fo be reached in China. There are large districts in China where labour is so cheap that it can hardly be reckoned on a money standard. Thousands of Chinese labourers live on a little more than than a handful of rice or so a day, and yet even then there are thousands of unemployed practically starving. Hence the wage value of the labourer who just manages to live is practically infinitesimal. Of labour that may be fairly called skilled the Japanese is probably the cheapest, for a worker in lacquer or inlaying and mosaic work will employ skill and knowledge that has been inherited and handed down for generations in return for a wage that an English labourer would refuse- with contemptuous disgust.
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Bibliographic details
Bruce Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3016, 29 November 1898, Page 5
Word Count
231
THREE HALFPENCE A DAY FOR LABOUR.
Bruce Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3016, 29 November 1898, Page 5
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