Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1886 — Wages in 1800. [ARTICLE]

Wages in 1800.

Tlie condition of the wage class of that day may be well examined; it is full of instruction for social agitators. In the great cities unskilled workmen were hired by the day, bought their own food, and found their own lodgings. But in the country, on the farms, or wherever a hand was employed on some public work, they were led and lodged by the employer and given a few dollars a month. On the Pennsylvania canals the diggers ate the coarsest diet, were housed in the rudest sheds, and paid $6 a month from May to November, and $5 a month from November to May. Hod-carriers and mortar mixers, diggers and choppers, who from 1790 to 1800 labored on the public buildings and cut the streets and avenues of Washington City, received S7O a year, or, if they wished, S6O for all the work they could perform from March 1 to December 20. The hours of work were invariably from sunrise to sunset. Wages at Albany and New York were 3 shillings, or, as money then went, 40 cents; at Lancaster, $8 to $lO a month; elsewhere in Pennsylvania workmen were content with $6 in summer and $5 in winter. At Baltimore men were glad to be hired at 18 pence a day. None, by the month, asked more than $6. At Fredericksburg the price of labor was from $5 to $7. In Virginia white men employed by the year were given £l6 currency; slaves, when hired, were clothed and the master paid £1 a month. A pound Virginia money was, in Federal money, $3.33. The average rate of wages the land over was, therefor, $65 a year, with food and, perhaps, lodging. Out of this small sum the workman must, with his wife’s help, maintain his family.— McMaster s “History of the People of the United States”