Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/509

Ricardo, as we have seen, very naturally regarded food as so much the larger element that the others could be neglected, and accordingly laid down that wages varied with the cost of food. As to this Professor Marshall has a somewhat obscure note on p. 554. He remarks that—

Prof. Brentano... gives as a reason for believing that the English classical economists really held the iron law of wages, the fat that they frequently speak of the minimum of wages as depending on the price of corn. But the term 'corn,' as used by them, was short for 'agricultural food products of all kinds.'

This is, of course, true; and for 'corn' Ricardo sometimes substitutes the general term 'provisions.'

The cheapness of provisions.... is after all, whatever intervals we may be willing to allow, the great regulator of the wages of labour.^[1]

But how does this disprove Professor Brentano's contention? To argue that the rate of wages depended on the price of provisions surely implied that on the whole wages but barely covered the necessary cost of subsistence. At any rate, this is how the argument was understood by Adam Smith. In seeking to demonstrate that in Great Britain 'the wages of labour do not fluctuate with the price of provisions,'^[2] Adam Smith certainly thought he was presenting an argument against the Physiocrats; and the Physiocrats, as Professor Marshall points out,^[3] held the doctrine of the iron law in a sufficiently rigid form.

There is one more consideration to be noticed, which, although it is not perhaps strictly relevant to Professor Marshall's argument, is essential for a complete view of the case. It is that Lassalle and Karl Marx are themselves careful in their statement of the iron law to explain that wages are not absolutely fixed at the lowest point physically possible. Lassalle assumes, following Ricardo closely in his phraseology, that the standard depends on the habits of the people.

Combien pourrait coter au marché en moyenne un travailleur, M. Schulze?—Evidemment une somme égale à l'entretien habituel de tout autre travailleur et de sa famille (Lassalle's italics). J'ai expliqué au travailleurs que l'entretien nècessaire usuel et conforme aux habitudes du peuple n'était nullement un point fixe

1. Letters, ed. Bonar, p. 34.
2. Bk. i. ch. vii. (ed. Rogers, i. 78).
3. P. 550.