Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, 1946.

MAXIMUM WAGE-FIXING AND RESTRAINTS ON COMBINATIONS

The mercantilists concretely implemented the medieval policy which sought to prevent the engrossing of indispensable necessaries, of which labor, like food and raw materials, was a basic element. Central control over the regulation of wages and prices was first seriously attempted in England in the medieval Ordinance of Labourers and the Statute of Labourers, enacted in 1349 and 1351, respectively. Statutes of 1351 and 1388 established specific maximum wage scaIes, but this policy was dropped in 1390, when the justices of the peace were authorized to impose wages "according to the dearth of victuals." Between 1455 and 1515 maximum wage scales were once more set by statute, but the great Statute of Artificers of 1563, which laid down principles determining the legal relations of master and servant for more than a century and a half, threw specific maximum scales overboard and authorized the justices of the peace to fix wages according "to the plenty or scarcity of the time."1

Whether or not the government was genuinely concerned about improving the condition of the workers, as some writers maintain, there is no question that the Tudor program did restrain unconscionable landowners. The Privy Council insisted that workers were not to be "uncharitably dealt with."2 On a few rare occasions minimum wages were prescribed by law.3 But in general the program was restricted to the levying of maximum wages. The Statute of Artificers (§ 16) provided that none should "geve any more or greater wages, then by proclamacion shall be limited, upon payne that the maister shall forfaite five pounds. And the servant shall suffer one and twentye days imprisonment without baile or mayneprice." In every wage assessment is found the provision that workmen in a particular category were "not to be paid more than" specific wages stated. The explanation for the fact that the wage assessments had the effect of assuring a constant cheap labor supply lay in the relaxation of control over the program by the Privy Council and the conferring of authority upon the justices of the peace to fix the rates of wages. By law the justices of the peace were required to be men of property and prominence in their respective localities.4 The country gentry could hardly be expected to make decisions consistently against their own interests.5 Where, as in the industrial communities, the justices were apt to be impartial, they were likely to be indifferent, negligent, or corrupt.6 As Holdsworth has observed, "the capitalist had in substance freed himself from the obligations which the Tudor scheme imposed upon him; but the workmen still remained liable to them."7 The English colonies experimented quite extensively with wage fixing. Such experiments were by no means confined to Great Britain and her colonies, but were familiar to continental countries and at various times were introduced by the French and Spanish into their New World possessions.

Throughout the colonial period, and long after general legislative wage fixing had been discontinued, colonial towns and villages or other licensing bodies customarily set the wages or fees of certain quasi-public functionaries, such as porters, carmen, draymen, millers, smiths, chimney sweeps, gravediggers, pilots, and others. Fees for many public services, such as slaughtering, sawing wood, and grinding corn, were customarily fixed by public authority. The legal fare was set for ferries, and seaport towns fixed wharfage and storage rates. In addition, the prices of certain necessaries were determined by public authority. While bread was the most consistent subject of regulation, assizes of meat, leather, bricks, and other products were frequently set.8 In addition, the prices of liquors, food, and lodging to be charged in taverns and ordinaries were universally regulated. In the Southern colonies the setting of tavern rates was the most consistent example of price regulation undertaken by the county or sessions courts right through the Revolutionary period. Aside from regulating the prices of basic products and services, the colonial authorities, notably in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, laid down standards of quality and measure for commodities and certain manufactured articles, passed laws impeding the free traffic of commodities and manufactured goods, and enacted legislation curbing production. These economic controls of goods and labor services were buttressed by a popular demand for a regulated market which found expression in the continuation of prohibitions on forestalling, engrossing, regrating, and monopolizing necessaries, -- restraints which were to enjoy enormous vitality in Revolutionary days.9 While such regulations directly affected the independent producers in certain fields and only indirectly their hired workmen, many of the articles regulated were processed materials or involved a considerable amount of labor services, and therefore such regulation had a tendency to limit the wages which the producer in such regulated trades or monopoly fields could pay.

Tudor legislation buttressed the wage assessment procedure by making the refusal to work at the statutory rate a criminal offense, just as an earlier act had declared it illegal for workmen to combine in order to secure higher wages.10 No workman was to depart before the end of his agreed term, and then he was required to produce letters testimonial to show that he was free to hire himself out. Employers were prohibited from engaging workmen who could not produce such a testimonial.11 The courts interpreted these statutes to give a right of action against a master who enticed a servant away from another. The present study considers in detail the extent to which the colonies introduced the English restraints against concerted action on the part of workers to better their working conditions.12 The vigilance of colonial courts in giving masters a remedy against those who enticed servants or workmen away from them or who otherwise induced a breach of a labor contract bespeaks eloquently the influence of the Tudor industrial code upon the colonial labor system.13


Notes

1 Stat. of Labourers, 23 Edw. III, cc. i-viii; 25 Edw. III, stat. 1; 12 Ric. II, cc. 3-5; 13 Ric. II, stat. 1, c. viii; 3 Hen. V, c. 4; 6 Hen. VI, c. 3; 4 Eliz. c. 4, § 11. See also Richard Burn, The Justice of the Peace (London, 1800), IV, 206 et seq. The regulatory background in England and on the continent has been treated in the studies of Tawney, Hauser, Heckscher, Lipson, Bertha H. Putnam, Estelle Waterman, and Knoop and Jones, among others. For a bibliography of mercantilist writings on the subject, see Buck, Politics of Mercantilism, p. 201.

2 See Lipson, Econ. Hist. of Eng., Ill, 257. For the Stuarts, see ibid., pp. 258, 259. See also Holdsworth, H.E.L., II, 463, 464.

3 1 Jac. I, c. 6; Lipson, op. cit., Ill, 251-254. See also draft bill fixing minimum rates for spinners and weavers and restraining speculation in yarn (April, 1593). Tawney and Power, Tudor Econ. Docs., I, 371-376.

4 C. A. Beard, Origin and Duties of the Justice of the Peace (New York, 1904), pp. 51, 54.

5 For evidence of partiality on the part of the justices in deliberately curbing wage rises, the records of Hertford, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, North Riding, Nottingham, West Riding, and Wiltshire provide us with abundant illustrations. See, e.g., J. D. Chambers, Nottinghamshire in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1932), pp. 279, 280; Lincoln Record Society, Quarter Sessions of Lincoln, XXV, 4. The justices were primarily worried about "excessive wages" rather than inadequate wages. See "Quarter Session Records, County Palatine of Chester, 1559-1769," ed. J. H. E. Bennett and J. C. Dewhurst, Record Society, Publications, XCIV (1940), p. 68 (1609). In an emergency the justices of the peace were supported by the militia, officered by men of the same general background as themselves. M. Beloff, Public Order and Popular Disturbances, 1660-1714 (Oxford, 1938), pp. 152, 153.

6 Heckscher, Mercantilism, I, 247; E. Dowdell, One Hundred Years of Quarter Sessions (Cambridge, 1932), p. 49. The statute, 1 Jac. I, c. 6 (1604), provided, however, that no justice of the peace who was by trade a clothier could be a "rater" of wages of workers in the clothmaking industry.

7 H.E.L., VI, 348, 349.

8 In England the assizes were not limited to bread, but included meat, wine, cheese and butter, wool, lead, ale and beer. See John Powell, Assize of Bread (1626, ed.); also "Surrey Quarter Sessions Records, 1569-1661," Surrey Rec. Soc., Publications, XXXV, 25 (1660); "Quarter Session Records, County Palatine of Chester, 1559-1769," Record Society, Publications, XCIV (1940), 43 (1604). For criticism of the operation of the assize in 18th-century Britain, see D. G. Barnes, A History of the English Corn Laws from 1660-1846 (New York, 1930), p. 34. Pennsylvania furnishes an interesting example of maximum price legislation for both leather and shoes. See Pa. Stat. at Large, II, 257 (1721); VIII, 223 (1772). See also Md. Arch., XIX, 183 (1695); Hening, III, 75 (1691); VI, 133 (1748).

9 A multiplicity of examples of price regulation, inspection laws, and trade regulations are found in R. B. Morris, ed., Era of Amer. Revol., pp. 76, 77, 83-89, 123, 124.

10 2,3Edw. VI, c. 15.

11 5 Eliz. c. 4 §§ 7, 8.

12 See pp. 136-207.

13 See pp. 414-434.