WAGES, the payment for work done or services performed; the price paid for labor; the return made or compensation paid to those employed to perform any kind of labor or service by their em ployers; hire, pay, recompense, need. The rate of wages is determined by the ratio which the capital, for the productive use of which labor is sought, bears to the number of laborers seeking that kind of employment. When the capital increases more rapidly than the laboring popula tion of the country, wages rise; when it increases more slowly, they fall. But in the United States and most countries, the rise of wages produces an increase in the number of marriages, and in due time, of population, with the result of ultimately causing wages again to fall. All attempts to fix wages by law are inoperative and mischievous. The effort was made, in England, in the reign of Edward III. (1350), on the part of cap italists, after the black death, in 1346, had swept away so large a part of the population, both in Great Britain and the continent, that wages naturally and greatly rose. If, on the other hand, the
capitalists were required by law to give higher wages than the natural law of supply and demand fixed, his motive for continuing to carry on his business would become less potent, or might wholly cease, and ultimate injury be done to those whom it was sought to benefit. Wages in ordinary language is retricted to the payment for mechanical or muscu lar labor, and especially to that which is ordinarily paid for at short, stated intervals, as daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc., to workmen. Strictly speaking, how ever, the term wages comprehends as well the pay of officers, the fees of bar risters, medical men, etc., the salary of clerks, the stipends of clergymen, as the remuneration for mechanical labor. See MINIMUM WAGE: UNEMPLOYMENT, etc.