Adam,
Some of this is directly to the point, some of it is more about the issue of being able to evaluate wages, which clearly was not standard or uniform, even within one craft, in one city, in one year, even with a price book. Like Mark, I have often brought up the analogy of MSRP when describing the (presumed) purpose of the price book. Has anyone ever paid the MSRP for a car? I know several lawyers and I know that, even with a stated “hourly rate”, legal bills at a certain level are always negotiated down. I am certain that journeymen and masters battled it out too, despite the price book’s existence and despite which party was aware of its existence.
The conventional source for currency valuation is John J. McCusker, “How Much is that In Real Money?: A Historical Commodity Price Index for use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States” (Second Edition) Worcester, Mass: The American Antiquarian Society, 2001. Page 61: Values of colonial currencies were all different and, to trade inter-colonially, currencies were most easily calculated into London’s currency, whose exchange rates and commodity prices were published, and then recalculated. Page 70: In 1772, to buy £100 sterling, it cost a Pennsylvanian 160.61 Pennsylvania pounds (£P) and a Virginian 129.75 Virginia pounds (£V). Page 52: McCusker shows in a table that 1772 was a year of highly inflated commodity and wage prices. After 1774, prices deflate. (This is a point echoed by all of the sources I read.) One can expect high labor costs in such an economy. (I have always thought that perhaps this why the price book was printed exactly at that moment…) The table shows that, in Pennsylvania in 1772, Anne Bezanson calculated that the commodity price of £100 cost £113; by 1774, it was again £100. An 1860 CPI (Commodity Price Index) calculated for 1772 it was £110, and in 1774 it was £97. The same spread, but you can see here (and certainly on the table) how much variation and disagreement there was/remains over such valuations. That being said, many of these sources are long on which economist said what and when and who was over-inflating and who was undervaluing, etc. A strong point McCusker (and all of the others…) makes is that specie was rare, printed money volatile, so valuating prices for goods and services was difficult then and even more so today.
This lead me to think: was the purpose of the price book to encourage a cash (non-barter) system? Cabinetmakers advertised that they accepted (and extended) credit, but (not unlike today) they offered better prices for cash. Considering that specie and printed money was so rare even for wealthy merchants, exactly how did a master cabinetmaker plan to pay a journeyman who demanded cash for his cabinetmaking?
Gary B. Nash’s essay “Artisans and Politics in 18th century Philadelphia” in The
Craftsman in Early America edited by Ian M. G. Quimby (Winterthur, 1984) cites the 5 s per day for “an artisan” (3 s for a laborer). He does not footnote the date of that wage. [In a footnote on that page (65) he does quote Benjamin Rush from 1769: “The grand complaint with laborers among us is that we do not pay them sufficient prices for their work. A plain reason may be assigned for this: we consume too little of their manufactures to keep them employed the whole year around” Interesting—I am not sure if that was germane to the cabinetmaker…] Page 82, Nash begins in 1770 talking about how artisans tried to persuade merchants from resuming trade after the repeal of the non-importation acts. By 1772, the artisans were working to press the legislature “for laws that would benefit them.” Again such observations about what was going on politically
and socially within Philadelphia in 1772 raise more questions about the goal of the price book in such a moment as 1772.
Anne Bezanson’s Prices and Inflation during the American Revolution: Pennsylvania, 1770-1790 (Philadelphia: U Penn Press, 1951) is extremely rare in that she actually ventured into the subject of wages and even cites artisanal work. Page 316: Thomas Evans, a dealer in leather work, paid unskilled workers up to 4 shillings a day for mowing. Good discussion about how private arrangements in each craft [such as the furniture price book would be considered] was the real way the relationship between wages and prices was established. Page 317: Labor and commodity prices were highest in early 1770s, deflated rapidly in 1774. Page 29: March, 1776, a shoemaker advertised that he paid journeymen shoemakers 10 shillings per pair of shoes, a 33 % increase over his old rate of 7 sh, 6 p. He asked his purchasers to pay 12 shillings per bound pair of shoes and 11 shillings per unbound pair of shoes. 1770s = volatility. Page 166: Pa Council of Safety—Gunlock Makers Dec 1776m complaining about rising cost of journeymen’s wages. Page 293: Samuel Wetherill complained that the journeymen spinners and weavers had doubled their wages. There are several more examples of such complaints about journeymen’s wages and how the ball was in their court because of the scarcity of labor. Thomas M. Doerflinger also discusses this in A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Institute of Early American History and Culture: Wm & Mary/UNC, 1986). Page 157: Primitive economy in colonial American as noted by high cost of labor and capital, competitive imports, fear of flooding export market and having manufactured wares devalued, scarcity of specie, volatility—that all lead to an economy where there was incredible potential for both adversity and opportunity. Doerflinger also cites the assessed values of houses occupied by artisans in the 1770s (though he does not specifically mention cabinetmakers—in fact none of them do…) (pages 37-40). In Philadelphia, for houses valued between £501 and £750, 28% were merchants and 72% were artisans. That speaks well for Phila artisans! Powel’s house was £2000.
One of my best sources comes from our friend Franklin and his work during the French and Indian War (aka Seven Years War, 1756-1763). In another text, The Economy of Early America: The Revolutionary Period, 1763-1790 (edited by Hoffman, McCusker, Menard, and Albert), Doerflinger (page 192/193) cites the wage Franklin paid to an unskilled laborer during the War at 15 shillings per day. The unskilled laborer was a wagoner who offered his services and his wagon to the war cause. Renting one’s horse (just the horse, no person/handler) was paid at 2 shillings a day. The attractive 15 sh wage for an unskilled wagoner drove farmers to abandon farming and take up wagoning—by 1779, the price of grain was high again, and wagoners returned to farming.
T. H. Breen writes in The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford, 2004) that in Philadelphia, dry goods merchants sold as much as 90% of their goods on credit. (page 136) He then of course cites Franklin’s adage for the ages “Time is Money” Page 187-191: The interest in producing paper money began in the 1740s and hoped to encourage consumerism. In Boston, “too little specie, not enough paper” (page 188) lead to the development of “Shop Notes” that permitted the bearer to demand goods at a later date—like a bond. There were numerous problems related to this practice (such as devaluing the notes once they were redeemed) but it is illustrative of the lack of masters being able to actually even pay wages to journeymen.
There is no shortage of tangential information for you on the subject of wealth of artisans and comparative currency values in the colonial period. Alice Hanson Jones wrote in Wealth of a Nation To Be (Columbia, 1980) about income and wealth of colonial Americans in 1774—very geographical comprehensive but tough because there is little on artisans and 1774 is a deflation year in comparison to 1772. See Table B2 and page 147. McCusker also co-authored another standard text with Russell E. Menard, The Economy of British North America. In Studies on Money in Early America, McCusker wrote an informative article entitled “Colonial Paper Money” where he further discusses the effect of printing money in a barter and specie-poor economy. In 1774, Maryland printed a 6 dollar bill where it is printed on the face of the dollar (yes, dollar) that one dollar = 4 sh 6 d British, which equaled £2 5s old money…
I recognize that my estimate of 15 to 25 shillings per 12-hour day is high and is broad, but it was assessed with the understanding that 1772 was a “high” year and that this was for a barter economy where cash payment is difficult to measure (was it specie or printed money?—two different valuations!! NB: the method of payment is always noted in cabinetmaker’s and other artisan’s receipt books…) For 1772, we see account books, receipt books, invoices, etc with charges for furniture and payments to journeymen, carvers, etc but little in the way of costs per day’s work for the skilled journeyman. With the information at hand four years ago, I stand by what I wrote. I am pleased to see the discussion and hope we can all gain a better understanding, improve upon my estimate and narrow it.
By the way, your query about my sentences on page 15 about the fines being imposed—that refers to the 1790s price books. Again, that is an entirely different set of bibliographic citations and I recommended to you that Montgomery wrote well on it.
Alexandra Kirtley
