eep's, per quart 6 "

Wages Per Day

Unskilled workman 10.8 cents (k)[92] $1.20-2.24[93]
Bricklayer 21.6 " (k) 4.50-6.50
Carpenter 21.6 " (k) 2.50-4.00
Stone-mason 21.6 " (k) 3.70-4.90
Painter 32.4 " (k) 2.75-4.00
Blacksmith 21.6 " (k) 2.15-3.20
Ship-builder 21-26 " (k) 2.15-3.50

We are not so much concerned in knowing the prices of meat, fish, eggs,
and flour in 301 and 1911 A.D. as we are in finding out whether the Roman
or the American workman could buy more of these commodities with the
returns for his labor. A starting point for such an estimate is furnished
by the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, on the "Cost
of Living and Retail Prices of Food" (1903), and by Bulletin No. 77 of the
Bureau of Labor (1908). In the first of these documents (pp. 582, 583) the
expenditure for rent, fuel, food, and other necessities of life in 11,156
normal American families whose incomes range from $200 to $1,200 per year
is given. In the other report (p. 344 _f._) similar statistics are given
for 1,944 English urban families. In the first case the average amount
spent per year was $617, of which $266, or a little less than a half of
the entire income, was used in the purchase of food. The statistics for
England show a somewhat larger relative amount spent for food. Almost
exactly one-third of this expenditure for the normal American family was
for meat and fish.[94] Now, if we take the wages of the Roman carpenter,
for instance, as 21 cents per day, and add one-fourth or one-third for his
"keep," those of the same American workman as $2.50 to $4.00, it is clear
that the former received only a ninth or a fifteenth as much as the
latter, while the average price of pork, beef, mutton, and ham (7.3 cents)
in 301 A.D. was about a third of the average (19.6 cents) of the same
articles to-day. The relative averages of wheat, rye, and barley make a
still worse showing for ancient times while fresh fish was nearly as high
in Diocletian's time as it is in our own day. The ancient and modern
prices of butter and eggs stand at the ratio of one to three and one to
six respectively. For the urban workman, then, in the fourth century,
conditions of life must have been almost intole