Even the driest statistics and datasets can tell a story or at the very least prompt a historian to ask questions that will reveal a story. The numbers represent the lives of real individuals and this story begins with just a few pages of a report on wages and costs of living expenses published by the Government Printing Office. The average weekly wage reveals that wool sorters in California were paid about half the wages of someone in New England doing the exact task in 1874. The average weekly wage of sorters in California was $5.25 whereas the average in New England was $10.92, with Maine workers being paid the least at $9.80 and Rhode Islanders being paid the most at $12.00.[1] What could account for such a drastic difference in wages? Like all topics it is best understood in its context. A recession that began in Germany had reached the United States by late July 1873. This recession was known as the Great Depression until Americans encountered an even more devastating one as a result of the stock market crash in 1929 and would use the moniker to identify the latter one instead. The data represents wages after Americans had already begun to feel the effects. What is interesting is because of the precious metal mining in the west, states like California and cities like San Francisco in particular fared the economic crisis better than the New England states. Therefore, one might expect to have seen California wages higher in comparison as a result. When comparing the New England wages five years early you see the impact the recession had already done by 1874. New England wool sorter weekly wages on average in 1869 were $11.42, which is 50¢ more a week than they will earn five years later during the economic crises. 1869 data was not available for California so the same analysis cannot be made there.[2]
Wool manufacturing was profitable and of high quality in the San Francisco Bay Area[3], so there appears no justification for the lower salary. Perhaps lower wages were the result of lower costs of living in California than in New England in 1874 so that is a question worth considering, but when the costs of basic necessities between the two regions is compared it is obvious New Englanders were able to get by with less so their increased wages were really justified because of cost of living expenses. To illustrate the point a dozen eggs cost on average 33¢ in New England, whereas 39¢ in the Pacific states, 37¢ for a pound of butter versus 42¢, 18.5¢ for a yard of cotton flannel as opposed to 20.5¢ for the same and male boarders could expect to pay $4.00 a week in New England as opposed to $6.17 in the Pacific states.[4]
Upon closer look at the data compiled by the American government that year there is an interesting notation next to the average yearly salary for workers in California and that symbol identifies that all workers in that occupation were Chinese. Chinese immigration to California increased during the Civil War and Reconstruction era because of famine and lack of opportunities in China. As low as their wages were in California as wool sorters, they were worse off in China where for the entire year’s wages they earned the equivalent in California in just two weeks and they had a high population will limited food supplies.[5] While California climate and soil was suitable for plantation agriculture, slavery was prohibited when it was granted statehood in 1850. With the lack of competing free labor, settlers in California could reasonably expect a competitive wage market. This does not mean that business owners agreed and therefore sought increased profits by exploiting cheap Chinese labor. In the next decade non-Chinese Californians would push for restriction and ultimately exclusion of new Chinese immigration precisely because it was difficult for white laborers who began flooding the west in earnest after the Civil War to compete for reasonable wages.[6]
So many more questions could be considered on this topic with more space allowed, however the exercise of exploring the historic wage data serves as a reminder that real people were behind those numbers and sometimes historians, especially when studying the working class condition, need to make effective use of this economic figures to give a richer account of the lives of average people from the past.
[1] Edward Young, and States United, Labor in Europe and America; a Special Report on the Rates of Wages, the Cost of Subsistence, and the Condition of the Working Classes in Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, and Other Countries of Europe, Also in the United States and British America, vol. vi, 864 p. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1876). //catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100475589, 753.
[2] Ibid.
[3] John Ross Browne, Resources of the Pacific Slope: A Statistical and Descriptive Summary of the Mines and Minerals, Climate, Topography, Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures and Miscellaneous Productions of the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains : With a Sketch of the Settlement and Exploration of Lower California (New York: Appleton and Co., 1869, [c1868]). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0107738747/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=96878a41&pg=268, 268.
[4] Young, Labor in Europe and America, 797-807.
[5] Russell Herman Conwell, and Hammatt Billings, Why and How: Why the Chinese Emigrate and the Means They Adopt for the Purpose of Reaching America: With Sketches of Travel, Amusing Incidents, Social Customs, &C (Boston; (Cambridge [Mass.]): Lee and Shepard; (University Press, Welch, Bigelow, & Co.), 1871, 1871). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0105625594/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=22d3a6a7&pg=66, 62.
[6] Beth Lew-Williams, "America's Experiment in Diplomatic Immigration Control before Restriction Became Exclusion," Pacific Historical Review 83, no. 1 (2014), accessed 2023/07/06/, https://dx.doi.org/10.1525/phr.2014.83.1.24: 29.
*Image is from Russell Herman Conwell and Hammatt Billings book.
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