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§ 14

I therefore venture to assert that fixed annual wages are in themselves unfair and also have an effect on emigration; they utterly stifle all diligence, force the most virtuous citizens to break the law and, through law-breaking, create a contempt for the law that is most damaging to a state. The matter has far-reaching implications, but for the unbiased and thoughtful reader, for whom I write, I do not need to argue this at length.

Such legally prescribed wages must be unfair in several respects. I need say no more here about how unfair these wages must be, taking into account the variations in monetary values that have hitherto occurred among us from time to time, when since 1739 the riksdaler specie has risen from 9 daler kmt to 18 daler, whereby the servants, if the tariffs were the very fairest in 1739, have lost half of their annual wages, as the regulations in that regard have not changed in the slightest in line with the value of the riksdaler established for all time by our great king.1 I merely wish to show that they cannot in themselves be other than unfair. For just as one and the same commodity commands quite different prices within one and the same county, the same labour also has quite a different value in different places. In one parish, where there are many opportunities for gainful employment, the day wages and remunerations rise steeply compared with the others, where there are few chances of paid work, and we have the clearest evidence of that in the fact that in one and the same parish in Finland the natural value of the day wage varies by almost 100 per cent. How fairly can one then impose a fixed value on labour throughout the entire county?

An unfairness must also arise from the fact that the earnings are not everywhere the same at all times. One parish, for example, that earns an income by shipbuilding from its forest has an excellent income in some years, when ships command a good price, and can therefore pay its hands high annual wages, which the others cannot, but when that source of income ceases, or all the forest in the parish has been felled, the day wage declines and with it the annual wage of the worker, during which time the saleable products of another parish may rise in price and in the same manner force up the remunerations for a while. How fair could fixed annual wages then be under such circumstances? Or how useful could they be to the realm? If it were possible to maintain low tariffs in such cases, that would cause an inevitable emigration from the country, in order to look for a better income among our neighbours.

But the damage done to the realm and its subjects in general by fixed annual wages, through suppressing the willingness to work, although least visible to an unreflecting public, is nevertheless the most serious one in the long term. The proposition to pay the same price for a good and a useless commodity, apart from being in itself extremely unfair, will also have the obvious effect of causing the commodity to deteriorate and making it virtually useless. That fixed annual wages for the servants will have the same effect is likewise evident. When diligence and eagerness are not rewarded or, even worse, are forbidden on pain of a stiff fine from being remunerated, they cannot exist in a society where such laws are observed, still less be increased to any degree. The matter has been clearly established above in § 8, and here I merely wish to express regret for the consequences of it for our kingdom. What, then, is labour without willingness? A concealed lethargy. What is willingness without encouragement and reward? A folly of working and striving to no purpose, being made a mockery of by the bad worker who, in sleep and idleness, to the chagrin of diligence, gathers as great a harvest as the hard-working one. Is it, then, not amazing to see in our laws that such a reward for diligence has for ages past been most strenuously precluded and how the legislative power has already for a hundred years busied itself with stifling the willingness to work of the Swedish labourer, merely in order to favour masters by means of low annual wages for their servants?

The trade balances never reveal how much the kingdom has lost by this,2 but the loss must become insupportable. In this and other such regulations we may thus easily discover the natural reason why the Dutch and the English far outstrip the Swedes in all kinds of work, when even daily experience teaches us how work can be done as piecework in half a day, and often less, which otherwise generally takes a whole day.

Nor must I omit to mention here the damage that the kingdom and its inhabitants, both masters and servants, have suffered from the numerous lawsuits to which our previous statute on servants has given rise, both by prescribing certain annual wages and by the designation vagabonds and other circumstances, which on both accounts have cost the realm almost millions, have probably increased the fees of the courts considerably, but have also led judges either to pronounce judgments, according to the plain wording of the laws, that are quite contrary to conscience and equity, or else, in order to appease their consciences, to find ways of evading the issue, of which I may cite a single remarkable example. One such case, concerning an annual wage, had progressed as far as one of the appeal courts of the realm, where the case was submitted for the opinion of a member of the tribunal learned in the law, of wide renown and conscientious, who, in order to avoid pronouncing a judgment contrary to conscience and equity, adopted the expedient of declaring himself disqualified on the grounds that he had been obliged to infringe the same tariff; and I cannot without the greatest anxiety think of how the renewal of that statute, including the proposed lotdrawing and other constraints, will give rise to discord, lawsuits, breaches of the law and penalties, which have now in most places, as it were, fallen into abeyance and become ineffective owing to the inappropriateness of the previous one and its widespread infringement.


  1. . . . the value of the riksdaler established for all time by our great king: refers to the minting reform of 1776, when the monetary system was totally renewed. A sole silver (specie) standard was introduced and riksdaler became the main currency.
  2. The trade balances never reveal . . .: a common type of critique among English economic writers from the 1690s onwards towards the idea of basing English trade policies upon the balance of trade. As stated by Charles Davenant and others during this time, it was almost impossible to calculate the trade balance for a particular time or moment. See L. Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language, London: Routledge, 1994, p. 116f.

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