ABSTRACT
The price of a commodity is regulated by demand and supply, and the demand, as well as the supply, are influenced, not by the market of one country, but by the market of the whole world. Thus, if manufacturers were compelled to increase the price of their goods by percent, in order to compensate themselves for the higher wages which the law or any other power decree that they should pay. The wages which are earned by masons and bricklayers, must therefore be sufficient to remunerate them for the time during which they are kept out of work. A man who only earns ten shillings a week is so poor, that he is almost compelled to make his children labour directly they can obtain even the smallest wages. Consequently any attempt to regulate wages by compulsory enactments would either be futile or would be highly injurious to those who were intended to be benefited.
