Fourth Hyde Lecture Yesterday

M. d'Avenel delivered his fourth lecture yesterday afternoon in Sanders Theatre. The next lecture, on "Le budget des depenses de l'ouvrier et du paysan, depuis sept cent ans," will be given tomorrow at 4.30 o'clock.

In his lecture yesterday, M. d'Avenel said that the history of salaries is bound up with the struggles of four-fifths of any nation, who have sold their lives to be able to live. In the Middle Ages, where feudalism was everywhere present, nothing was paid for in money, but in labor. People engaged themselves in exchange for commodities; but such contracts soon became very odious, and every attempt was made to annul them. In consequence of the rising of values, debtors found it to their advantage to take back any land, renouncing the services which were the price paid therefor.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages, work began to be paid for in money, and this work was paid better than in the fourteenth or even in the nineteenth centuries. Laborers were paid better than servants, but with the advent of the present social system and the growth of luxury, the conditions became reversed.

A most important point, which people who have not followed M. d'Avenel's work usually lose sight of is the fact that the corporations of the Middle Ages, resembling those of the present day, had no influence on the amounts of salaries. The proportion between the salary of skilled and unskilled labor, was the same then as today.

Work usually lasted only 250 days a year, the rest of the time being taken up by enforced holidays, which diminished the well-being of laborers. M. d'Avenel shows that women have gained about 75 per cent, over the wages of the Middle Ages, while men have lost about 50 per cent. This is due to the free competition among women. As they have been able to earn more, the marriage burdens on men have been lessened, which has given rise to larger families. Today, one hour's labor procures half the quantity of provisions that it would have procured a century ago, and it is the regrets, in looking towards the imaginary wealth of the past, that spoil the charm of a new country for the masses.