Our most recent post, Labor Day – a photo essay, got me thinking about work and wages during Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark’s years in Mequon. For some time now, I’ve been trying to get a sense of where Jonathan and Mary got their money and how they spent, saved, and invested it during Wisconsin’s first decades as a territory and state. Consider this as the first post of several that will try and answer some of those questions.
Labor, wages & the Clarks, c. 1850
Back in 2019 we took a close look at the Clark family’s information as enumerated on the 1850 U.S. federal census population schedules. If you missed that series, or want to refresh your memory, here are some links: part 1, part 2, part 3. And in part 4 of that series, we noted that the Clark household included a “Laborer,” a 30 year-old immigrant from Germany named John Buck:
The Clarks were also able to hire an extra hand for the farm, John Buck. This must have been an essential expenditure, otherwise Jonathan—and the 16-year-old Arthur Clark—would have been the only adult males to work the Clark farm’s 160 acres. And Mary Clark had her hands full, raising five children of her own, feeding and clothing a household of eight, and attending to her full complement of exhausting daily domestic and farm chores.
So, how much did the Clarks have to pay John Buck for his labor? We don’t have any financial records from the Clarks’ household, but we do have some relevant information from this book:
The Statistical view of the United States…being a compendium of the seventh census, compiled by J. D. B. DeBow, superintendent of the U.S. Census, published in Washington, DC, 1854, pages 164-165.
Table CLXXV. — Average Wages, 1850.
Most useful for our purposes is table 175, showing the average wages for most of the U.S. states and territories at the time of the 1850 census.
Reading the tables
Table 175 lists the wages for the states, and then territories, in alphabetical order. Each state or territory is followed by six columns, each listing—in dollars and cents—the average wage for various types of work and workers, namely:
• Monthly to a farm hand with board
• To a day laborer with board.
• To a day laborer without board.
• Day wages to a carpenter without board.
• Weekly to a female domestic with board
• Weekly board to laboring men
The Clarks’ hired man
What did John Buck earn, laboring for the Clarks in 1850? Unfortunately, we’re not sure what his exact job description entailed. Did he live and board with the Clarks and earn a monthly wage? Did he live with his Buck family nearby and “commute” to his job on the Clark farm? If so, did he bring his own food, or was he fed along with the rest of the Clark family?
My surmise is that John Buck, at age 30, and being enumerated with the Clark family on the census, was probably a “live-in” farm hand, residing at the Clark house and eating Mary Clark’s cooking. In which case he would have been paid, perhaps:
• Monthly to a [Wisconsin] farm hand with board, an average of $12.69 per month
It’s also possible that he lived elsewhere in the Mequon area, perhaps with members of his German-American family, and earned something like one of these average 1850 wages as a day laborer on the Clark farm:
• To a day laborer with board, an average of $0.71 per day, or
• To a day laborer without board, an average of $1.00 per day
The bigger picture
How did John Buck’s Wisconsin wages compare to wages in other parts of the nation? Here’s what the Statistical Compendium had to say:
The Commissioner of Patents in 1848 sent out a circular to all of the States, in order to ascertain the rates of wages paid by the agricultural interest. Answers were received from most of the States, which showed a remarkable uniformity. The average wages to field laborers with board, ranged from 10 to 15 dollars for the whites, and from 5 to 12 for the slaves, the average for female domestics with board, ranged from 4 to 6 dollars for the whites and 3 to 5 for slaves. The average wages of mechanics from 75 cents to $1.50 per day, reaching in Texas as high as $3. Upon the whole the rates seemed to be lowest in the Northwest, and highest in the Southwest for white labor-the South and the North differing very little. The money price of wages unless the prices of other articles be known, gives but an unsatisfactory idea of the condition of the laboring population at different periods and in different countries. (p. 164-165)
I won’t argue with the Commissioner of Patents, but I think it’s worth noting that the information he gathered in his 1848 circular was probably out-of-date by 1850 in regard to California and Oregon. The exceptionally high 1850 wages there were, no doubt, caused by a shortage of available laborers during the first years of Gold Rush fever. Otherwise, the commissioner’s 1848 data seems to correlate well with the 1850 census findings.
How did that compare with the Old World?
Like so many immigrants, John Buck’s family left the Old World and came to Wisconsin seeking a better life including, presumably, more substantial rewards for their hard work. In footnotes to the above table, the 1850 Statistical Compendiium adds some useful comparisons between Old World and U.S. wages, circa 1850 (note the following British abbreviations/equivalents for various European monies: £ = pounds, s. = shillings, d. = pence).
The weekly net earnings of factory hands at Manchester, England, in full employment, in 1849: — [wool? cotton?] Card[ing] Room, males 12s.: females 8s. 6d.; spinners 12s.: Power Loom Weavers 9s. 5d.; helpers 4s. 8d.; Mechanics 19s.3d. The Wages of other workmen were as follows: Colliers at iron works in Staffordshire, average weekly, 16s. 3d.; miners 13s. 11d.; masons, smiths and carpenters, 10s. 6d.
From the replies addressed by British Consuls to the home government in 1833, it appears that wages ranged upon the continent for agricultural laborers, viz: Ploughmen in France 100 to 160 shillings per annum ,with hoard, laborers in France, 5 to 15d. per day, in the latter case without board or dwelling furnished; in Germany 4¾d. to 7d., w1th lodging, but without board ; in the Netherlands 3d. to 4d. with board and lodging 5d. to 6d. without either; in Italy at Genoa, 60 shillings to 100 shillings per annum; in Tuscany 40 shillings per annum, in both cases with board and lodging. These are for farm servants. Farm laborers are returned at 6d. per day, without board or lodging. The replies to the Poor Law Commissioners gave for 6 or 800 parishes in England an average earning to a family consisting of man, wife and four children age 14, 11, 8, and 5 the eldest a boy, £41 17s. 8d. In 71 parishes this amount was stated to be insufficient for support without relief, and in 337 barely sufficient or sufficient without meat.
How many cheeseburgers can you buy with 12 shillings?
I’m not sure. Making purchase-power comparisons between historical earnings and modern wages is difficult and inexact. Even so, I hope you found this post useful, and that it can help shed some light on the value of work—and workers—during the Clarks’ time in early Wisconsin Territory and State. Let me know if you enjoyed this post, or if you have questions or observations to share with our readers.
I’ll be back soon with more Clark Heritage & History.