The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Highlight Loc. 358-63  | Added on Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 12:08 AM

Evidence is very scanty on the behavior of wage rates during this period. In Massachusetts, the wages of agricultural workers fluctuated sharply with the boom and contraction, averaging sixty cents per day in 1811, $1.50 in 1818, and fifty-three cents in 1819. The wage rates of skilled labor, on the other hand, remained stable throughout at approximately $1 per day. In Pennsylvania, woodcutters who averaged a wage of thirty-three cents per cord in the first half of the nineteenth century were paid only ten cents per cord in 1821 and 1822. Unskilled turnpike workers paid seventy-five cents a day in early 1818 received only twelve cents a day in 1819.