Like the price of every commodity, the immediate wages of common labor is determined by the relation of the demand and supply of labor. Other circumstances being the same, every great plague[160-1] or emigration[160-2] is wont, by decreasing the supply, to increase the wage's of labor; and a plague, the wages of the lowest kind of labor most.[160-3] And so, the increased demand, in harvest time, is wont to increase wages; and even day board during harvest time is wont to be better.[160-4] [160-5] In winter the diminished demand lowers wages again.[160-6] Among the most effective tricks of socialistic sophistry is, unfortunately, to caricature the correct principle: "labor is a commodity," into this other: "the laborer is a commodity." Moreover, common labor has this peculiarity, that those who have it to supply are generally much more numerous than those who want it; while the reverse is the case with most other commodities. Another important peculiarity of the "commodity" labor, is, that it can seldom be bought, without at the same time reducing the person of the seller to a species of dependence. Thus, for instance, the seller cannot be in a place different from that in which his commodity is. Hence a change in the person, etc. of the buyer very readily necessitates in the workman a radical change of life, and that the levelling adjustment of local excess and want is rendered so difficult in the case of this commodity.[160-7] Hence, it is that, if in the long run the exchange of labor against wages is to be an equitable one (§ 110), the master of labor must, so to speak, incorporate part of his own personality into it, have a heart for faithful workmen and thus attach them to himself.[160-8] [Footnote 160-1: High rate of Italian wages after the plague in 1348, but also many complaints of the indolence and dissoluteness of workmen. (_M. Villani_, I, 2 ff., 57 seq. _Sismondi_, Gesch. der ital. Republiken in Mittelalter, VI, 39.) In England, the same plague increased the wages of threshers from an average of 1.7 d. in 1348, to 3.3 d. in 1349. Mowers received, during the 90 years previous, 1/12 of a quarter of wheat per acre; in 1371-1390, from 1/7 to 1/6. The price of most of their wants was then from 1/8 to 1/12 as high as in _A. Young's_ time, and wages ¼ as high. (_Rogers_, I, 306, 271, 691.) The great earthquake in Calabria, in 1783, produced similar effects. (_Galanti_, N. Beschreiburg von Neapel, I, 450.) Compare _Jesaias_, 13, 12. On the other hand, depopulation caused by unfortunate wars is not very favorable to the rate of wages; instance, Prussia in 1453 ff., after the Polish struggle, and Germany, after the Thirty Years' War.]