In Germany, the depopulation caused by the Thirty Years' War explains why, before and after the peace of Westphalia, so many diets were concerned with fixing the rate of wages of servants. Compare _Spittler_, Gesch., Hanovers, II, 175. Among the most recent instances of English fixed rates of wages, is 8 George III., for London tailors, and the Spitalfields Act of 1773, for silk weavers who had, a short time before, revolted. Also in New South Wales, about the end of the last century, on account of the high rate of colonial wages. (_Collins_, Account of the English Colonies of New South Wales, 1798.) Later, _Mortimer_, Elements of Politics, Commerce and Finance, 1174, 72, maintains fixed rates of wages to be necessary. In Germany the imperial decree of 1830, tit., 24, and again the ordinance of Sept. 4, 1871, provide that each magistrate shall fix the rate of wages in his own district. _Chr. Wolf_, Vernunftige Gedanken vom gesellsch. Leben der Menschen, 1721, § 487, would have the rates so fixed that the laborers might live decently and work with pleasure.] [Footnote 175-2: Proposal for a fixed sale of wages in the protocols of the Chamber of Lords of Nassau, 1821, 12.] [Footnote 175-3: The Spitalfields Act was repealed in 1824, for the reason that the manufacturers themselves attributed the stationary condition of their industries for a hundred years to the fact that they were hampered by that act. _Ricardo's_ and _Huskisson's_ prophecies, on this occasion, fulfilled by the great impulse which the English silk industries soon afterwards received.] [Footnote 175-4: Compare _Brentano_, Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, II, 288. However, fixed rates of wages equitably arranged, in the establishment of which neither party has been given an advantage over the other, have continued to exist much longer than our distrustful and novelty-loving age would think possible. Thus compositors' wages in London, from 1785 to 1800, from 1800 to 1810, from 1810 to 1816, and from 1816 to 1866, remained unaltered; those of London ship builders, from 1824 to 1867; of London builders, from 1834 to 1853, and from 1853 to 1865. (_Brentano_ II, 213. Compare II, 250, 267 ff.)] SECTION CLXXVI. WAGES-POLICY.--STRIKES. Where the wages-receiving class feel themselves to be a special class, _vis-a-vis_ of the purchasers of their labor, they have frequently endeavored, by the preconcerted suspension of labor upon a large scale, to force their masters to pay them higher wages, or grant them some other advantage.[176-1] It is hard to say whether such strikes have more frequently failed or succeeded.[176-2]