Costs and Wages
Wages were low in Britain in the 18th century because of a surplus of labor. The average was about 50 shillings (£2.5) a year for a plowman, and 40 shillings (£2) a year for an ordinary unskilled worker. Ship captains negotiated prices for transporting and feeding a passenger on the seven or eight week journey across the ocean, averaging about £5 to £7, the equivalent of four or five years of work back in England.
Read more about this topic: Indentured Servant
Famous quotes containing the words costs and/or wages:
“The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)
“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
—Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Romans, 6:23.