HC Deb 22 June 1893 vol 13 c1677
SIR J. LENG (Dundee)

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he can state the estimated amount of a day's wages of the industrial classes of the United Kingdom?

MR. MUNDELLA

The annual earnings of the classes usually called working classes or manual labour classes (including the estimated value of the board and lodgings of domestic servants, soldiers, sailors, and others) have been recently estimated by MR. Giffen at about £600,000,000, and dividing this sum by the number of working days in the year would give an average daily earning of about £2,000,000; but the sum actually paid in money as daily wages, owing to the board and lodgings included in many cases and the numbers paid by salary and not by daily wages or by piece work, would probably be much less than the average amount of daily earnings reckoned in the way described.