wager

t. & i. [WAGER, 8.] A. Trans.: To stake, hazard, or risk on the i ue of some event, or on some question to be decided, or on some casualty; to bet, to stake. "I'd wager twenty pounds That, if he is alive, he has it yet." Words worth: The Brothers. to those employed to perform any kind of labor or service by their employers; hire, pay, recompense, meed. The rate of wages is determined by the ratio which the capital, for the productive use of which labor is sought, bears to the number of laborers seeking that kind of employment. When the capital increases more rapidly than the laboring population of a country, wages rise; when it increases more slowly, they fall. But in the United States, and most countries, the rise of wages produces an increase in the number of marriages and, in due time, of population, with the result of ultimately causing wages again to fall. All attempts to fix wages by law are inoperative and mischievous. The effort was made, in England, in the reign of Edward III. (1350), on the part of capitalists, after the Black Death, in 1346, had swept away so large a part of the population, both in Britain and the continent, that wages naturally and greatly rose. [LABORER, T.] If, on the other hand, the capitalist were required by law to give higher wages than the natural law of supply and demand fixed, his motive for continuing to carry on his busine would become le potent, or might wholly cease, and ultimate injury be done to those whom it was sought to benefit. [TRUCK.] "The produce of labor constitutes the natural recompense or wages of labor." - Smith: Wealth of Nations, bk. i., ch. viii. Although a plural, wages sometimes has the verb in the singular. "The wages of sin is death."- Romans vi. 23. Wages in ordinary language is restricted to the payment for mechanical or muscular labor, and especially to that which is ordinarily paid for at short, stated intervals, as daily, weekly, fort nightly, ., to workmen. Strictly speaking, however, the term wages comprehends as well the pay of officers, the fees of barristers, medical men, ., the salary of clerks, the stipends of clergymen, as the remuneration for mechanical labor.