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Establishment of the Unit Price: Entries before 1749
A few months after William Strahan's death in 1785, the London compositors and Masters came to their first "union wage agreement" which was binding for most (certainly the majority) of the printing
In spite of the complaints of the eighteenth-century compositors, price scales were being used long before 1785, and, specifically in the business of William Strahan, the scale was consistent and practical but flexible. The compositors could not have had as strong a grievance against Strahan as they had against some small shops. Even though there is not enough information available to prove whether Strahan's scale resulted in high or in low wages, there is ample evidence to prove that Strahan's wages must have been the same for two similar jobs and that they must have been consistent. We can know this by extrapolating from the consistency of the prices he charged his customers. I shall, therefore, examine the price scales for standard work as it was charged to the customer at Strahan's private business.[7]
Discussion of Strahan's standard scale of prices for his customers can be divided into three parts: the methods of entry in the ledgers, the unit price for work, and the cost of paper. In addition to the standard scale, Strahan maintained a separate, consistent scale for "extra" work. Since this discussion will concentrate on the methods of
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