As Benjamin Franklin wrote, in his 1783 essay “Reflections on the Augmentation of Wages, Which Will Be  Occasioned in Europe by the American Revolution, “To desire to keep down the rate of wages… is to seek to render the citizens of a state miserable, in order that foreigners may purchase its productions at a cheaper rate; it is, at most, attempting to enrich a few merchants by impoverishing the body of the nation; it is taking the part of the stronger in that contest, already so unequal, between the man who can pay wages, and him who is under the necessity of receiving them; it is, in one word, to forget, that the object of every political society ought to be the happiness of the largest number.”