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Originally Posted by mahratt
... But, do manual work is now in India dearly valued? I doubt that 150 years ago the situation was different ....
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india and pakistan are still major suppliers of 'damascus' pattern welded steel sword and knife blades. they still command a premium over a monosteel blade of the same shape.
i would however assume it's the distributor that makes the most money, paying relatively little to the poor kami hammering on the anvil. the kamis and sarkis who forged the blades and made the scabbards and fittings were and are of the 'untouchables', the lowest of low caste in that most nasty of social ranking systems. most employers pay them on the piece work system, so the faster the items are made, and the more items they make per day, the more they get paid.
western smiths are better educated, better paid and expect far more than eastern ones. as you say, likely not far different than in the 19c, even under queen victoria, and her extended family, the kings, kaisers and tsars of the other european nations.
...and the rising use of steam and later electric powered machinery rather than hand tools makes a difference too.
there are a variety of ever changing and mutating conditions, economic, historical, social, political, and scientific all playing their part. it will be interesting to see if anyone comes up with any precise reasonings in the maelstrom.
i have also read somewhere that the mines where the ore used for wootz were playing out, so with the source drying up, and other ore sources not having it's peculiar chemical composition (some say it was a trace of vanadium that made all the difference), some people hid away blooms justincase, which occasionally still show up. hence the wootz blades made in more modern times, using the old blobs of material whose mfg. process had been lost. tracking down the source and date of that theory would be rather difficult. (i do seem to recall a billet of wootz (or maybe bulat) of a few kilos going for an outrageous price on a well known internet auction site.)