CHAPTER I.

Wages in the different Departments of Industry—Causes of their Apparent Discrepancy—Really approach very near to Equality.

The wages paid to the labourers engaged in different employments differ so very widely, that, at first sight, it may seem to be impossible to lay down any principles that should be applicable to them all. Such, however, is not the case. The differences in question are apparent rather than real; and when the various favourable and unfavourable circumstances connected with different employments are taken into account, it will be found that the wages or earnings of those engaged in them are very nearly the same.

If all employments were equally agreeable and healthy; if the labour to be performed in each was of the same intensity; and if each required the same degree of dexterity and skill on the part of those employed, it is evident, supposing industry to be unfettered, that there could be no permanent or considerable difference in the wages of labour. For if those employed in a particular business were to earn either more or less than their neighbours, labourers would, in the former case, leave other businesses to engage in it; and in the latter they would leave it to engage in others, until the increase or diminution of their numbers had lowered or elevated wages to the common level. In point of fact, however, the intensity of the labour to be performed in different employments, the degree of skill required to carry them on, their healthiness, and the estimation in which they are held, differ exceedingly; and these varying circumstances necessarily occasion proportional differences in the wages of the workmen engaged in them. Wages are the price paid Edition: current; Page: [301] for the exertion of the physical powers, skill, and ingenuity of the labourer. They, therefore, necessarily vary according to the severity of the labour, and the degree of skill and ingenuity required. A jeweller or engraver, for example, must be paid higher wages than a common farm-servant or scavenger; for, a long course of training being necessary to instruct a man in the art of jewelling and engraving, were he not indemnified for its cost by a higher rate of wages, others, instead of learning so difficult an art, would addict themselves, in preference, to such employments as hardly require any instruction. Hence, the discrepancies that actually obtain in the rate of wages are confined within certain limits—increasing or diminishing it only so far as may be necessary fully to countervail the unfavourable or favourable peculiarities attending different employments.

The following, according to Adam Smith, are the principal circumstances which make the rate of wages in some employments fall below or rise above the medium or average rate of wages:—

• 1st, The agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments:
• 2d, The facility and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense, of learning them:
• 3d, The constancy or inconstancy of the employments:
• 4th, The small or great trust that must be reposed in those who carry them on:
• 5th, The probability or improbability of succeeding in them.

First, The agreeableness of an employment may arise either from physical or moral causes—from the lightness of the labour, its healthiness or cleanliness, the degree of estimation in which it is held, &c.; and its disagreeableness from the opposite circumstances—that is, from the severity of the labour, its unhealthiness or dirtiness, the degree of odium attached to it, &c. The rate of wages must obviously vary Edition: current; Page: [302] with the variations of those circumstances which exert so powerful an influence over the labourer. It is out of the question to suppose, that any individual should be so blind to his own interest, as to engage in an occupation considered as mean and disreputable, or where the labour is severe, if he obtain only the same wages he may get by engaging in employments in higher estimation, and where the work is comparatively light. The labour of the ploughman is not unhealthy, nor is it either irksome or disagreeable; but being more severe, and requiring greater skill than that of the shepherd, it is uniformly better rewarded. The same principle holds universally. Miners, gilders, typefounders, smiths, distillers, and all who carry on unhealthy, disagreeable, and dangerous businesses, invariably obtain higher wages than those who, with equal skill, are engaged in more desirable employments. The unfavourable opinion entertained respecting certain businesses operates on wages as if the labour to be performed in them were unusually unhealthy or severe. The trade of a butcher, for example, is generally looked upon as low and discreditable; and this feeling occasions such a disinclination on the part of young men to enter it, as can only be overcome by the high wages that butchers are said to earn, notwithstanding the lightness of their labour: this, also, is the reason that the keeper of a small inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises one of the most profitable of the common trades. The contrary circumstances have contrary effects. Hunting and fishing form, in an advanced state of society, among the most agreeable amusements of the rich; but from their being held in this degree of estimation, and from the lightness of their labour, those who practise, them as a trade generally receive very small wages, and are proverbially poor; and the agreeableness and healthiness of the employments, rather than the lightness of their labour, or the little skill which they require, seem to be the principal cause of the redundant numbers, and consequent low wages Edition: current; Page: [303] of common farm-servants, and generally of all workmen employed in ordinary field labour.

The severe discipline and various hardships to which common soldiers are exposed, and the little chance they have of arriving at a higher station, are unfavourable circumstances, which, it might be supposed, could only be countervailed by a high rate of wages. It is found, hewever, that there are few common trades in which labourers can be procured for such low wages as those for which recruits are willing to enlist in the army. Nor is it difficult to discover the causes of this apparent anomaly. Except when actually engaged in warlike operations, a soldier is comparatively idle; while his free, dissipated, and generally adventurous life, the splendour of his uniform, the imposing spectacle of military parades and evolutions, and the martial music by which they are accompanied, exert a most seductive influence over the young and inconsiderate. The dangers and privations of campaigns are undervalued, while the chances of advancement are proportionally exaggerated in their sanguine imaginations. “Without regarding the danger,” says Adam Smith, “soldiers are never obtained so easily as at the beginning of a new war; and though they have scarce any chance of preferment, they figure to themselves, in their youthful fancies, a thousand occasions of acquiring honour and distinction which never occur. These romantic hopes make the whole price of their blood. Their pay is less than that of common labourers, and in actual service their fatigues are much greater.”1

It is observed by Smith, that the chances of succeeding in the sea service are greater than in the army. “The son of a creditable labourer or artificer may frequently go to sea with his father’s consent; but if he enlists as a soldier, it is always without it. Other people see some chance of his making something by the one trade: nobody but himself sees any of his making any thing by the other.” But the allurements to Edition: current; Page: [304] enlist in the army are, notwithstanding, found to be much greater than those which prompt young men to enter the navy. The life of a sailor is, perhaps, more adventurous than that of a soldier; but he has no regular uniform, his employment is comparatively dirty and disagreeable, his labour more severe, and while at sea he suffers a species of imprisonment, and cannot, like the soldier, excite the envy of the men, or the admiration of the women where he is quartered. In consequence, the wages of seamen almost invariably exceed those of soldiers, and there is a greater difficulty of obtaining recruits at the breaking out of a war.

In England, the disadvantages and drawbacks naturally incident to a sea-faring life were formerly much increased by the practice of impressment. The violence and injustice to which this practice exposed sailors, tended to prevent young men from entering on board ship, and consequently contributed, by artificially lessening the supply of sailors, to raise their wages above their natural level, to the injury both of the Queen’s and the merchant service. “The custom of impressment,” says Mr. Richardson, “puts a free-born British sailor on the same footing as a Turkish slave. The Grand Seignior cannot do a more absolute act than to order a man to be dragged away from his family, and against his will run his head against the mouth of a cannon; and if such acts should be frequent in Turkey, upon any one set of useful men, would it not drive them away to other countries, and thin their numbers yearly? and would not the remaining few double or treble their wages? which is the case with our sailors, in time of war, to the great detriment of our commerce.”1

This also was the cause that our sailors were in the habit of withdrawing in large numbers, at the breaking out of hostilities, to Holland, and, more recently, to the United States. Latterly, however, the practice of impressment has Edition: current; Page: [305] fallen into desuetude; and though not formally, it may be assumed as having been virtually abolished. The facilities of deserting to America are so very great, that it would have been impossible, seeing that impressment does not exist in the United States, to have maintained it in this country.

The officers of the army and navy, and many of those functionaries who fill situations of great trust and responsibility, receive a very inadequate pecuniary remuneration. The consideration attached to such offices, and the influence they confer on their possessors, form a principal part of their salary.

Secondly, The wages of labour, in particular businesses, vary according to the facility with which they may be learned.

There are several sorts of labour which a man may perform without any, or with but little, previous instruction; and in which he will, consequently, gain a certain rate of wages from the moment he is employed. But, in civilised societies, there are many employments which can be carried on by those only who have been regularly instructed in them; and it is evident, that the wages of such skilled labourers should so far exceed the wages of those who are comparatively uninstructed as to afford them a sufficient compensation for the time they have lost, and the expense they have incurred, in their education. Suppose that the education of a skilled labourer—a jeweller, or engraver, for example—and his maintenance down to the period when he begins to support himself, cost 300l. more than is required for the maintenance of an unskilled labourer down to the same period: it is plain that, to place these individuals in the same situation, the skilled labourer should earn as much, over and above the wages earned by the one that is unskilled, as may be sufficient, not only to yield the usual rate of profit on the extra sum of 300l. expended on his education, but also to replace the sum itself, previously to the probable termination Edition: current; Page: [306] of his life. If he obtain less than this, he will be underpaid, and if he obtain more he will be overpaid, and there will be an influx of new entrants into his business, until their competition has reduced wages to their proper level.

The policy of most European nations has added to the necessary cost of breeding up skilled labourers, by forcing them to serve as apprentices for a longer period than is commonly required to obtain a knowledge of the trades they mean to exercise. But as the wages of labour are always proportioned, not only to the skill and dexterity of the labourer, but also to the time he has spent, and the difficulties and expense he has had to encounter, in learning his business, it is plain that, if an individual be compelled to serve an apprenticeship of seven years to a business which he might have learned in two or three years, he will obtain a proportionally higher rate of wages after the expiration of his apprenticeship. The institution of unnecessarily long apprenticeships is, therefore, productive of a double mischief; it injures the employers of workmen, by artificially raising wages; and it injures the workmen from its tendency to generate idle and dissipated habits, by making them pass so large a portion of their youth without any sufficient motive to be industrious.

The common law of England authorises every man to employ himself at pleasure in any lawful trade. But this sound principle was almost entirely subverted by a statute passed, in compliance with the solicitations of the corporate bodies, in the fifth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, commonly called the statute of apprenticeship. It enacted that no person should, for the future, exercise any trade, craft, or mystery, at that time exercised in England or Wales, unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of seven years at least; so that what had before been a by-law of a few corporations, became the general and statute law of the kingdom. Fortunately, however, the courts were always singularly disinclined to enforce the provisions of Edition: current; Page: [307] this statute. Though the words of the act plainly include the whole kingdom of England and Wales, it was interpreted to refer to market towns only, and to those trades which had been practised in England when the statute was passed, without any reference to such as had been subsequently introduced. This interpretation gave occasion to several very absurd and even ludicrous distinctions. It was adjudged, for example, that a coachmaker could neither himself make, nor employ a journeyman to make his coach wheels, but must buy them of a master wheelwright, this latter trade having been exercised in England before the 5th of Elizabeth. But a wheelwright, though he had never served an apprenticeship to a coachmaker, might either make himself, or employ journeymen to make coaches, the trade of a coachmaker not being within the statute, because not exercised in England at the time when it was passed. The absurdity of these distinctions, and the injurious operation of the statute, were long obvious; but so slow is the progress of sound legislation, and so powerful the opposition to every change affecting private interests, that its repeal did not take place till 1814. The act for this purpose did not, however, interfere with the existing rights, privileges, and by-laws of corporate bodies; but wherever these do not interpose, the conditions in apprenticeships, and their duration, have since been left to be adjusted by the parties.

Thirdly, The wages of labour, in different employments, vary with the constancy and inconstancy of employment.

Employment is much more constant in some businesses than in others. Many trades can only be carried on in particular states of the weather and seasons of the year; and if the workmen engaged in these trades cannot easily find employment in others during the time they are thrown out of them, their wages must be proportionally augmented. A jeweller, weaver, shoemaker, or tailor, for example, may, under ordinary circumstances, reckon upon obtaining constant Edition: current; Page: [308] employment; but masons, bricklayers, paviors, and, in general, all those workmen who carry on their business in the open air, are liable to perpetual interruptions. Their wages must, however, not only suffice for their maintenance while they are employed, but also during the time they are necessarily idle; and they should also afford them, as Smith has remarked, some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so precarious a situation must sometimes occasion.

This principle shows the fallacy of the opinion so generally entertained respecting the great earnings of porters, hackney-coachmen, watermen, and generally of all workmen employed only for short periods, and on particular occasions. Such persons frequently make as much in an hour or two as a regularly employed workman makes in a day; but this greater hire, during the time they are employed, is found to be only a bare compensation for the labour they perform, and for the time they are necessarily idle: instead of making money, such persons are almost invariably poorer than those engaged in more constant occupations.

The interruption to employments occasioned by the celebration of holidays, has a similar effect on wages. There are countries in which the holidays, including Sundays, amount to about half the year; and the necessary wages of labour should there be about double what they would be were these holidays abolished.

Fourthly, The wages of labour vary according to the small or great trust which must be reposed in the workmen.

“The wages of goldsmiths and jewellers are every where superior to those of many other workmen, not only of equal, but of much superior ingenuity, on account of the precious materials with which they are intrusted.

We trust our health to the physician; our fortune, and sometimes our life and reputation, to the lawyer and attorney. Such confidence could not safely be reposed in people of a Edition: current; Page: [309] very mean or low condition. Their reward must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in society which so important a trust requires. The long time and the great expense which must be laid out in their education, when combined with this circumstance, necessarily enhance still further the price of their labour.”1

Fifthly, The wages of labour in different employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them.

This cause of variation chiefly affects the wages of the higher class of labourers, or of those who practise what are usually denominated liberal professions.

If a young man be bound apprentice to a shoemaker or a tailor, there is hardly any doubt he will attain to an ordinary degree of proficiency and expertness in his business, and that he will be able to live by it. But if he be bound apprentice to a barrister, a painter, a sculptor, or a player, there are five chances to one against his ever attaining to such a degree of proficiency in any of these callings as will enable him to subsist on his earnings. But in professions where many fail for one who succeeds, the fortunate one should not only gain such a rate of wages as may indemnify him for the expenses incurred in his education, but also for all that has been expended on the education of his unsuccessful competitors. It is abundantly certain, however, that the wages of lawyers, players, sculptors, &c., taken in the aggregate, never amount to so large a sum. The lottery of the law and other liberal professions has many great prizes; but there is, notwithstanding, a large excess of blanks. “Compute,” says Adam Smith, “in any particular place, what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely to be annually spent, by all the different workmen in any common trade, such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former Edition: current; Page: [310] sum will generally exceed the latter. But make the same computation with regard to all the counsellors and students of law, in all the different inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a very small proportion to their annual expense, even though you rate the former as high, and the latter as low as can well be done. The lottery of the law, therefore, is very far from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honourable professions, is, in point of pecuniary gains, evidently under-recompensed.”

But the love of that wealth, power, and consideration, which most commonly attend superior excellence in any of the liberal professions, and the overweening confidence placed by each individual in his own good fortune, are sufficient to overbalance all the disadvantages and drawbacks that attend them, and never fail of crowding their ranks with all the most generous and aspiring spirits.

The pecuniary wages or earnings of scientific and literary men are, with a few rare exceptions, very inconsiderable. This arises from a variety of causes; but principally, perhaps, from the indestructibility, if we may so term it, and rapid circulation of their works and inventions. The cloth of the manufacturer, and the corn of the agriculturist, are speedily consumed, and there is a continued demand for fresh supplies of the same articles. Such, however, is not the case with new inventions, new theories, or new literary works. They may be universally made use of, but they cannot be consumed. The moment that the invention of logarithms, the mode of spinning by rollers, and the discovery of the cow-pox, had been published, they were rendered imperishable, and every one was in a condition to profit by them. It was no longer necessary to resort to their authors. The results of their researches had become public property, had conferred new powers on every individual, and might be applied by any one. The institution of patents does not materially affect what is Edition: current; Page: [311] now stated. That the progress of the arts may not be checked, their duration is limited to a comparatively short period. And as the invention is known in other countries to which the patent does not extend, if the discoverer were to exact a high price for the produce of his invention, it would be clandestinely imported from abroad.

The condition of purely literary men, in a pecuniary point of view, is still less to be envied. However profound and learned, if a work be not at the same time popular and pleasing, its sale will be but limited. And as principles and theories may be developed in an endless variety of ways, whatever is new and original may be appropriated by others, and served up in what may probably prove a more desirable form.

Hence, though a work should have the greatest influence over the legislation of the country, or the state of the arts, it may redound but little to the advantage of the author. A scientific work is seldom very attractive in point of style; and unless it have this recommendation, it will be read only by a few. It may have a great reputation among those capable of appreciating its merits, but it will not have a great sale. It will be bought, or rather, perhaps, borrowed and consulted by those who are anxious to profit by its statements and discussions; but the generality of readers will know it only by report. It is not, therefore, so much on the depth, originality, and importance of its views, as on the circumstance of its being agreeable to the public taste, that the success, and consequently the productiveness, of a book to the author must depend. The value of the work of a man’s hands is generally proportioned to the quantity of labour expended upon it; but in works of the mind no such correspondence can be traced between the toil and the recompense. Many a middling novel has produced more money than the “Principia,” or the “Wealth of Nations;” and in this respect, the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” has been far inferior to the “Arabian Edition: current; Page: [312] Nights!” Works of fancy are at once the most popular and the least easily superseded. Success in them is not, however, common; and except when it is very decided, it rarely confers much celebrity. It is fortunate, therefore, that a few individuals should be at all times captivated by the delights of study, and eager in the pursuit of learned and scientific researches for the gratification resulting from them. Had the taste for study depended only on the pecuniary emoluments which it brings along with it, it may well be doubted whether it would ever have found a single votary; and we should have been deprived, not only of very many of our most valuable and important discoveries in the arts, as well as in philosophy and legislation, but of much that refines and exalts the character, and supplies the best species of amusement.

It is unnecessary to enter upon any further details with respect to this part of our subject. It has been sufficiently proved, that the permanent differences that obtain in the wages paid to those engaged in different employments in countries where industry is perfectly unfettered, are rarely more than sufficient to balance the favourable or unfavourable circumstances attending them. When the cost of their education, the chances of their success, and the various disadvantages incident to their professions, are taken into account those who receive the highest wages are not really better paid than those who receive the lowest. The wages earned by the different classes of workmen are equal, not when each individual earns the same number of shillings, or of pence, in a given space of time, but when each is paid in proportion to the severity of the labour he has to perform, to the degree of education and skill that it requires, and to the other causes of variation already specified. So long, indeed, as the principle of competition is allowed to operate without restraint, or as individuals may employ themselves as they please, we may be assured, that the higgling of the market will adjust the rates Edition: current; Page: [313] of wages in different employments on the principle now stated, and that they will be, all things considered, nearly equal. If wages in one employment be depressed below the common level, labourers will leave it to go to others; and if they be raised above that level, labourers will be attracted to it from those departments where wages are lower, until their increased competition has sunk them to the average standard. A period of greater or less duration, according to the peculiar circumstances affecting each employment, is always required to bring about this equalisation. But all inquiries that have the establishment of general principles for their object, either are or should be founded on periods of average duration; and whenever such is the case, we may always, without falling into any material error, assume that the wages earned in different employments are, all things taken into account, about equal.

It may further be observed, in reference to these principles, that wherever industry is unfettered, and knowledge generally diffused, the talents of all are turned to the best account. Indeed, it may be safely affirmed, that of the myriads of individuals engaged in industrial undertakings in Great Britain, as conductors, overseers, or workmen, the situation occupied by each is, in the vast majority of cases, that which is best suited to his capacity, and his salary or wages such as he is fairly entitled to by his services. Agriculturists, manufacturers, and merchants, whether their businesses be large or small, are always most anxious to give the greatest efficacy to their establishments; to adapt their means properly to their ends; and to select the parties that are, all things considered, the most suitable for their purposes. In a society like this, integrity, skill, and industry are sure to be duly prized and appreciated; and the fund that should feed labour is never (or, if ever, only for a moment,) diverted to the support of idleness. And yet there have been, and still are, persons calling themselves social reformers and friends to the poor, who propose that this admirable system should be subverted, and a meddling despotism substituted in its stead; that the rewards of Edition: current; Page: [314] industry should no longer be apportioned according to the fair and equitable arrangement of the parties concerned; but that the employment and the wages of every man should be determined by agents nominated by government for the purpose! We should show but little respect for our readers were we to waste their time in refuting such palpable absurdities. The abuses to which the adoption of such a scheme would infallibly lead would be such that it could not be maintained for any considerable period; if it were, it would fill the land with injustice and ruin.

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