Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and Stock THE whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality.If in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments.This at least would be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free both to choose what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper.Every man's interest would prompt him to seek the advantageous, and to shun the disadvantageous employment.
Pecuniary wages and profit, indeed, are everywhere in Europe extremely different according to the different employments of labour and stock.But this difference arises partly from certain circumstances in the employments themselves, which, either really, or at least in the imaginations of men, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and counterbalance a great one in others; and partly from the policy of Europe, which nowhere leaves things at perfect liberty.
The particular consideration of those circumstances and of that policy will divide this chapter into two parts.
PART 1 Inequalities arising from the Nature of the Employments themselves THE five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them.
First, the wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment.Thus in most places, take the year round, a journeyman tailor earns less than a journeyman weaver.His work is much easier.A journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith.His work is not always easier, but it is much cleanlier.A journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom earns so much in twelve hours as a collier, who is only a labourer, does in eight.His work is not quite so dirty, is less dangerous, and is carried on in daylight, and above ground.
Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions.In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by.Disgrace has the contrary effect.The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades.
The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.
Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become in its advanced state their most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity.In the advanced state of society, therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade what other people pursue as a pastime.
Fishermen have been so since the time of Theocritus.A poacher is everywhere a very poor man in Great Britain.In countries where the rigour of the law suffers no poachers, the licensed hunter is not in a much better condition.The natural taste for those employments makes more people follow them than can live comfortably by them, and the produce of their labour, in proportion to its quantity, comes always too cheap to market to afford anything but the most scanty subsistence to the labourers.
Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labour.The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business.But there is scarce any common trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit.
Secondly, the wages of labour vary with the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning the business.
When any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinary work to be performed by it before it is worn out, it must be expected, will replace the capital laid out upon it, with at least the ordinary profits.A man educated at the expense of much labour and time to any of those employments which require extraordinary dexterity and skill, may be compared to one of those expensive machines.The work which he learns to perform, it must be expected, over and above the usual wages of common labour, will replace to him the whole expense of his education, with at least the ordinary profits of an equally valuable capital.It must do this, too, in a reasonable time, regard being had to the very uncertain duration of human life, in the same manner as to the more certain duration of the machine.
The difference between the wages of skilled labour and those of common labour is founded upon this principle.