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Book I, Chapter X, 1
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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 imagination 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 I. 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 day-light, 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 shew 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. {See Idyllium xxi.}. 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 any thing 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.
The policy of Europe considers the labour of all mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers, as skilled labour; and that of all country labourers as common labour. It seems to suppose that of the former to be of a more nice and delicate nature than that of the latter. It is so perhaps in some cases; but in the greater part it is quite otherwise, as I shall endeavour to shew by and by. The laws and customs of Europe, therefore, in order to qualify any person for exercising the one species of labour, impose the necessity of an apprenticeship, though with different degrees of rigour in different places. They leave the other free and open to every body. During the continuance of the apprenticeship, the whole labour of the apprentice belongs to his master. In the meantime he must, in many cases, be maintained by his parents or relations, and, in almost all cases, must be clothed by them. Some money, too, is commonly given to the master for teaching him his trade. They who cannot give money, give time, or become bound for more than the usual number of years; a consideration which, though it is not always advantageous to the master, on account of the usual idleness of apprentices, is always disadvantageous to the apprentice. In country labour, on the contrary, the labourer, while he is employed about the easier, learns the more difficult parts of his business, and his own labour maintains him through all the different stages of his employment. It is reasonable, therefore, that in Europe the wages of mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers, should be somewhat higher than those of common labourers. They are so accordingly, and their superior gains make them, in most places, be considered as a superior rank of people. This superiority, however, is generally very small: the daily or weekly earnings of journeymen in the more common sorts of manufactures, such as those of plain linen and woollen cloth, computed at an average, are, in most places, very little more than the day-wages of common labourers. Their employment, indeed, is more steady and uniform, and the superiority of their earnings, taking the whole year together, may be somewhat greater. It seems evidently, however, to be no greater than what is sufficient to compensate the superior expense of their education. Education in the ingenious arts, and in the liberal professions, is still more tedious and expensive. The pecuniary recompence, therefore, of painters and sculptors, of lawyers and physicians, ought to be much more liberal; and it is so accordingly.
The profits of stock seem to be very little affected by the easiness or difficulty of learning the trade in which it is employed. All the different ways in which stock is commonly employed in great towns seem, in reality, to be almost equally easy and equally difficult to learn. One branch, either of foreign or domestic trade, cannot well be a much more intricate business than another.
Thirdly, the wages of labour in different occupations vary with the constancy or inconstancy of employment.
Employment is much more constant in some trades than in others. In the greater part of manufactures, a journeyman maybe pretty sure of employment almost every day in the year that he is able to work. A mason or bricklayer, on the contrary, can work neither in hard frost nor in foul weather, and his employment at all other times depends upon the occasional calls of his customers. He is liable, in consequence, to be frequently without any. What he earns, therefore, while he is employed, must not only maintain him while he is idle, but make him some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so precarious a situation must sometimes occasion. Where the computed earnings of the greater part of manufacturers, accordingly, are nearly upon a level with the day-wages of common labourers, those of masons and bricklayers are generally from one-half more to double those wages. Where common labourers earn four or five shillings a-week, masons and bricklayers frequently earn seven and eight; where the former earn six, the latter often earn nine and ten; and where the former earn nine and ten, as in London, the latter commonly earn fifteen and eighteen. No species of skilled labour, however, seems more easy to learn than that of masons and bricklayers. Chairmen in London, during the summer season, are said sometimes to be employed as bricklayers. The high wages of those workmen, therefore, are not so much the recompence of their skill, as the compensation for the inconstancy of their employment.
A house-carpenter seems to exercise rather a nicer and a more ingenious trade than a mason. In most places, however, for it is not universally so, his day-wages are somewhat lower. His employment, though it depends much, does not depend so entirely upon the occasional calls of his customers; and it is not liable to be interrupted by the weather.
When the trades which generally afford constant employment, happen in a particular place not to do so, the wages of the workmen always rise a good deal above their ordinary proportion to those of common labour. In London, almost all journeymen artificers are liable to be called upon and dismissed by their masters from day to day, and from week to week, in the same manner as day-labourers in other places. The lowest order of artificers, journeymen tailors, accordingly, earn their half-a-crown a-day, though eighteen pence may be reckoned the wages of common labour. In small towns and country villages, the wages of journeymen tailors frequently scarce equal those of common labour; but in London they are often many weeks without employment, particularly during the summer.
When the inconstancy of employment is combined with the hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of the work, it sometimes raises the wages of the most common labour above those of the most skilful artificers. A collier working by the piece is supposed, at Newcastle, to earn commonly about double, and, in many parts of Scotland, about three times, the wages of common labour. His high wages arise altogether from the hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of his work. His employment may, upon most occasions, be as constant as he pleases. The coal-heavers in London exercise a trade which, in hardship, dirtiness, and disagreeableness, almost equals that of colliers; and, from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrivals of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labour, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four and five times those wages. In the inquiry made into their condition a few years ago, it was found that, at the rate at which they were then paid, they could earn from six to ten shillings a-day. Six shillings are about four times the wages of common labour in London; and, in every particular trade, the lowest common earnings may always be considered as those of the far greater number. How extravagant soever those earnings may appear, if they were more than sufficient to compensate all the disagreeable circumstances of the business, there would soon be so great a number of competitors, as, in a trade which has no exclusive privilege, would quickly reduce them to a lower rate.
The constancy or inconstancy of employment cannot affect the ordinary profits of stock in any particular trade. Whether the stock is or is not constantly employed, depends, not upon the trade, but the trader.
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 everywhere 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 entrusted. 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 very mean or low condition. Their reward must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in the 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.
When a person employs only his own stock in trade, there is no trust; and the credit which he may get from other people, depends, not upon the nature of the trade, but upon their opinion of his fortune, probity and prudence. The different rates of profit, therefore, in the different branches of trade, cannot arise from the different degrees of trust reposed in the traders.
Fifthly, the wages of labour in different employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them.
The probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for the employments to which he is educated, is very different in different occupations. In the greatest part of mechanic trades success is almost certain; but very uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes; but send him to study the law, it as at least twenty to one if he ever makes such proficiency as will enable him to live by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession, where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. The counsellor at law, who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only of his own so tedious and expensive education, but of that of more than twenty others, who are never likely to make any thing by it. How extravagant soever the fees of counsellors at law may sometimes appear, their real retribution is never equal to this. Compute, 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 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 gain, evidently under-recompensed.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the complete English text of all five books for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity.
ON WAGES AND PROFIT IN THE DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENTS OF LABOR AND STOCK.
Within the same neighborhood, the advantages and disadvantages of the various employments of labor and stock must either be exactly equal or continually tend toward equality. If one occupation there were plainly more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would enter it in the first case, or abandon it in the second, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other occupations. Such, at least, would be the result in a society where things followed their natural course, where freedom was complete, and where everyone was entirely free to choose an occupation and change it as often as desired. Each person's interest would lead him toward advantageous work and away from disadvantageous work.
Money wages and profit do, indeed, vary enormously throughout Europe among the different employments of labor and stock. This difference arises partly from circumstances inherent in the occupations themselves: these compensate, either in reality or at least in people's imaginations, for a small monetary reward in some occupations, and offset a large one in others. It also arises partly from Europe's policies, which nowhere leave people in complete freedom.
An examination of these circumstances and these policies will divide this chapter into two parts.
PART I. Inequalities arising from the nature of the employments themselves.
As far as I have observed, five principal circumstances compensate for low monetary returns in some occupations and offset high returns in others. First, whether the occupations themselves are agreeable or disagreeable; second, whether learning them is easy and cheap or difficult and expensive; third, whether employment in them is steady or irregular; fourth, how little or how much trust must be placed in those who practice them; and fifth, how likely or unlikely success is in them.
First, wages vary with an occupation's ease or hardship, cleanliness or dirtiness, honor or dishonor. Thus in most places, reckoned over a year, a journeyman tailor earns less than a journeyman weaver: the tailor's work is much easier. A journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith: the weaver's work is not always easier, but is much cleaner. A journeyman blacksmith, though a craftsman, seldom earns as much in twelve hours as a collier, who is only a laborer, earns in eight. The blacksmith's work is not quite so dirty, is less dangerous, and is done in daylight above ground. Honor constitutes much of the reward in every honorable profession. In money terms, when all is considered, such professions are generally underpaid, as I shall presently try to show. Disgrace has the opposite effect. The butcher's trade is brutal and repellent, yet in most places more profitable than most common trades. The most detestable employment of all, public executioner, pays better in proportion to the amount of work done than any ordinary trade whatever.
Hunting and fishing, humanity's most important occupations in a primitive society, become its most agreeable amusements in an advanced one: what people once did from necessity they now pursue for pleasure. Thus in advanced society those who earn their living at what others do for recreation are all very poor. Fishermen have been so since Theocritus's time. [See Idyllium xxi.]. Everywhere in Great Britain the poacher is a very poor man. Where strict laws allow no poachers, the licensed hunter is not much better off. A natural taste for these pursuits draws more people to them than can live comfortably from them; relative to its quantity, their labor's produce always reaches the market too cheaply to give the laborers more than the scantest subsistence.
Unpleasantness and disgrace affect profits of stock just as they affect wages of labor. An innkeeper or tavern keeper, never master of his own house and exposed to every drunkard's brutality, follows a business neither very pleasant nor very respectable. Yet hardly any ordinary trade yields such a high return on a small stock.
Second, wages vary according to how easy and inexpensive, or difficult and costly, it is to learn a business.
When an expensive machine is installed, the exceptional work it performs before wearing out is expected to repay the capital spent on it with at least ordinary profits. A person educated through much time and effort for work requiring exceptional dexterity and skill may be compared with such a machine. The work he learns to do must be expected to repay the whole expense of his education, over and above ordinary laborers' wages, with at least the ordinary profits of equally valuable capital. It must also do so within a reasonable period, allowing for the far less certain length of a human life compared with that of a machine.
This principle accounts for the difference between the wages of skilled and ordinary labor.
European policy treats the labor of all mechanics, craftsmen, and manufacturers as skilled, but that of all agricultural laborers as ordinary. It appears to assume that the former's work is finer and more delicate than the latter's. It may be so in some cases; in most it is quite otherwise, as I shall try to show shortly. European laws and customs therefore require an apprenticeship to qualify anyone for the first kind of work, with varying degrees of strictness in different places. They leave the other kind free and open to everyone. Throughout an apprenticeship, the apprentice's entire labor belongs to his master. Meanwhile his parents or relatives must in many cases provide his maintenance and in almost every case his clothes. Some money is commonly paid to his master as well for teaching him the trade. Those who cannot pay money give time instead, binding themselves for more than the usual number of years. Although this is not always advantageous to the master, given the usual idleness of apprentices, it is always disadvantageous to the apprentice. In agricultural labor, by contrast, the worker learns the harder parts of his trade while employed on the easier parts, and his own work supports him at every stage. It is reasonable, then, that European mechanics, craftsmen, and manufacturing workers should earn somewhat higher wages than ordinary laborers. They do, and their higher earnings cause them to be regarded in most places as a higher rank of people. Yet this advantage is generally very small: averaged out, the daily or weekly earnings of journeymen in the more common manufactures, such as plain linen and woolen cloth, are in most places only slightly above the daily wages of ordinary laborers. Their work is indeed steadier and more regular, and their advantage over the entire year may be somewhat greater. Even so, it clearly appears to amount to no more than is needed to offset the higher cost of their education. Training in the ingenious arts and the liberal professions takes still longer and costs still more. Painters and sculptors, lawyers and physicians, should therefore receive a much more generous monetary reward; and so they do.
The ease or difficulty of learning a trade appears to have very little effect on the profits of stock employed in it. The different ways in which stock is ordinarily employed in great towns seem, in fact, almost equally easy or equally difficult to learn. One branch of foreign or domestic trade can hardly be much more intricate than another.
Third, wages in different occupations vary with the steadiness or irregularity of employment.
Employment is far steadier in some trades than in others. In most manufactures, a journeyman can be fairly certain of work on nearly every day of the year on which he is able to work. A mason or bricklayer, by contrast, can work neither in severe frost nor in bad weather; at other times his work depends on the occasional demands of his customers. He is consequently often without employment. His earnings when he has work must therefore sustain him while idle and also compensate him somewhat for the anxious, despondent hours that his insecure condition sometimes brings. Thus, where the estimated earnings of most manufacturing workers are nearly equal to ordinary laborers' daily wages, masons and bricklayers generally earn between half as much again and twice as much. Where ordinary laborers earn four or five shillings a week, masons and bricklayers often earn seven and eight; where the former earn six, the latter often earn nine and ten; and where the former earn nine and ten, as in London, the latter commonly earn fifteen and eighteen. Yet no kind of skilled labor seems easier to learn than masonry and bricklaying. During the summer in London, chairmen are said sometimes to work as bricklayers. These workers' high wages are thus less a reward for their skill than compensation for the irregularity of their employment.
A house carpenter appears to practice a finer and more inventive craft than a mason. Nevertheless, in most places—though not everywhere—his daily wages are somewhat lower. His work depends heavily, but not quite so completely, on occasional customer demand, and weather does not interrupt it.
When trades that generally offer regular employment fail to offer it in a particular place, their workers' wages always rise well above the usual ratio to ordinary laborers' wages. In London, masters can hire and dismiss nearly all journeyman craftsmen from day to day and week to week, as they do day laborers elsewhere. Consequently, even the lowest class of craftsmen, journeyman tailors, earn half-a-crown a day, although eighteen pence may be regarded as the wage for ordinary labor. In small towns and country villages, journeyman tailors' wages often barely equal those of ordinary laborers; in London, however, tailors often spend many weeks without work, especially in summer.
When irregular employment is combined with hard, unpleasant, dirty work, it sometimes raises even the wages of ordinary labor above those of the most skilled craftsmen. A collier paid by the piece is thought ordinarily to earn about twice the wage of ordinary labor at Newcastle, and about three times that wage in many parts of Scotland. His high wage comes entirely from the hardship, unpleasantness, and dirtiness of his work. On most occasions his work can be as steady as he wishes. The coal heavers of London practice a trade almost as hard, dirty, and unpleasant as the colliers', but the inevitable irregularity of coal ships' arrivals makes employment necessarily very irregular for most of them. If colliers normally earn two or three times ordinary wages, it should not seem unreasonable for coal heavers sometimes to earn four or five times those wages. An inquiry into their circumstances a few years ago found that at their then current rates they could earn from six to ten shillings a day. Six shillings are about four times the wages of ordinary labor in London; and in any trade the lowest ordinary earnings can always be regarded as the earnings of by far the largest number of workers. However extravagant those earnings may seem, if they more than compensated for every unpleasant feature of the business, competitors would soon enter in such numbers that, in a trade with no exclusive privilege, they would quickly lower the rate.
Steady or irregular employment cannot affect the ordinary profits of stock in a particular trade. Whether stock remains constantly employed depends not on the trade but on the trader.
Fourth, wages vary with the degree of trust that must be placed in workers.
Goldsmiths and jewelers everywhere earn more than many workers with equal or even much greater ingenuity, because of the precious materials entrusted to them. We entrust our health to a physician; to a lawyer and attorney we entrust our fortune and sometimes our life and reputation. Such trust could not safely be placed in people of very low or humble condition. Their reward must therefore give them the social rank demanded by so important a trust. Joined with the long and costly education they require, this consideration necessarily raises the price of their labor still further.
When someone employs only his own stock in trade, there is no trust involved. Any credit others give him depends not on the kind of trade he follows but on their opinion of his wealth, honesty, and prudence. Differences in profit rates among branches of trade therefore cannot arise from differing degrees of trust placed in traders.
Fifth, wages in different occupations vary with the likelihood of success in them.
The likelihood that a given person will become qualified for the occupation for which he is educated differs greatly among occupations. Success is almost certain in most mechanical trades, but highly uncertain in the liberal professions. Apprentice your son to a shoemaker and there is little doubt he will learn to make a pair of shoes; send him to study law and the odds are at least twenty to one against his mastering it well enough to earn his living. In a perfectly fair lottery, the prize winners should gain everything lost by those who draw blanks. In a profession where twenty fail for each one who succeeds, the one should gain everything the unsuccessful twenty would have earned. A counselor at law who perhaps begins to earn something from his profession only when nearly forty ought to be rewarded not just for his own long, costly education but for that of more than twenty others who will probably never earn anything from theirs. However extravagant lawyers' fees sometimes appear, their actual reward never equals that amount. Calculate in any place the probable yearly earnings and yearly expenses of all the workers in an ordinary trade, such as shoemaking or weaving, and you will generally find that earnings exceed expenses. Make the same calculation for all the counselors and law students in all the Inns of Court, however, and their annual earnings will prove to be only a small fraction of their annual expenses, even if you estimate earnings as high and expenses as low as reasonably possible. The lottery of the law, then, is far from perfectly fair; and in monetary terms law, like many other liberal and honorable professions, is clearly underpaid.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the complete English text of all five books.
ON WAGES AND PROFIT IN THE DIFFERENT USES OF LABOR AND STOCK.
Within the same area, the overall advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of work and different uses of stock must either be equal or always move toward equality. If one occupation in that area were clearly better than the others, people would flock to it. If it were clearly worse, people would leave it. Either way, its advantages would soon move back toward those of other occupations. At least this would happen in a society where things followed their natural course, everyone had complete freedom, and each person could choose and change occupations whenever he wished. Each person's own interest would lead him toward the more rewarding work and away from the less rewarding work.
Money wages and profits do differ greatly across occupations throughout Europe. Part of the difference comes from features of the work itself. These features, in reality or in people's minds, make up for lower money earnings in some occupations or offset higher earnings in others. Another part comes from European policy, which nowhere allows complete freedom.
I will examine those features and that policy in the two parts of this Chapter.
PART I. Differences arising from the nature of the work itself.
As far as I can tell, five main features make up for low money earnings in some occupations and offset high earnings in others. First is whether the work is pleasant or unpleasant. Second is how easy and cheap, or difficult and expensive, it is to learn. Third is whether employment is steady or irregular. Fourth is how much trust the workers must be given. Fifth is how likely they are to succeed.
First, wages vary according to whether work is easy or hard, clean or dirty, respected or disrespected. In most places, over a whole year, a journeyman tailor earns less than a journeyman weaver because tailoring is much easier. A journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith. Weaving is not always easier, but it is much cleaner. A journeyman blacksmith is a skilled craft worker, yet in twelve hours he seldom earns as much as a coal miner, an ordinary laborer, earns in eight. Smithing is not quite as dirty or as dangerous, and it takes place above ground in daylight. The respect attached to respected professions forms a large part of their reward. Measured in money, and considering everything, they are generally underpaid, as I will show shortly. Disgrace has the opposite effect. Butchering is rough and widely disliked, but in most places it pays better than most ordinary trades. Public execution, the most hated occupation of all, pays better for the amount of work done than any ordinary trade.
In early societies, hunting and fishing are among humanity's most important occupations. In advanced societies, they become some of its most pleasant pastimes. People then do for pleasure what they once did out of necessity. So those who do for a living what others do for fun are all very poor in an advanced society. Fishermen have been poor since the time of Theocritus. [See Idyllium xxi.]. A poacher is a very poor man everywhere in Great Britain. Where the law strictly prevents poaching, a licensed hunter is not much better off. So many people enjoy these occupations that more pursue them than can live comfortably by them. As a result, the products they bring to market sell too cheaply, relative to the quantity produced, to give the workers more than a very meager living.
Unpleasant work and social disgrace affect profits on stock as they affect wages. An innkeeper or tavern keeper is never free to enjoy his own house and must put up with the abuse of every drunkard. His business is neither pleasant nor respected. Yet there are hardly any ordinary trades in which a small stock produces such a large profit.
Second, wages vary according to how easy and cheap, or difficult and expensive, it is to learn the work.
Anyone who builds an expensive machine expects it to do enough extra work before wearing out to repay its cost and produce at least normal profits. Someone who spends much time and effort learning an occupation that takes special skill can be compared to that machine. The work he learns must pay him enough beyond ordinary wages to recover his entire training cost and earn at least normal profits on an equally valuable amount of capital. He must recover it in a reasonable time, too, because a human life has a less predictable length than a machine's working life.
This is the reason skilled workers receive different wages from ordinary workers.
European policy regards the work of all mechanics, craft workers, and manufacturing workers as skilled, and the work of all farm laborers as ordinary. It seems to assume that the first group's work calls for more delicate skill. Sometimes it does, but usually the opposite is true, as I will show shortly. European laws and customs nevertheless require an apprenticeship to qualify someone for the first kind of work. Requirements are stricter in some places than in others. They leave farm work open to everyone. During an apprenticeship, all the apprentice's work belongs to his master. In many cases his parents or relatives must support him, and in almost all cases they must supply his clothing. They also commonly pay the master to teach him the trade. Those who cannot pay money pay with time by committing to more than the usual number of years. The extra time does not always benefit the master because apprentices are often idle, but it always harms the apprentice. A farm laborer, by contrast, learns the difficult parts of his work while doing the easier parts. His own labor supports him at every stage of his training. It is therefore reasonable for mechanics, craft workers, and manufacturing workers in Europe to earn somewhat more than ordinary laborers. They do, and their higher earnings make people in most places see them as a higher rank. But the advantage is usually very small. In common kinds of manufacturing, including plain linen and woolen cloth, the average daily or weekly earnings of journeymen in most places are only slightly above an ordinary laborer's daily wage. Their work is steadier, though, so over a whole year the gap may be somewhat larger. Even so, it seems no larger than needed to repay their greater training costs. Training in the fine arts and the liberal professions takes still longer and costs more. Painters, sculptors, lawyers, and physicians should therefore receive much higher money rewards, and they do.
The difficulty of learning a trade seems to have little effect on the profits earned from stock invested in it. In large towns, the various common uses of stock are, in practice, nearly equally easy or difficult to learn. One kind of foreign or domestic trade can hardly be much more complicated than another.
Third, wages vary according to whether work is steady or irregular.
Some trades offer much steadier work than others. A journeyman in most kinds of manufacturing can be fairly sure of working nearly every day he is able to work. A mason or bricklayer, by contrast, cannot work during a hard frost or bad weather. Even in good weather, he depends on whether customers need him. He is therefore often out of work. His earnings while working must support him through periods without work. They must also make up for the anxiety and despair that such uncertainty sometimes brings. So where most manufacturing workers earn about as much as ordinary laborers per day, masons and bricklayers generally earn from one-half more to double that wage. Where ordinary laborers earn four or five shillings a-week, masons and bricklayers often earn seven and eight. Where the first earn six, the others often earn nine and ten. And where the first earn nine and ten, as in London, the others commonly earn fifteen and eighteen. Yet no skilled trade seems easier to learn than masonry or bricklaying. In London, chairmen are said sometimes to work as bricklayers in summer. These workers' higher wages pay less for skill than for uncertain employment.
House carpentry seems to require somewhat more skill and care than masonry. In most places, though not everywhere, a carpenter earns a somewhat lower daily wage. His work depends heavily on customers' occasional demands, but not as completely as a mason's does, and the weather does not interrupt it.
When a usually steady trade offers irregular employment in a particular place, its workers' wages rise well above their usual level relative to ordinary laborers' wages. In London, masters hire and dismiss almost all journeyman craft workers from one day or week to the next, much like day laborers elsewhere. Even journeyman tailors, the lowest-paid group of craft workers, therefore earn half-a-crown a-day, while eighteen pence can be taken as the wage of ordinary labor. In small towns and country villages, journeyman tailors often earn barely as much as ordinary laborers. In London, however, they often go many weeks without work, especially in summer.
When irregular work is also hard, unpleasant, and dirty, wages for the most ordinary labor sometimes rise above those of the most skilled craft workers. At Newcastle, a coal miner paid by the piece is thought normally to earn about twice the ordinary laborer's wage. In many parts of Scotland, he earns about three times as much. His higher wages arise entirely from how hard, unpleasant, and dirty his work is. He can usually work as regularly as he likes. London's coal unloaders do work almost as hard, dirty, and unpleasant as coal miners' work. Because coal ships arrive irregularly, most coal unloaders have highly irregular employment. If miners normally earn double or triple ordinary wages, it should not seem unreasonable that coal unloaders sometimes earn four or five times as much. An investigation of their circumstances a few years ago found that at their pay rates then, they could earn from six to ten shillings a-day. Six shillings is about four times the ordinary laborer's wage in London. In any trade, the lowest usual earnings can be taken as the earnings of most workers. These amounts may seem excessive. But if they more than made up for all the unpleasant features of the work, many more people would soon seek it. With no exclusive right to enter the trade, that competition would quickly lower wages.
Steady or irregular work cannot affect the normal profit on stock in a given trade. Whether stock is put to use steadily depends on the trader, not on the trade.
Fourth, wages vary according to the degree of trust workers must be given.
Goldsmiths and jewelers everywhere earn more than many workers who are equally skilled or much more skilled, because they handle valuable materials entrusted to them. We trust physicians with our health, and lawyers and attorneys with our fortunes and sometimes our lives and reputations. It would be unsafe to give such trust to people in a very low social position. Their pay must therefore be enough to give them the standing in society that this trust requires. Their long and costly training raises their pay still further.
When a trader uses only his own stock, no one entrusts stock to him. The credit others give him depends on what they think of his wealth, honesty, and good judgment, not on his type of trade. Differences in profit rates between trades therefore cannot come from differences in the trust placed in traders.
Fifth, wages vary according to how likely workers are to succeed in their chosen occupations.
The chance that a person will become qualified for the occupation he trains for differs greatly by occupation. In most crafts, success is almost certain. In the liberal professions, it is very uncertain. Apprentice your son to a shoemaker, and there is little doubt he will learn to make shoes. Send him to study law, and the odds are at least twenty to one against his learning enough to make a living from it. In a perfectly fair lottery, winners should receive everything lost by those who draw losing tickets. In a profession where twenty fail for each person who succeeds, that successful person should earn everything the other twenty would have earned. A lawyer who only begins earning money from his profession near the age of forty should receive a return on his own long and costly education and on that of more than twenty others who will probably never earn anything from it. However high lawyers' fees sometimes look, their actual reward never reaches that level. In a given place, compare the likely yearly income and expenses of all the workers in an ordinary trade, such as shoemaking or weaving. You will generally find that income exceeds expenses. Make the same comparison for all the lawyers and law students in all the Inns of Court. Their annual earnings are only a small fraction of their annual expenses, even if you estimate the earnings as high and the expenses as low as reasonably possible. The lottery of law is therefore far from fair. In money terms, law and many other respected liberal professions are plainly underpaid.