But those circumstances of a country, or of an occupation, in which
population can with impunity increase at its utmost rate, are rare and
transitory. Very few are the countries presenting the needful union of
conditions. Either the industrial arts are backward and stationary, and
capital therefore increases slowly, or, the effective desire of
accumulation being low, the increase soon reaches its limit; or, even
though both these elements are at their highest known degree, the increase
of capital is checked, because there is not fresh land to be resorted to
of as good quality as that already occupied. Though capital should for a
time double itself simultaneously with population, if all this capital and
population are to find employment on the same land, they can not, without
an unexampled succession of agricultural inventions, continue doubling the
produce; therefore, if wages do not fall, profits must; and, when profits
fall, increase of capital is slackened.
Except, therefore, in the very peculiar cases which I have just noticed,
of which the only one of any practical importance is that of a new colony,
or a country in circumstances equivalent to it, it is impossible that
population should increase at its utmost rate without lowering wages. In
no old country does population increase at anything like its utmost rate;
in most, at a very moderate rate: in some countries, not at all. These
facts are only to be accounted for in two ways. Either the whole number of
births which nature admits of, and which happen in some circumstances, do
not take place; or, if they do, a large proportion of those who are born,
die. The retardation of increase results either from mortality or
prudence; from Mr. Malthus’s positive, or from his preventive check: and
one or the other of these must and does exist, and very powerfully too, in
all old societies. Wherever population is not kept down by the prudence
either of individuals or of the state, it is kept down by starvation or
disease.
§ 5. Due Restriction of Population the only Safeguard of a Laboring-Class.
Where a laboring-class who have no property but their daily wages, and no
hope of acquiring it, refrain from over-rapid multiplication, the cause, I
believe, has always hitherto been, either actual legal restraint, or a
custom of some sort which, without intention on their part, insensibly
molds their conduct, or affords immediate inducements not to marry. It is
not generally known in how many countries of Europe direct legal obstacles
are opposed to improvident marriages.
Where there is no general law restrictive of marriage, there are often
customs equivalent to it. When the guilds or trade corporations of the
middle ages were in vigor, their by-laws or regulations were conceived
with a very vigilant eye to the advantage which the trade derived from
limiting competition; and they made it very effectually the interest of
artisans not to marry until after passing through the two stages of
apprentice and journeyman, and attaining the rank of master.
Unhappily, sentimentality rather than common sense usually presides over
the discussions of these subjects. Discussions on the condition of the
laborers, lamentations over its wretchedness, denunciations of all who are
supposed to be indifferent to it, projects of one kind or another for
improving it, were in no country and in no time of the world so rife as in
the present generation; but there is a tacit agreement to ignore totally
the law of wages, or to dismiss it in a parenthesis, with such terms as
“hard-hearted Malthusianism”; as if it were not a thousand times more
hard-hearted to tell human beings that they may, than that they may not,
call into existence swarms of creatures who are sure to be miserable, and
most likely to be depraved!
I ask, then, is it true or not, that if their numbers were fewer they
would obtain higher wages? This is the question, and no other: and it is
idle to divert attention from it, by attacking any incidental position of
Malthus or some other writer, and pretending that to refute that is to
disprove the principle of population. Some, for instance, have achieved an
easy victory over a passing remark of Mr. Malthus, hazarded chiefly by way
of illustration, that the increase of food may perhaps be assumed to take
place in an arithmetical ratio, while population increases in a
geometrical: when every candid reader knows that Mr. Malthus laid no
stress on this unlucky attempt to give numerical precision to things which
do not admit of it, and every person capable of reasoning must see that it
is wholly superfluous to his argument. Others have attached immense
importance to a correction which more recent political economists have
made in the mere language of the earlier followers of Mr. Malthus. Several
writers had said that it is the tendency of population to _increase
faster_ than the means of subsistence. The assertion was true in the sense
in which they meant it, namely, that population would in most
circumstances increase faster than the means of subsistence, if it were
not checked either by mortality or by prudence. But inasmuch as these
checks act with unequal force at different times and places, it was
possible to interpret the language of these writers as if they had meant
that population is usually gaining ground upon subsistence, and the
poverty of the people becoming greater. Under this interpretation of their
meaning, it was urged that the reverse is the truth: that as civilization
advances, the prudential check tends to become stronger, and population to
slacken its rate of increase, relatively to subsistence; and that it is an
error to maintain that population, in any improving community, tends to
increase faster than, or even so fast as, subsistence.(171) The word
tendency(172) is here used in a totally different sense from that of the
writers who affirmed the proposition; but waiving the verbal question, is
it not allowed, on both sides, that in old countries population presses
too closely upon the means of subsistence?
Chapter III. Of Remedies For Low Wages.
§ 1. A Legal or Customary Minimum of Wages, with a Guarantee of
Employment.
The simplest expedient which can be imagined for keeping the wages of
labor up to the desirable point would be to fix them by law; and this is
virtually the object aimed at in a variety of plans which have at
different times been, or still are, current, for remodeling the relation
between laborers and employers. No one, probably, ever suggested that
wages should be absolutely fixed, since the interests of all concerned
often require that they should be variable; but some have proposed to fix
a minimum of wages, leaving the variations above that point to be adjusted
by competition. Another plan, which has found many advocates among the
leaders of the operatives, is that councils should be formed, which in
England have been called local boards of trade, in France “conseils de
prud’hommes,” and other names; consisting of delegates from the
work-people and from the employers, who, meeting in conference, should
agree upon a rate of wages, and promulgate it from authority, to be
binding generally on employers and workmen; the ground of decision being,
not the state of the labor market, but natural equity; to provide that the
workmen shall have _reasonable_ wages, and the capitalist reasonable
profits.
The one expedient most suggested by politicians and
labor-reformers in the United States is an eight-hour law,
mandatory upon all employers. It is to be remembered, however,
that in very many industries piece-work exists, and if a
diminution of hours is enforced, that will mean a serious
reduction in the amount of wages which can be possibly earned in a
day. Even if all industries were alike in the matter of arranging
their work, this plan means higher wages for the same work, or the
same wages for less work, and so an increased cost of labor. This
would, then, take its effect on profits at once; and the effects
would be probably seen in a withdrawal of capital from many
industries, where, as now, the profits are very low. It must be
recalled, however, that in the United States there has been, under
the influence of natural causes, unaided by legislation, a very
marked reduction in the hours of labor, accompanied by an increase
of wages. For example, in 1840, Rhode Island operatives in the
carding-room of the cotton-mills worked fourteen hours a day for
$3.28 a week, while in 1884 they work eleven hours and receive
$5.40 a week. This result is most probably due to the gain arising
from the invention of labor-saving machinery.
Others again (but these are rather philanthropists interesting themselves
for the laboring-classes, than the laboring people themselves) are shy of
admitting the interference of authority in contracts for labor: they fear
that if law intervened, it would intervene rashly and ignorantly; they are
convinced that two parties, with opposite interests, attempting to adjust
those interests by negotiation through their representatives on principles
of equity, when no rule could be laid down to determine what was
equitable, would merely exasperate their differences instead of healing
them; but what it is useless to attempt by the legal sanction, these
persons desire to compass by the moral. Every employer, they think,
_ought_ to give _sufficient_ wages; and if he does it not willingly,
should be compelled to it by general opinion; the test of sufficient wages
being their own feelings, or what they suppose to be those of the public.
This is, I think, a fair representation of a considerable body of existing
opinion on the subject.
I desire to confine my remarks to the principle involved in all these
suggestions, without taking into account practical difficulties, serious
as these must at once be seen to be. I shall suppose that by one or other
of these contrivances wages could be kept above the point to which they
would be brought by competition. This is as much as to say, above the
highest rate which can be afforded by the existing capital consistently
with employing all the laborers. For it is a mistake to suppose that
competition merely keeps down wages. It is equally the means by which they
are kept up. When there are any laborers unemployed, these, unless
maintained by charity, become competitors for hire, and wages fall; but
when all who were out of work have found employment, wages will not, under
the freest system of competition, fall lower. There are strange notions
afloat concerning the nature of competition. Some people seem to imagine
that its effect is something indefinite; that the competition of sellers
may lower prices, and the competition of laborers may lower wages, down to
zero, or some unassignable minimum. Nothing can be more unfounded. Goods
can only be lowered in price by competition to the point which calls forth
buyers sufficient to take them off; and wages can only be lowered by
competition until room is made to admit all the laborers to a share in the
distribution of the wages-fund. If they fell below this point, a portion
of capital would remain unemployed for want of laborers; a
counter-competition would commence on the side of capitalists, and wages
would rise.
The assumption in the last chapter in regard to competition and
custom should be kept in mind in all this reasoning. As a matter
of fact, there is not that mobility of labor which insures so free
an operation of competition that equality of payment always
exists. In reality there is no competition at all between the
lower grades of laborers and the higher classes of skilled labor.
Of course, the _tendency_ is as explained by Mr. Mill, and as time
goes on there is a distinctly greater mobility of labor visible.
Vast numbers pass from Scandinavia and other countries of Europe
to the United States, or from England to Australia, urged by the
desire to go from a community of low to one of higher wages.
Since, therefore, the rate of wages which results from competition
distributes the whole wages-fund among the whole laboring population, if
law or opinion succeeds in fixing wages above this rate, some laborers are
kept out of employment; and as it is not the intention of the
philanthropists that these should starve, they must be provided for by a
forced increase of the wages-fund—by a compulsory saving. It is nothing to
fix a minimum of wages unless there be a provision that work, or wages at
least, be found for all who apply for it. This, accordingly, is always
part of the scheme, and is consistent with the ideas of more people than
would approve of either a legal or a moral minimum of wages. Popular
sentiment looks upon it as the duty of the rich, or of the state, to find
employment for all the poor. If the moral influence of opinion does not
induce the rich to spare from their consumption enough to set all the poor
at work at “reasonable wages,” it is supposed to be incumbent on the state
to lay on taxes for the purpose, either by local rates or votes of public
money. The proportion between labor and the wages-fund would thus be
modified to the advantage of the laborers, not by restriction of
population, but by an increase of capital.
§ 2. —Would Require as a Condition Legal Measures for Repression of
Population.
If this claim on society could be limited to the existing generation; if
nothing more were necessary than a compulsory accumulation, sufficient to
provide permanent employment at ample wages for the existing numbers of
the people; such a proposition would have no more strenuous supporter than
myself. Society mainly consists of those who live by bodily labor; and if
society, that is, if the laborers, lend their physical force to protect
individuals in the enjoyment of superfluities, they are entitled to do so,
and have always done so, with the reservation of a power to tax those
superfluities for purposes of public utility; among which purposes the
subsistence of the people is the foremost. Since no one is responsible for
having been born, no pecuniary sacrifice is too great to be made by those
who have more than enough, for the purpose of securing enough to all
persons already in existence.
But it is another thing altogether when those who have produced and
accumulated are called upon to abstain from consuming until they have
given food and clothing, not only to all who now exist, but to all whom
these or their descendants may think fit to call into existence. Such an
obligation acknowledged and acted upon, would suspend all checks, both
positive and preventive; there would be nothing to hinder population from
starting forward at its rapidest rate; and as the natural increase of
capital would, at the best, not be more rapid than before, taxation, to
make up the growing deficiency, must advance with the same gigantic
strides. But let them work ever so efficiently, the increasing population
could not, as we have so often shown, increase the produce proportionally;
the surplus, after all were fed, would bear a less and less proportion to
the whole produce and to the population: and the increase of people going
on in a constant ratio, while the increase of produce went on in a
diminishing ratio, the surplus would in time be wholly absorbed; taxation
for the support of the poor would engross the whole income of the country;
the payers and the receivers would be melted down into one mass.
It would be possible for the state to guarantee employment at ample wages
to all who are born. But if it does this, it is bound in self-protection,
and for the sake of every purpose for which government exists, to provide
that no person shall be born without its consent. To give profusely to the
people, whether under the name of charity or of employment, without
placing them under such influences that prudential motives shall act
powerfully upon them, is to lavish the means of benefiting mankind without
attaining the object. But remove the regulation of their wages from their
own control; guarantee to them a certain payment, either by law or by the
feeding of the community; and no amount of comfort that you can give them
will make either them or their descendants look to their own
self-restraint as the proper means for preserving them in that state.
The famous poor-laws of Elizabeth, enacted in 1601, were at first
intended to relieve the destitute poor, sick, aged, and impotent,
but in their administration a share was given to all who _begged_
it. Employers, of course, found it cheaper to hire labor partly
paid for by the parish, and the independent farm-laborer who would
not go on the parish found his own wages lowered by this kind of
competition. This continued a crying evil until it reached the
proportions described by May: “As the cost of pauperism, thus
encouraged, was increasing, the poorer rate-payers were themselves
reduced to poverty. The soil was ill-cultivated by pauper labor,
and its rental consumed by parish rates. In a period of fifty
years, the poor-rates were quadrupled, and had reached, in 1833,
the enormous amount of ￡8,600,000. In many parishes they were
approaching the annual value of the land itself.”(173) The old
poor-laws were repealed, and there went into effect in 1834 the
workhouse system, which, while not denying subsistence to all
those born, required that the giving of aid should be made as
disagreeable as possible, in order to stimulate among the poor a
feeling of repugnance to all aid from the community. This is also
the general idea of poor-relief in the United States.
The cultivation of the principle of self-help in each laborer is
certainly the right object at which to aim. In the United States
voluntary charitable organizations have associated together, in
some cities, in order to scrutinize all cases of poverty through a
number of visitors in each district, who advise and counsel the
unfortunate, but never give money. This system has been very
successful, and, by basing its operations on the principle of
self-help, has given the best proof of its right to an increasing
influence.
§ 3. Allowances in Aid of Wages and the Standard of Living.
Next to the attempts to regulate wages, and provide artificially that all
who are willing to work shall receive an adequate price for their labor,
we have to consider another class of popular remedies, which do not
profess to interfere with freedom of contract; which leave wages to be
fixed by the competition of the market, but, when they are considered
insufficient, endeavor by some subsidiary resource to make up to the
laborers for the insufficiency. Of this nature was the allowance system.
The principle of this scheme being avowedly that of adapting the means of
every family to its necessities, it was a natural consequence that more
should be given to the married than to the single, and to those who had
large families than to those who had not: in fact, an allowance was
usually granted for every child. It is obvious that this is merely another
mode of fixing a minimum of wages.
There is a rate of wages, either the lowest on which the people can, or
the lowest on which they will consent, to live. We will suppose this to be
seven shillings a week. Shocked at the wretchedness of this pittance, the
parish authorities humanely make it up to ten. But the laborers are
accustomed to seven, and though they would gladly have more, will live on
that (as the fact proves) rather than restrain the instinct of
multiplication. Their habits will not be altered for the better by giving
them parish pay. Receiving three shillings from the parish, they will be
as well off as before, though they should increase sufficiently to bring
down wages to four shillings. They will accordingly people down to that
point; or, perhaps, without waiting for an increase of numbers, there are
unemployed laborers enough in the workhouse to produce the effect at once.
It is well known that the allowance system did practically operate in the
mode described, and that under its influence wages sank to a lower rate
than had been known in England before.
The operation of a low standard upon the wages of those in the
community who have a higher one, has been seen in the United
States to a certain extent by the landing on our shores of Chinese
laborers, who maintain a decidedly lower standard of living than
either their American or Irish competitors. If they come in such
numbers as to retain their lower standard by forming a group by
themselves, and are thereby not assimilated into the body of
laborers who have a higher standard of comfort, they can, to the
extent of their ability to do work, drive other laborers out of
employment. This, moreover, is exactly what was done by the Irish,
who drove Americans out of the mills of New England, and who are
now being driven out, probably, by the French Canadians, with a
standard lower than the Irish. The Chinese come here now without
their families, as may be seen by the accompanying diagram, in
which the shaded side represents the males on the left, and the
unshaded the females on the right, of the perpendicular line.
Decade. Males. Females.
1 6 4
2 106 12
3 351 37
4 283 15
5 139 3
6 32 1
7 10 0
8 1 0
9 0 0
The horizontal lines show the ages, the largest number being about
thirty years of age. It will be noted how many come in the prime
of life, and how few children and females there are.
It need hardly be said that the economic side of a question is
here discussed, which requires for its solution many ethical and
political considerations besides.
§ 4. Grounds for Expecting Improvement in Public Opinion on the Subject of
Population.
By what means, then, is poverty to be contended against? How is the evil
of low wages to be remedied? If the expedients usually recommended for the
purpose are not adapted to it, can no others be thought of? Is the problem
incapable of solution? Can political economy do nothing, but only object
to everything, and demonstrate that nothing can be done? Those who think
it hopeless that the laboring-classes should be induced to practice a
sufficient degree of prudence in regard to the increase of their families,
because they have hitherto stopped short of that point, show an inability
to estimate the ordinary principles of human action. Nothing more would
probably be necessary to secure that result, than an opinion generally
diffused that it was desirable.
But let us try to imagine what would happen if the idea became general
among the laboring-class that the competition of too great numbers was the
principal cause of their poverty. We are often told that the most thorough
perception of the dependence of wages on population will not influence the
conduct of a laboring-man, because it is not the children he himself can
have that will produce any effect in generally depressing the labor
market. True, and it is also true that one soldier’s running away will not
lose the battle; accordingly, it is not that consideration which keeps
each soldier in his rank: it is the disgrace which naturally and
inevitably attends on conduct by any one individual which, if pursued by a
majority, everybody can see would be fatal. Men are seldom found to brave
the general opinion of their class, unless supported either by some
principle higher than regard for opinion, or by some strong body of
opinion elsewhere.
If the opinion were once generally established among the laboring-class
that their welfare required a due regulation of the numbers of families,
the respectable and well-conducted of the body would conform to the
prescription, and only those would exempt themselves from it who were in
the habit of making light of social obligations generally; and there would
be then an evident justification for converting the moral obligation
against bringing children into the world, who are a burden to the
community, into a legal one; just as in many other cases of the progress
of opinion, the law ends by enforcing against recalcitrant minorities
obligations which, to be useful, must be general, and which, from a sense
of their utility, a large majority have voluntarily consented to take upon
themselves.
The dependence of wages on the number of the competitors for employment is
so far from hard of comprehension, or unintelligible to the
laboring-classes, that by great bodies of them it is already recognized
and habitually acted on. It is familiar to all trades-unions: every
successful combination to keep up wages owes its success to contrivances
for restricting the number of competitors; all skilled trades are anxious
to keep down their own numbers, and many impose, or endeavor to impose, as
a condition upon employers, that they shall not take more than a
prescribed number of apprentices. There is, of course, a great difference
between limiting their numbers by excluding other people, and doing the
same thing by a restraint imposed on themselves; but the one as much as
the other shows a clear perception of the relation between their numbers
and their remuneration. The principle is understood in its application to
any one employment, but not to the general mass of employment. For this
there are several reasons: first, the operation of causes is more easily
and distinctly seen in the more circumscribed field; secondly, skilled
artisans are a more intelligent class than ordinary manual laborers; and
the habit of concert, and of passing in review their general condition as
a trade, keeps up a better understanding of their collective interests;
thirdly and lastly, they are the most provident, because they are the best
off, and have the most to preserve.
§ 5. Twofold means of Elevating the Habits of the Laboring-People; by
Education, and by Foreign and Home Colonization.
For the purpose, therefore, of altering the habits of the laboring people,
there is need of a twofold action, directed simultaneously upon their
intelligence and their poverty. An effective national education of the
children of the laboring-class is the first thing needful; and,
coincidently with this, a system of measures which shall (as the
Revolution did in France) extinguish extreme poverty for one whole
generation. Without entering into disputable points, it may be asserted
without scruple that the aim of all intellectual training for the mass of
the people should be to cultivate common sense; to qualify them for
forming a sound practical judgment of the circumstances by which they are
surrounded. [But] education is not compatible with extreme poverty. It is
impossible effectually to teach an indigent population. Toward effecting
this object there are two resources available, without wrong to any one,
without any of the liabilities of mischief attendant on voluntary or legal
charity, and not only without weakening, but on the contrary
strengthening, every incentive to industry, and every motive to
forethought.
The first is a great national measure of colonization. I mean, a grant of
public money, sufficient to remove at once, and establish in the colonies,
a considerable fraction of the youthful agricultural population. It has
been shown by others that colonization on an adequate scale might be so
conducted as to cost the country nothing, or nothing that would not be
certainly repaid; and that the funds required, even by way of advance,
would not be drawn from the capital employed in maintaining labor, but
from that surplus which can not find employment at such profit as
constitutes an adequate remuneration for the abstinence of the possessor,
and which is therefore sent abroad for investment, or wasted at home in
reckless speculations.
The second resource would be to devote all common land, hereafter brought
into cultivation, to raising a class of small proprietors. What I would
propose is, that common land should be divided into sections of five acres
or thereabout, to be conferred in absolute property on individuals of the
laboring-class who would reclaim and bring them into cultivation by their
own labor.
This suggestion works to the same purpose as the proposal that our
Government should retain its public lands and aid in the formation
of a great number of small farmers, rather than, by huge grants,
to foster large holdings in the Western States and
Territories.(174)
The preference should be given to such laborers, and there are many of
them, as had saved enough to maintain them until their first crop was got
in, or whose character was such as to induce some responsible person to
advance to them the requisite amount on their personal security. The
tools, the manure, and in some cases the subsistence also, might be
supplied by the parish, or by the state; interest for the advance, at the
rate yielded by the public funds, being laid on as a perpetual quitrent,
with power to the peasant to redeem it at any time for a moderate number
of years’ purchase. These little landed estates might, if it were thought
necessary, be indivisible by law; though, if the plan worked in the manner
designed, I should not apprehend any objectionable degree of subdivision.
In case of intestacy, and in default of amicable arrangement among the
heirs, they might be bought by government at their value, and re-granted
to some other laborer who could give security for the price. The desire to
possess one of these small properties would probably become, as on the
Continent, an inducement to prudence and economy pervading the whole
laboring population; and that great desideratum among a people of hired
laborers would be provided, an intermediate class between them and their
employers; affording them the double advantage of an object for their
hopes, and, as there would be good reason to anticipate, an example for
their imitation.
It would, however, be of little avail that either or both of these
measures of relief should be adopted, unless on such a scale as would
enable the whole body of hired laborers remaining on the soil to obtain
not merely employment, but a large addition to the present wages—such an
addition as would enable them to live and bring up their children in a
degree of comfort and independence to which they have hitherto been
strangers.
Chapter IV. Of The Differences Of Wages In Different Employments.
§ 1. Differences of Wages Arising from Different Degrees of Attractiveness
in Different Employments.
In treating of wages, we have hitherto confined ourselves to the causes
which operate on them generally, and _en masse_; the laws which govern the
remuneration of ordinary or average labor, without reference to the
existence of different kinds of work which are habitually paid at
different rates, depending in some degree on different laws. We will now
take into consideration these differences, and examine in what manner they
affect or are affected by the conclusions already established.
The differences, says [Adam Smith], arise 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.” These circumstances he
considers to be: “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.”
(1.) “The wages of labor vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness
or dirtiness, the honorableness or dishonorableness of the employment. A
journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom earns so much in twelve
hours as a collier, who is only a laborer, does in eight. His work is not
quite so dirty, is less dangerous, and is carried on in daylight and above
ground. Honor makes a great part of the reward of all honorable
professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered,” their
recompense is, in his opinion, below the average. “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 the
public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better
paid than any common trade whatever.”
(2.) “Employment is much more constant,” continues Adam Smith, “in some
trades than in others. In the greater part of manufactures, a journeyman
may be pretty sure of employment almost every day in the year that he is
able to work. A mason or brick-layer, 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.”
“When (1) the inconstancy of the employment is combined with (2) the
hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of the work, it sometimes raises
the wages of the most common labor above those of the most skillful
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 labor. 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 labor, it ought not to seem unreasonable
that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four or 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 about four times
the wages of common labor in London.”
These inequalities of remuneration, which are supposed to compensate for
the disagreeable circumstances of particular employments, would, under
certain conditions, be natural consequences of perfectly free competition:
and as between employments of about the same grade, and filled by nearly
the same description of people, they are, no doubt, for the most part,
realized in practice.
But it is altogether a false view of the state of facts to present this as
the relation which generally exists between agreeable and disagreeable
employments. The really exhausting and the really repulsive labors,
instead of being better paid than others, are almost invariably paid the
worst of all, because performed by those who have no choice. If the
laborers in the aggregate, instead of exceeding, fell short of the amount
of employment, work which was generally disliked would not be undertaken,
except for more than ordinary wages. But when the supply of labor so far
exceeds the demand that to find employment at all is an uncertainty, and
to be offered it on any terms a favor, the case is totally the reverse.
Partly from this cause, and partly from the natural and artificial
monopolies, which will be spoken of presently, the inequalities of wages
are generally in an opposite direction to the equitable principle of
compensation, erroneously represented by Adam Smith as the general law of
the remuneration of labor.
(3.) One of the points best illustrated by Adam Smith is the influence
exercised on the remuneration of an employment by the uncertainty of
success in it. If the chances are great of total failure, the reward in
case of success must be sufficient to make up, in the general estimation,
for those adverse chances. 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 is at least twenty to one if ever he 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. How extravagant soever the fees of counselors-at-law
may sometimes appear, their real retribution is never equal to this.
§ 2. Differences arising from Natural Monopolies.
The preceding are cases in which inequality of remuneration is necessary
to produce equality of attractiveness, and are examples of the equalizing
effect of free competition. The following are cases of real inequality,
and arise from a different principle.
(4.) “The wages of labor vary according to the small or great trust which
must be reposed in the workmen. The wages of goldsmiths and jewelers 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 intrusted.” The superiority of reward is not here the
consequence of competition, but of its absence: not a compensation for
disadvantages inherent in the employment, but an extra advantage; a kind
of monopoly price, the effect not of a legal, but of what has been termed
a natural monopoly. If all laborers were trustworthy, it would not be
necessary to give extra pay to working goldsmiths on account of the trust.
The degree of integrity required being supposed to be uncommon, those who
can make it appear that they possess it are able to take advantage of the
peculiarity, and obtain higher pay in proportion to its rarity.
This same explanation of a natural monopoly applies exactly to the
causes which give able executive managers, who watch over
productive operations, the usually high rewards for labor under
the name of “wages of superintendence.” If successful managers of
cotton or woolen mills were as plentiful, in proportion to the
demand for them, as ordinary artisans, in proportion to the demand
for them, then the former would get no higher rewards than the
latter. Able executive and business managers secure high wages
solely on the ground—as explained above—of monopoly; that is,
because their numbers, owing to natural causes, are few relatively
to the demand for them in every industry in the land.
(5.) Some employments require a much longer time to learn, and a much more
expensive course of instruction, than others; and to this extent there is,
as explained by Adam Smith, an inherent reason for their being more highly
remunerated. Wages, consequently, must yield, over and above the ordinary
amount, an annuity sufficient to repay these sums, with the common rate of
profit, within the number of years [the laborer] can expect to live and be
in working condition.
But, independently of these or any other artificial monopolies, there is a
natural monopoly in favor of skilled laborers against the unskilled, which
makes the difference of reward exceed, sometimes in a manifold proportion,
what is sufficient merely to equalize their advantages. But the fact that
a course of instruction is required, of even a low degree of costliness,
or that the laborer must be maintained for a considerable time from other
sources, suffices everywhere to exclude the great body of the laboring
people from the possibility of any such competition. Until lately, all
employments which required even the humble education of reading and
writing could be recruited only from a select class, the majority having
had no opportunity of acquiring those attainments.
Here is found the germ of the idea, which has been elaborately
worked out by Mr. Cairnes(175) in his theory of non-competing
groups of laborers: “What we find, in effect, is not a whole
population competing indiscriminately for all occupations, but a
series of industrial layers superposed on one another, within each
of which the various candidates for employment possess a real and
effective power of selection, while those occupying the several
strata are, for all purposes of effective competition, practically
isolated from each other.” (Mr. Mill certainly understood this
fully, and stated it clearly again in Book III, Chap. II, § 2.)
The changes, however, now so rapidly taking place in usages and ideas, are
undermining all these distinctions; the habits or disabilities which
chained people to their hereditary condition are fast wearing away, and
every class is exposed to increased and increasing competition from at
least the class immediately below it. The general relaxation of
conventional barriers, and the increased facilities of education which
already are, and will be in a much greater degree, brought within the
reach of all, tend to produce, among many excellent effects, one which is
the reverse: they tend to bring down the wages of skilled labor.
§ 3. Effect on Wages of the Competition of Persons having other Means of
Support.
A modifying circumstance still remains to be noticed, which interferes to
some extent with the operation of the principles thus far brought to view.
While it is true, as a general rule, that the earnings of skilled labor,
and especially of any labor which requires school education, are at a
monopoly rate, from the impossibility, to the mass of the people, of
obtaining that education, it is also true that the policy of nations, or
the bounty of individuals, formerly did much to counteract the effect of
this limitation of competition, by offering eleemosynary instruction to a
much larger class of persons than could have obtained the same advantages
by paying their price.
[Adam Smith has pointed out that] “whenever the law has attempted to
regulate the wages of workmen, it has always been rather to lower them
than to raise them. But the law has upon many occasions attempted to raise
the wages of curates, and, for the dignity of the Church, to oblige the
rectors of parishes to give them more than the wretched maintenance which
they themselves might be willing to accept of. And in both cases the law
seems to have been equally ineffectual, and has never been either able to
raise the wages of curates or to sink those of laborers to the degree that
was intended, because it has never been able to hinder either the one from
being willing to accept of less than the legal allowance, on account of
the indigence of their situation and the multitude of their competitors,
or the other from receiving more, on account of the contrary competition
of those who expected to derive either profit or pleasure from employing
them.”
Although the highest pecuniary prizes of successful authorship are
incomparably greater than at any former period, yet on any rational
calculation of the chances, in the existing competition, scarcely any
writer can hope to gain a living by books, and to do so by magazines and
reviews becomes daily more difficult. It is only the more troublesome and
disagreeable kinds of literary labor, and those which confer no personal
celebrity, such as most of those connected with newspapers, or with the
smaller periodicals, on which an educated person can now rely for
subsistence. Of these, the remuneration is, on the whole, decidedly high;
because, though exposed to the competition of what used to be called “poor
scholars” (persons who have received a learned education from some public
or private charity), they are exempt from that of amateurs, those who have
other means of support being seldom candidates for such employments.
When an occupation is carried on chiefly by persons who derive the main
portion of their subsistence from other sources, its remuneration may be
lower almost to any extent than the wages of equally severe labor in other
employments. The principal example of the kind is domestic manufactures.
When spinning and knitting were carried on in every cottage, by families
deriving their principal support from agriculture, the price at which
their produce was sold (which constituted the remuneration of their labor)
was often so low that there would have been required great perfection of
machinery to undersell it. The amount of the remuneration in such a case
depends chiefly upon whether the quantity of the commodity produced by
this description of labor suffices to supply the whole of the demand. If
it does not, and there is consequently a necessity for some laborers who
devote themselves entirely to the employment, the price of the article
must be sufficient to pay those laborers at the ordinary rate, and to
reward, therefore, very handsomely the domestic producers. But if the
demand is so limited that the domestic manufacture can do more than
satisfy it, the price is naturally kept down to the lowest rate at which
peasant families think it worth while to continue the production. Thus
far, as to the remuneration of the subsidiary employment; but the effect
to the laborers of having this additional resource is almost certain to be
(unless peculiar counteracting causes intervene) a proportional diminution
of the wages of their main occupation.
For the same reason it is found that, _cæteris paribus_, those trades are
generally the worst paid in which the wife and children of the artisan aid
in the work. The income which the habits of the class demand, and down to
which they are almost sure to multiply, is made up in those trades by the
earnings of the whole family, while in others the same income must be
obtained by the labor of the man alone. It is even probable that their
collective earnings will amount to a smaller sum than those of the man
alone in other trades, because the prudential restraint on marriage is
unusually weak when the only consequence immediately felt is an
improvement of circumstances, the joint earnings of the two going further
in their domestic economy after marriage than before.
This statement seems to be borne out by the statistics of
wages(176) both in England and the United States. In our
cotton-mills, where women do certain kinds of work equally well
with men, the wages of the men are lower than in outside
employments into which women can not enter.
Blacksmiths, per week: $16.74
Family of four: Drawers-in, cotton-mill—man, per week: $5.50
Family of four: Drawers-in, cotton-mill—woman, per week: $5.50
Family of four: Tenders, two boys: $4.50
Total: $15.50
In this case the family of four all together receive only about
the same as the wages of the single blacksmith alone. |
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