Chapter XII: 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.

Those professions keep their level, however, with other occupations; and,
notwithstanding these discouragements, all the most generous and liberal
spirits are eager to crowd into them. Two different causes contribute to
recommend them. First, the desire of the reputation which attends upon
superior excellence in any of them; and, secondly, the natural confidence
which every man has, more or less, not only in his own abilities, but in
his own good fortune.

To excel in any profession, in which but few arrive at mediocrity, is the
most decisive mark of what is called genius, or superior talents. The
public admiration which attends upon such distinguished abilities makes
always a part of their reward; a greater or smaller, in proportion as it
is higher or lower in degree. It makes a considerable part of that reward
in the profession of physic; a still greater, perhaps, in that of law; in
poetry and philosophy it makes almost the whole.

There are some very agreeable and beautiful talents, of which the
possession commands a certain sort of admiration, but of which the
exercise, for the sake of gain, is considered, whether from reason or
prejudice, as a sort of public prostitution. The pecuniary recompence,
therefore, of those who exercise them in this manner, must be sufficient,
not only to pay for the time, labour, and expense of acquiring the
talents, but for the discredit which attends the employment of them as the
means of subsistence. The exorbitant rewards of players, opera-singers,
opera-dancers, etc. are founded upon those two principles; the rarity and
beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this manner.
It seems absurd at first sight, that we should despise their persons, and
yet reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. While we do the
one, however, we must of necessity do the other, Should the public opinion
or prejudice ever alter with regard to such occupations, their pecuniary
recompence would quickly diminish. More people would apply to them, and
the competition would quickly reduce the price of their labour. Such
talents, though far from being common, are by no means so rare as
imagined. Many people possess them in great perfection, who disdain to
make this use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if any
thing could be made honourably by them.

The over-weening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own
abilities, is an ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists
of all ages. Their absurd presumption in their own good fortune has been
less taken notice of. It is, however, if possible, still more universal.
There is no man living, who, when in tolerable health and spirits, has not
some share of it. The chance of gain is by every man more or less
over-valued, and the chance of loss is by most men under-valued, and by
scarce any man, who is in tolerable health and spirits, valued more than
it is worth.

That the chance of gain is naturally overvalued, we may learn from the
universal success of lotteries. The world neither ever saw, nor ever will
see, a perfectly fair lottery, or one in which the whole gain compensated
the whole loss; because the undertaker could make nothing by it. In the
state lotteries, the tickets are really not worth the price which is paid
by the original subscribers, and yet commonly sell in the market for
twenty, thirty, and sometimes forty per cent. advance. The vain hopes of
gaining some of the great prizes is the sole cause of this demand. The
soberest people scarce look upon it as a folly to pay a small sum for the
chance of gaining ten or twenty thousand pounds, though they know that
even that small sum is perhaps twenty or thirty per cent. more than the
chance is worth. In a lottery in which no prize exceeded twenty pounds,
though in other respects it approached much nearer to a perfectly fair one
than the common state lotteries, there would not be the same demand for
tickets. In order to have a better chance for some of the great prizes,
some people purchase several tickets; and others, small shares in a still
greater number. There is not, however, a more certain proposition in
mathematics, than that the more tickets you adventure upon, the more
likely you are to be a loser. Adventure upon all the tickets in the
lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your
tickets, the nearer you approach to this certainty.

That the chance of loss is frequently undervalued, and scarce ever valued
more than it is worth, we may learn from the very moderate profit of
insurers. In order to make insurance, either from fire or sea-risk, a
trade at all, the common premium must be sufficient to compensate the
common losses, to pay the expense of management, and to afford such a
profit as might have been drawn from an equal capital employed in any
common trade. The person who pays no more than this, evidently pays no
more than the real value of the risk, or the lowest price at which he can
reasonably expect to insure it. But though many people have made a little
money by insurance, very few have made a great fortune; and, from this
consideration alone, it seems evident enough that the ordinary balance of
profit and loss is not more advantageous in this than in other common
trades, by which so many people make fortunes. Moderate, however, as the
premium of insurance commonly is, many people despise the risk too much to
care to pay it. Taking the whole kingdom at an average, nineteen houses in
twenty, or rather, perhaps, ninety-nine in a hundred, are not insured from
fire. Sea-risk is more alarming to the greater part of people; and the
proportion of ships insured to those not insured is much greater. Many
sail, however, at all seasons, and even in time of war, without any
insurance. This may sometimes, perhaps, be done without any imprudence.
When a great company, or even a great merchant, has twenty or thirty ships
at sea, they may, as it were, insure one another. The premium saved up on
them all may more than compensate such losses as they are likely to meet
with in the common course of chances. The neglect of insurance upon
shipping, however, in the same manner as upon houses, is, in most cases,
the effect of no such nice calculation, but of mere thoughtless rashness,
and presumptuous contempt of the risk.

The contempt of risk, and the presumptuous hope of success, are in no
period of life more active than at the age at which young people choose
their professions. How little the fear of misfortune is then capable of
balancing the hope of good luck, appears still more evidently in the
readiness of the common people to enlist as soldiers, or to go to sea,
than in the eagerness of those of better fashion to enter into what are
called the liberal professions.

What a common soldier may lose is obvious enough. Without regarding the
danger, however, young volunteers never enlist so readily as at the
beginning of a new war; and though they have scarce any chance of
preferment, they figure to themselves, in their youthful fancies, a
thousand occasions of acquiring honour and distinction which never occur.
These romantic hopes make the whole price of their blood. Their pay is
less than that of common labourers, and, in actual service, their fatigues
are much greater.

The lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageous as that of the
army. The son of a creditable labourer or artificer may frequently go to
sea with his father’s consent; but if he enlists as a soldier, it is
always without it. Other people see some chance of his making something by
the one trade; nobody but himself sees any of his making any thing by the
other. The great admiral is less the object of public admiration than the
great general; and the highest success in the sea service promises a less
brilliant fortune and reputation than equal success in the land. The same
difference runs through all the inferior degrees of preferment in both. By
the rules of precedency, a captain in the navy ranks with a colonel in the
army; but he does not rank with him in the common estimation. As the great
prizes in the lottery are less, the smaller ones must be more numerous.
Common sailors, therefore, more frequently get some fortune and preferment
than common soldiers; and the hope of those prizes is what principally
recommends the trade. Though their skill and dexterity are much superior
to that of almost any artificers; and though their whole life is one
continual scene of hardship and danger; yet for all this dexterity and
skill, for all those hardships and dangers, while they remain in the
condition of common sailors, they receive scarce any other recompence but
the pleasure of exercising the one and of surmounting the other. Their
wages are not greater than those of common labourers at the port which
regulates the rate of seamen’s wages. As they are continually going from
port to port, the monthly pay of those who sail from all the different
ports of Great Britain, is more nearly upon a level than that of any other
workmen in those different places; and the rate of the port to and from
which the greatest number sail, that is, the port of London, regulates
that of all the rest. At London, the wages of the greater part of the
different classes of workmen are about double those of the same classes at
Edinburgh. But the sailors who sail from the port of London, seldom earn
above three or four shillings a month more than those who sail from the
port of Leith, and the difference is frequently not so great. In time of
peace, and in the merchant-service, the London price is from a guinea to
about seven-and-twenty shillings the calendar month. A common labourer in
London, at the rate of nine or ten shillings a week, may earn in the
calendar month from forty to five-and-forty shillings. The sailor, indeed,
over and above his pay, is supplied with provisions. Their value, however,
may not perhaps always exceed the difference between his pay and that of
the common labourer; and though it sometimes should, the excess will not
be clear gain to the sailor, because he cannot share it with his wife and
family, whom he must maintain out of his wages at home.

The dangers and hair-breadth escapes of a life of adventures, instead of
disheartening young people, seem frequently to recommend a trade to them.
A tender mother, among the inferior ranks of people, is often afraid to
send her son to school at a sea-port town, lest the sight of the ships,
and the conversation and adventures of the sailors, should entice him to
go to sea. The distant prospect of hazards, from which we can hope to
extricate ourselves by courage and address, is not disagreeable to us, and
does not raise the wages of labour in any employment. It is otherwise with
those in which courage and address can be of no avail. In trades which are
known to be very unwholesome, the wages of labour are always remarkably
high. Unwholesomeness is a species of disagreeableness, and its effects
upon the wages of labour are to be ranked under that general head.

In all the different employments of stock, the ordinary rate of profit
varies more or less with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns.
These are, in general, less uncertain in the inland than in the foreign
trade, and in some branches of foreign trade than in others; in the trade
to North America, for example, than in that to Jamaica. The ordinary rate
of profit always rises more or less with the risk. It does not, however,
seem to rise in proportion to it, or so as to compensate it completely.
Bankruptcies are most frequent in the most hazardous trades. The most
hazardous of all trades, that of a smuggler, though, when the adventure
succeeds, it is likewise the most profitable, is the infallible road to
bankruptcy. The presumptuous hope of success seems to act here as upon all
other occasions, and to entice so many adventurers into those hazardous
trades, that their competition reduces the profit below what is sufficient
to compensate the risk. To compensate it completely, the common returns
ought, over and above the ordinary profits of stock, not only to make up
for all occasional losses, but to afford a surplus profit to the
adventurers, of the same nature with the profit of insurers. But if the
common returns were sufficient for all this, bankruptcies would not be
more frequent in these than in other trades.

Of the five circumstances, therefore, which vary the wages of labour, two
only affect the profits of stock; the agreeableness or disagreeableness of
the business, and the risk or security with which it is attended. In point
of agreeableness or disagreeableness, there is little or no difference in
the far greater part of the different employments of stock, but a great
deal in those of labour; and the ordinary profit of stock, though it rises
with the risk, does not always seem to rise in proportion to it. It should
follow from all this, that, in the same society or neighbourhood, the
average and ordinary rates of profit in the different employments of stock
should be more nearly upon a level than the pecuniary wages of the
different sorts of labour.

They are so accordingly. The difference between the earnings of a common
labourer and those of a well employed lawyer or physician, is evidently
much greater than that between the ordinary profits in any two different
branches of trade. The apparent difference, besides, in the profits of
different trades, is generally a deception arising from our not always
distinguishing what ought to be considered as wages, from what ought to be
considered as profit.

Apothecaries’ profit is become a bye-word, denoting something uncommonly
extravagant. This great apparent profit, however, is frequently no more
than the reasonable wages of labour. The skill of an apothecary is a much
nicer and more delicate matter than that of any artificer whatever; and
the trust which is reposed in him is of much greater importance. He is the
physician of the poor in all cases, and of the rich when the distress or
danger is not very great. His reward, therefore, ought to be suitable to
his skill and his trust; and it arises generally from the price at which
he sells his drugs. But the whole drugs which the best employed apothecary
in a large market-town, will sell in a year, may not perhaps cost him
above thirty or forty pounds. Though he should sell them, therefore, for
three or four hundred, or at a thousand per cent. profit, this may
frequently be no more than the reasonable wages of his labour, charged, in
the only way in which he can charge them, upon the price of his drugs. The
greater part of the apparent profit is real wages disguised in the garb of
profit.

In a small sea-port town, a little grocer will make forty or fifty per
cent. upon a stock of a single hundred pounds, while a considerable
wholesale merchant in the same place will scarce make eight or ten per
cent. upon a stock of ten thousand. The trade of the grocer may be
necessary for the conveniency of the inhabitants, and the narrowness of
the market may not admit the employment of a larger capital in the
business. The man, however, must not only live by his trade, but live by
it suitably to the qualifications which it requires. Besides possessing a
little capital, he must be able to read, write, and account and must be a
tolerable judge, too, of perhaps fifty or sixty different sorts of goods,
their prices, qualities, and the markets where they are to be had
cheapest. He must have all the knowledge, in short, that is necessary for
a great merchant, which nothing hinders him from becoming but the want of
a sufficient capital. Thirty or forty pounds a year cannot be considered
as too great a recompence for the labour of a person so accomplished.
Deduct this from the seemingly great profits of his capital, and little
more will remain, perhaps, than the ordinary profits of stock. The greater
part of the apparent profit is, in this case too, real wages.

The difference between the apparent profit of the retail and that of the
wholesale trade, is much less in the capital than in small towns and
country villages. Where ten thousand pounds can be employed in the grocery
trade, the wages of the grocer’s labour must be a very trifling addition
to the real profits of so great a stock. The apparent profits of the
wealthy retailer, therefore, are there more nearly upon a level with those
of the wholesale merchant. It is upon this account that goods sold by
retail are generally as cheap, and frequently much cheaper, in the capital
than in small towns and country villages. Grocery goods, for example, are
generally much cheaper; bread and butchers’ meat frequently as cheap. It
costs no more to bring grocery goods to the great town than to the country
village; but it costs a great deal more to bring corn and cattle, as the
greater part of them must be brought from a much greater distance. The
prime cost of grocery goods, therefore, being the same in both places,
they are cheapest where the least profit is charged upon them. The prime
cost of bread and butchers’ meat is greater in the great town than in the
country village; and though the profit is less, therefore they are not
always cheaper there, but often equally cheap. In such articles as bread
and butchers’ meat, the same cause which diminishes apparent profit,
increases prime cost. The extent of the market, by giving employment to
greater stocks, diminishes apparent profit; but by requiring supplies from
a greater distance, it increases prime cost. This diminution of the one
and increase of the other, seem, in most cases, nearly to counterbalance
one another; which is probably the reason that, though the prices of corn
and cattle are commonly very different in different parts of the kingdom,
those of bread and butchers’ meat are generally very nearly the same
through the greater part of it.

Though the profits of stock, both in the wholesale and retail trade, are
generally less in the capital than in small towns and country villages,
yet great fortunes are frequently acquired from small beginnings in the
former, and scarce ever in the latter. In small towns and country
villages, on account of the narrowness of the market, trade cannot always
be extended as stock extends. In such places, therefore, though the rate
of a particular person’s profits may be very high, the sum or amount of
them can never be very great, nor consequently that of his annual
accumulation. In great towns, on the contrary, trade can be extended as
stock increases, and the credit of a frugal and thriving man increases
much faster than his stock. His trade is extended in proportion to the
amount of both; and the sum or amount of his profits is in proportion to
the extent of his trade, and his annual accumulation in proportion to the
amount of his profits. It seldom happens, however, that great fortunes are
made, even in great towns, by any one regular, established, and well-known
branch of business, but in consequence of a long life of industry,
frugality, and attention. Sudden fortunes, indeed, are sometimes made in
such places, by what is called the trade of speculation. The speculative
merchant exercises no one regular, established, or well-known branch of
business. He is a corn merchant this year, and a wine merchant the next,
and a sugar, tobacco, or tea merchant the year after. He enters into every
trade, when he foresees that it is likely to be more than commonly
profitable, and he quits it when he foresees that its profits are likely
to return to the level of other trades. His profits and losses, therefore,
can bear no regular proportion to those of any one established and
well-known branch of business. A bold adventurer may sometimes acquire a
considerable fortune by two or three successful speculations, but is just
as likely to lose one by two or three unsuccessful ones. This trade can be
carried on nowhere but in great towns. It is only in places of the most
extensive commerce and correspondence that the intelligence requisite for
it can be had.

The five circumstances above mentioned, though they occasion considerable
inequalities in the wages of labour and profits of stock, occasion none in
the whole of the advantages and disadvantages, real or imaginary, of the
different employments of either. The nature of those circumstances is
such, that they make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and
counterbalance a great one in others.

In order, however, that this equality may take place in the whole of their
advantages or disadvantages, three things are requisite, even where there
is the most perfect freedom. First the employments must be well known and
long established in the neighbourhood; secondly, they must be in their
ordinary, or what may be called their natural state; and, thirdly, they
must be the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them.

First, this equality can take place only in those employments which are
well known, and have been long established in the neighbourhood.

Where all other circumstances are equal, wages are generally higher in new
than in old trades. When a projector attempts to establish a new
manufacture, he must at first entice his workmen from other employments,
by higher wages than they can either earn in their own trades, or than the
nature of his work would otherwise require; and a considerable time must
pass away before he can venture to reduce them to the common level.
Manufactures for which the demand arises altogether from fashion and
fancy, are continually changing, and seldom last long enough to be
considered as old established manufactures. Those, on the contrary, for
which the demand arises chiefly from use or necessity, are less liable to
change, and the same form or fabric may continue in demand for whole
centuries together. The wages of labour, therefore, are likely to be
higher in manufactures of the former, than in those of the latter kind.
Birmingham deals chiefly in manufactures of the former kind; Sheffield in
those of the latter; and the wages of labour in those two different places
are said to be suitable to this difference in the nature of their
manufactures.

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce,
or of any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation from which
the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. These profits
sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they
are quite otherwise; but, in general, they bear no regular proportion to
those of other old trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds,
they are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes
thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the
level of other trades.

Secondly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages
of the different employments of labour and stock, can take place only in
the ordinary, or what may be called the natural state of those
employments.

The demand for almost every different species of labour is sometimes
greater, and sometimes less than usual. In the one case, the advantages of
the employment rise above, in the other they fall below the common level.
The demand for country labour is greater at hay-time and harvest than
during the greater part of the year; and wages rise with the demand. In
time of war, when forty or fifty thousand sailors are forced from the
merchant service into that of the king, the demand for sailors to merchant
ships necessarily rises with their scarcity; and their wages, upon such
occasions, commonly rise from a guinea and seven-and-twenty shillings to
forty shillings and three pounds a-month. In a decaying manufacture, on
the contrary, many workmen, rather than quit their own trade, are
contented with smaller wages than would otherwise be suitable to the
nature of their employment.

The profits of stock vary with the price of the commodities in which it is
employed. As the price of any commodity rises above the ordinary or
average rate, the profits of at least some part of the stock that is
employed in bringing it to market, rise above their proper level, and as
it falls they sink below it. All commodities are more or less liable to
variations of price, but some are much more so than others. In all
commodities which are produced by human industry, the quantity of industry
annually employed is necessarily regulated by the annual demand, in such a
manner that the average annual produce may, as nearly as possible, be
equal to the average annual consumption. In some employments, it has
already been observed, the same quantity of industry will always produce
the same, or very nearly the same quantity of commodities. In the linen or
woollen manufactures, for example, the same number of hands will annually
work up very nearly the same quantity of linen and woollen cloth. The
variations in the market price of such commodities, therefore, can arise
only from some accidental variation in the demand. A public mourning
raises the price of black cloth. But as the demand for most sorts of plain
linen and woollen cloth is pretty uniform, so is likewise the price. But
there are other employments in which the same quantity of industry will
not always produce the same quantity of commodities. The same quantity of
industry, for example, will, in different years, produce very different
quantities of corn, wine, hops, sugar, tobacco, etc. The price of such
commodities, therefore, varies not only with the variations of demand, but
with the much greater and more frequent variations of quantity, and is
consequently extremely fluctuating; but the profit of some of the dealers
must necessarily fluctuate with the price of the commodities. The
operations of the speculative merchant are principally employed about such
commodities. He endeavours to buy them up when he foresees that their
price is likely to rise, and to sell them when it is likely to fall.

Thirdly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of
the different employments of labour and stock, can take place only in such
as are the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them.

When a person derives his subsistence from one employment, which does not
occupy the greater part of his time, in the intervals of his leisure he is
often willing to work at another for less wages than would otherwise suit
the nature of the employment.

There still subsists, in many parts of Scotland, a set of people called
cottars or cottagers, though they were more frequent some years ago than
they are now. They are a sort of out-servants of the landlords and
farmers. The usual reward which they receive from their master is a house,
a small garden for pot-herbs, as much grass as will feed a cow, and,
perhaps, an acre or two of bad arable land. When their master has occasion
for their labour, he gives them, besides, two pecks of oatmeal a-week,
worth about sixteen pence sterling. During a great part of the year, he
has little or no occasion for their labour, and the cultivation of their
own little possession is not sufficient to occupy the time which is left
at their own disposal. When such occupiers were more numerous than they
are at present, they are said to have been willing to give their spare
time for a very small recompence to any body, and to have wrought for less
wages than other labourers. In ancient times, they seem to have been
common all over Europe. In countries ill cultivated, and worse inhabited,
the greater part of landlords and farmers could not otherwise provide
themselves with the extraordinary number of hands which country labour
requires at certain seasons. The daily or weekly recompence which such
labourers occasionally received from their masters, was evidently not the
whole price of their labour. Their small tenement made a considerable part
of it. This daily or weekly recompence, however, seems to have been
considered as the whole of it, by many writers who have collected the
prices of labour and provisions in ancient times, and who have taken
pleasure in representing both as wonderfully low.

The produce of such labour comes frequently cheaper to market than would
otherwise be suitable to its nature. Stockings, in many parts of Scotland,
are knit much cheaper than they can anywhere be wrought upon the loom.
They are the work of servants and labourers who derive the principal part
of their subsistence from some other employment. More than a thousand pair
of Shetland stockings are annually imported into Leith, of which the price
is from fivepence to seven-pence a pair. At Lerwick, the small capital of
the Shetland islands, tenpence a-day, I have been assured, is a common
price of common labour. In the same islands, they knit worsted stockings
to the value of a guinea a pair and upwards.

The spinning of linen yarn is carried on in Scotland nearly in the same
way as the knitting of stockings, by servants, who are chiefly hired for
other purposes. They earn but a very scanty subsistence, who endeavour to
get their livelihood by either of those trades. In most parts of Scotland,
she is a good spinner who can earn twentypence a-week.

In opulent countries, the market is generally so extensive, that any one
trade is sufficient to employ the whole labour and stock of those who
occupy it. Instances of people living by one employment, and, at the same
time, deriving some little advantage from another, occur chiefly in poor
countries. The following instance, however, of something of the same kind,
is to be found in the capital of a very rich one. There is no city in
Europe, I believe, in which house-rent is dearer than in London, and yet I
know no capital in which a furnished apartment can be hired so cheap.
Lodging is not only much cheaper in London than in Paris; it is much
cheaper than in Edinburgh, of the same degree of goodness; and, what may
seem extraordinary, the dearness of house-rent is the cause of the
cheapness of lodging. The dearness of house-rent in London arises, not
only from those causes which render it dear in all great capitals, the
dearness of labour, the dearness of all the materials of building, which
must generally be brought from a great distance, and, above all, the
dearness of ground-rent, every landlord acting the part of a monopolist,
and frequently exacting a higher rent for a single acre of bad land in a
town, than can be had for a hundred of the best in the country; but it
arises in part from the peculiar manners and customs of the people, which
oblige every master of a family to hire a whole house from top to bottom.
A dwelling-house in England means every thing that is contained under the
same roof. In France, Scotland, and many other parts of Europe, it
frequently means no more than a single storey. A tradesman in London is
obliged to hire a whole house in that part of the town where his customers
live. His shop is upon the ground floor, and he and his family sleep in
the garret; and he endeavours to pay a part of his house-rent by letting
the two middle storeys to lodgers. He expects to maintain his family by
his trade, and not by his lodgers. Whereas at Paris and Edinburgh, people
who let lodgings have commonly no other means of subsistence; and the
price of the lodging must pay, not only the rent of the house, but the
whole expense of the family.