Chapter XXIV: Section CLXVII

DIFFERENCE OF WAGES IN DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF LABOR.

All the causes which make wages higher in some branches of labor; than in others, may be divided into three great categories.[167-1]

A. Rare personal acquirements. The supply of labor requiring rare personal ability will always be limited.[167-2] Such labor must, naturally, have great value in use, when a small supply of it is met by a great demand.[167-3] It sometimes happens that a species of labor can be utilized only by a small circle of persons who demand it. But the wages for it is raised very high by the great solvability of those who do demand it. How frequently it happens, for instance, that a minister is paid a very high salary for the ability he possesses of making complicated and dry affairs of state attractive to the personal taste of his sovereign.[167-4] Here, particularly, the confidence which the workman inspires by his skill and fidelity enters as an element. Without this confidence, there are many kinds of business which would be crushed out entirely by the control it would be necessary to subject them to, and others would not be possible at all.[167-5] When, for instance, in a large manufacturing establishment, understrappers, workmen, foremen, subordinate superintendents, directors, etc., draw different salaries, their pay, if equitably graduated, should be in harmony with the principles laid down in § 148, The head of a manufacturing establishment, for instance, who has organized a more perfect division and coöperation of labor, himself, and by means of which ten men are enabled to perform the work before performed by twenty, may equitably retain, as the reward of his organizing power, a considerable amount of what was previously paid out in wages. Louis Blanc's proposition, that all should receive equal salaries is, as Bastiat remarks, equivalent to the assertion that a yard of cloth manufactured by a lazy or unskillful workman is worth as much as two yards manufactured by an industrious and skillful one.[167-6]

Such qualified labor, as is treated of here, may be most accurately estimated, the quality of which supposes a certain cost of acquisition. This cost may be considered as the outlay of so much capital, which, with interest,[167-7] should come back to the workman in his wages. Otherwise, others would be deterred from entering the same business by the example of his loss. Here, especially, it is necessary to take into account the long period of apprenticeship or tuition, and the large fees paid for the same; and this, whether they depend on the natural difficulties in the way of acquirement or on artificial obstacles opposed to freedom of competition.[167-8] The influence of these circumstances is particularly great in those kinds of labor which require a "liberal" education.[167-9] Among the costs of production proper, peculiar to this labor-force, must be included, also, the necessary support of the workman, during the interval between the completion of his studies and the beginning of his full reward.[167-10]

When a species of work requires special current expenses to be made in order to its proper performance, these also should of course be made good to the workman in his wages. Most intellectual labor, for instance, requires quiet surroundings. The brain-worker cannot share his study with his family, and, therefore should receive wages or remuneration large enough in amount to enable him to arrange his dwelling accordingly. A similar circumstance, only in a much higher degree, enhances the price paid for diplomatic service.

[Footnote 167-1: Excellent germs thereof in _Adam Smith_,
Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 10, 1. Earlier yet, in _Galiani_,
Della Moneta, I, 2. _Cantillon_, Nature du Commerce, 24 ff.]

[Footnote 167-2: Even in the case of mere manual labor, for
instance, a skillful packer of goods is paid higher wages
than a mere day laborer; a sower better than a plowman or a
digger; a vintner, in general, better than an agricultural
laborer: in the Palatinate of the Rhine, in the ratio of
36:24. Thus, almost anyone can paint a door or a house,
while an artist possesses a species of natural monopoly.]

[Footnote 167-3: Thus, the Greek juggler, who understood how
to throw lintels from a certain distance through the eye of
a needle, was very appropriately rewarded by his king with a
bushel of lintels. On the other hand, the high fee paid for
an operation for cataract depends both on the great
importance of the eye which cannot be replaced in any way,
and on the rarity of the courage among doctors to pierce the
eye of a living man. Very remarkable achievements, which it
requires great education to understand, are generally paid
for at a very low rate. (_Stein_, Lehrbuch, 123.)]

[Footnote 167-4: I need only recall _Richelieu_ and
_Mazarin_, the last of whom left an estate worth 200,000,000
livres. (_Voltaire_, Siècle de Louis XIV., ch. 6.) In
Parisian industries, few workmen are as well paid as those
who are skilled in rapidly effecting changes of form. The
so-called _premières de modes_ frequently received more than
1,800 francs a year, while the _apprêteuses_ received only
from 15 to 20 sous a day. (Revue des deux Mondes, Sept. 15,
1850.) There are women there paid very well for making
pin-cushions, pen-wipers, etc., each one of a different
form; but as soon as any one form ceases to be a novelty,
the wages paid for making it sinks to a minimum. (_M. Mohl_,
Gewerbswissenschaftliche Reise durch Frankreich, 87.)]

[Footnote 167-5: Jewelers, lawyers, statesmen, generals.
_Senior_ says that of the income of £4,000 which a lawyer or
a doctor draws, only £40 are wages for his labor; £3,000 are
a rent paid for the possession of extraordinary talent, or
for his good luck, and £960 as the interest on his
intellectual capital, which is also the chief element of
wealth. (Outline, 134.)]

[Footnote 167-6: On the sad experience of the tailors'
association founded by Louis Blanc himself, at Clichy, and
in consequence of which they soon gave up paying equal wages
and returned to piece wages, see Journal des Economistes,
Mars, 1850, 349.]

[Footnote 167-7: As the interest on land improvements
assumes the character of rent, so also does that of the
education of labor the character of wages. The rate of
interest usual in a country, and the average duration of the
life of the workman affect the capital thus invested as a
species of annuity.]

[Footnote 167-8: Wages in the country are generally lower
than in the cities. In the electorate of Hesse, for
instance, on the supposition of steady employment, males, in
the country, received 69 thalers, 23 silver groschens a
year; females, 55 thalers, 9 silver groschens; in the
cities, on the other hand, males, 88 thalers, 23 silver
groschens, and females 61 thalers, 28 silver groschens.
(_Hildebrand_, statistische Mittheilungen, 101, 137.) And
so, according to _Colquhoun_, Treatise on Indigence, 1806,
the English agricultural laborers received, on an average,
£31 per annum, and manufacturing workmen, £55. The reason of
this is, besides the greater facility of learning how to
perform agricultural labor, the greater dearness of living
in cities, and in England also, because industry has
developed much more rapidly than agriculture.]

[Footnote 167-9: The cost of bringing up a common laborer,
in England, according to _Senior_, is £40; a gentleman,
£2,040. (Outlines, 205.) The more expensive an education
which one acquires for its own sake and without any special
object beyond this in view, is, the less can the capital
laid out in it affect wages. (_von Mangoldt_, V. W. L.,
382.)]

[Footnote 167-10: If the salaries of clergymen are, on an
average, lower than the income of a lawyer or a doctor, it
is partly because theological candidates are provided for
much earlier, and partly because of the lesser cost
attending the study of theology. Thus, at the end of the
eighteenth century, there were 350 students at the
University of Tubingen who are maintained gratis, on
foundation-money, and who had previously attended monastery
schools, free of charge. (_Nicolai_, Reisebescreibungen, XI,
73.) The remarkable contrast between the high wages of the
Athenian sophists and the low wages of modern abbés, Adam
Smith accounts for principally by the many scholarships of
modern times. In Saxony, in 1850 etc., the outlay by the
state and of foundation-funds for the education of a student
amounted to an average of nearly 140 thalers. (_Engel._)]