An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

by no means the

same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as

possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter

in order to lower, the wages of labour.

 

It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon

all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the

other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in

number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or

at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of

the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the

price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes,

the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master

manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman,

could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already

acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month,

and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may

be as necessary to his master as his master is to him ; but the necessity is

not so immediate.

 

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though

frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account,

that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and

uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual

rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and

a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom,

indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and, one may say,

the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too,

sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour

even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and

secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they

sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are

never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently

resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen, who sometimes,

too, without any provocation of this kind, combine, of their own accord, to

raise tile price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the

high price of provisions, sometimes the great profit which their masters

make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or

defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point

to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and

sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and

act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either

starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their

demands. The masters, upon these occasions, are just as clamorous upon the

other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil

magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted

with so much severity against the combination of servants, labourers, and

journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from

the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the

interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the superior steadiness

of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the

workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence,

generally end in nothing but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.

 

But though, in disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have

the advantage, there is, however, a certain rate, below which it seems

impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of

the lowest species of labour.

 

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be

sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat

more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family. and the

race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Mr

Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of

common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance,

in order that, one with another, they may be enabled to bring up two

children; the labour of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on

the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself:

But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of

manhood. The poorest labourers, therefore, according to this account, must,

one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order; that two

may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary

maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of

one man. The labour of an able-bodied slave, the same author adds, is

computed to be worth double his maintenance ; and that of the meanest

labourer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than that of an able-bodied slave.

Thus far at least seems certain, that, in order to bring up a family, the

labour of the husband and wife together must, even in the lowest species of

common labour, be able to earn something more than what is precisely

necessary for their own maintenance; but in what proportion, whether in that

abovementioned, or many other, I shall not take upon me to determine.

 

There are certain circumstances, however, which sometimes give the labourers

an advantage, and enable them to raise their wages considerably above this

rate, evidently the lowest which is consistent with common humanity.

 

When in any country the demand for those who live by wages, labourers,

journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every

year furnishes employment for a greater number than had been employed the

year before, the workmen have no occasion to combine in order to raise their

wages. The scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who bid

against one another in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily break

through the natural combination of masters not to raise wages. The demand

for those who live by wages, it is evident, cannot increase but in proportion

to the increase of the funds which are destined to the payment of

wages. These funds are of two kinds, first, the revenue which is over and

above what is necessary for the maintenance; and, secondly, the stock which

is over and above what is necessary for the employment of their masters.

 

When the landlord, annuitant, or monied man, has a greater revenue than what

he judges sufficient to maintain his own family, he employs either the whole

or a part of the surplus in maintaining one or more menial servants.

Increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of those

servants.

 

When an independent workman, such as a weaver or shoemaker, has got more

stock than what is sufficient to purchase the materials of his own work, and

to maintain himself till he can dispose of it, he naturally employs one or

more journeymen with the surplus, in order to make a profit by their work.

Increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of his

journeymen.

 

The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases

with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot

possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the

increase of national wealth. The demand for those who live by wages,

therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and

cannot possibly increase without it.

 

It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual

increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not,

accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those

which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest.

England is certainly, in the present times, a much richer country than any

part of North America. The wages of labour, however, are much higher in

North America than in any part of England. In the province of New York,

common labourers earned in 1773, before the commencement

of the late disturbances, three shillings and sixpence currency, equal to

two shillings sterling, a-day ; ship-carpenters, ten shillings and sixpence

currency, with a pint of rum, worth sixpence sterling, equal in all to six

shillings and sixpence sterling; house-carpenters and bricklayers, eight

shillings currency, equal to four shillings and sixpence sterling ;

journeymen tailors, five shillings currency, equal to about two shillings

and tenpence sterling. These prices are all above the London price ; and

wages are said to be as high in the other colonies as in New York. The price

of provisions is everywhere in North America much lower than in England. A

dearth has never been known there. In the worst seasons they have always had

a sufficiency for themselves, though less for exportation. If the money

price of labour, therefore, be higher than it is anywhere in the

mother-country, its real price, the real command of the necessaries and

conveniencies of life which it conveys to the labourer, must be higher in a

still greater proportion.

 

But though North America is not yet so rich as England, it is much more

thriving, and advancing with much greater rapidity to the further

acquisition of riches. The most decisive mark of the prosperity of any

country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants. In Great

Britain, and most other European countries, they are not supposed to double

in less than five hundred years. In the British colonies in North

America, it has been found that they double in twenty or five-and-twenty

years. Nor in the present times is this increase principally owing to the

continual importation of new inhabitants, but to the great multiplication of

the species. Those who live to old age, it is said, frequently see there

from fifty to a hundred, and sometimes many more, descendants from their own

body. Labour is there so well rewarded, that a numerous family of children,

instead of being a burden, is a source of opulence and prosperity to the

parents. The labour of each child, before it can leave their house, is

computed to be worth a hundred pounds clear gain to them. A young widow with

four or five young children, who, among the middling or inferior ranks of

people in Europe, would have so little chance for a second husband, is there

frequently courted as a sort of fortune. The value of children is the

greatest of all encouragements to marriage. We cannot, therefore, wonder

that the people in North America should generally marry very young.

Notwithstanding the great increase occasioned by such early marriages, there

is a continual complaint of the scarcity of hands in North America. The

demand for labourers, the funds destined for maintaining them increase, it

seems, still faster than they can find labourers to employ.

 

Though the wealth of a country should be very great, yet if it has been long

stationary, we must not expect to find the wages of labour very high in it.

The funds destined for the payment of wages, the revenue and stock of its

inhabitants, may be of the greatest extent; but if they have continued for

several centuries of the same, or very nearly of the same extent, the number

of labourers employed every year could easily supply, and even more than

supply, the number wanted the following year. There could seldom be any

scarcity of hands, nor could the masters be obliged to bid against one