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 accordingly 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 intrusted.
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 his 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 employment to which he is educated is very different in different occupations.In the greater 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 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.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 that of more than twenty others who are never likely to make anything 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, are, 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.