An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith [e book reader pdf TXT] 📗
- Author: Adam Smith
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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
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