Book I: Chapter 10

CHAPTER X.

OF WAGES AND PROFIT IN THE DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENTS OF LABOUR AND
STOCK.

The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and
stock, must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal, or continually tending to
equality. If, in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either more or
less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so
many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other
employments. This, at least, would be the case in a society where things were left to follow
their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free
both to choose what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought
proper. Every man's interest would prompt him to seek the advantageous, and to shun the
disadvantageous employment.

Pecuniary wages and profit, indeed, are everywhere in Europe extremely different, according
to the different employments of labour and stock. But this difference arises, partly from
certain circumstances in the employments themselves, which, either really, or at least in the
imagination of men, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and counterbalance a great
one in others, and partly from the policy of Europe, which nowhere leaves things at perfect
liberty.

The particular consideration of those circumstances, and of that policy, will divide this
Chapter into two parts.

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