An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

60

The Wealth of Nations

longing to two distinct persons, the profits of stock, and the wages

of labour.

Such cases, however, are not very frequent; and in every part of

Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is inde-

pendent, and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to

be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and

the owner of the stock which employs him another.

What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere

upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose

interests are 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 dis-

pute, 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 sel-

dom, 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 combina-

tions to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are

always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the mo-

ment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they some-

times 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

---

61

Adam Smith

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 pro-

visions, sometimes the great profit which their masters make by

their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defen-

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

point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loud-

est clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and

outrage. They are desperate, and act with the folly and extrava-

gance 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 tu-

multuous 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 subsis-

tence, generally end in nothing but the punishment or ruin of the

ringleaders.

But though, in disputes with their workmen, masters must gen-

erally 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 occa-

sions 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 at-

tendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient

to provide for herself: But one half the children born, it is com-

puted, die before the age of manhood. The poorest labourers, there-

fore, 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

---