When a species of work requires special current expenses to be made in order to its proper performance, these also should of course be made good to the workman in his wages. Most intellectual labor, for instance, requires quiet surroundings. The brain-worker cannot share his study with his family, and, therefore should receive wages or remuneration large enough in amount to enable him to arrange his dwelling accordingly. A similar circumstance, only in a much higher degree, enhances the price paid for diplomatic service.
[167-1] Excellent germs thereof in Adam Smith, Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 10, 1. Earlier yet, in Galiani, Della Moneta, I, 2. Cantillon, Nature du Commerce, 24 ff.
[167-2] Even in the case of mere manual labor, for instance, a skillful packer of goods is paid higher wages than a mere day laborer; a sower better than a plowman or a digger; a vintner, in general, better than an agricultural laborer: in the Palatinate of the Rhine, in the ratio of 36:24. Thus, almost anyone can paint a door or a house, while an artist possesses a species of natural monopoly.
[167-3] Thus, the Greek juggler, who understood how to throw lintels from a certain distance through the eye of a needle, was very appropriately rewarded by his king with a bushel of lintels. On the other hand, the high fee paid for an operation for cataract depends both on the great importance of the eye which cannot be replaced in any way, and on the rarity of the courage among doctors to pierce the eye of a living man. Very remarkable achievements, which it requires great education to understand, are generally paid for at a very low rate. (Stein, Lehrbuch, 123.)
[167-4] I need only recall Richelieu and Mazarin, the last of whom left an estate worth 200,000,000 livres. (Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., ch. 6.) In Parisian industries, few workmen are as well paid as those who are skilled in rapidly effecting changes of form. The so-called premières de modes frequently received more than 1,800 francs a year, while the apprêteuses received only from 15 to 20 sous a day. (Revue des deux Mondes, Sept. 15, 1850.) There are women there paid very well for making pin-cushions, pen-wipers, etc., each one of a different form; but as soon as any one form ceases to be a novelty, the wages paid for making it sinks to a minimum. (M. Mohl, Gewerbswissenschaftliche Reise durch Frankreich, 87.)
[167-5] Jewelers, lawyers, statesmen, generals. Senior says that of the income of £4,000 which a lawyer or a doctor draws, only £40 are wages for his labor; £3,000 are a rent paid for the possession of extraordinary talent, or for his good luck, and £960 as the interest on his intellectual capital, which is also the chief element of wealth. (Outline, 134.)
[167-6] On the sad experience of the tailors' association founded by Louis Blanc himself, at Clichy, and in consequence of which they soon gave up paying equal wages and returned to piece wages, see Journal des Economistes, Mars, 1850, 349.
[167-7] As the interest on land improvements assumes the character of rent, so also does that of the education of labor the character of wages. The rate of interest usual in a country, and the average duration of the life of the workman affect the capital thus invested as a species of annuity.
[167-8] Wages in the country are generally lower than in the cities. In the electorate of Hesse, for instance, on the supposition of steady employment, males, in the country, received 69 thalers, 23 silver groschens a year; females, 55 thalers, 9 silver groschens; in the cities, on the other hand, males, 88 thalers, 23 silver groschens, and females 61 thalers, 28 silver groschens. (Hildebrand,[TN 10] statistische Mittheilungen, 101, 137.) And so, according to Colquhoun, Treatise on Indigence, 1806, the English agricultural laborers received, on an average, £31 per annum, and manufacturing workmen, £55. The reason of this is, besides the greater facility of learning how to perform agricultural labor, the greater dearness of living in cities, and in England also, because industry has developed much more rapidly than agriculture.
[167-9] The cost of bringing up a common laborer, in England, according to Senior, is £40; a gentleman, £2,040. (Outlines, 205.) The more expensive an education which one acquires for its own sake and without any special object beyond this in view, is, the less can the capital laid out in it affect wages. (von Mangoldt, V. W. L., 382.)