[167-10] If the salaries of clergymen are, on an average, lower than the income of a lawyer or a doctor, it is partly because theological candidates are provided for much earlier, and partly because of the lesser cost attending the study of theology. Thus, at the end of the eighteenth century, there were 350 students at the University of Tubingen who are maintained gratis, on foundation-money, and who had previously attended monastery schools, free of charge. (Nicolai, Reisebescreibungen, XI, 73.) The remarkable contrast between the high wages of the Athenian sophists and the low wages of modern abbés, Adam Smith accounts for principally by the many scholarships of modern times. In Saxony, in 1850 etc., the outlay by the state and of foundation-funds for the education of a student amounted to an average of nearly 140 thalers. (Engel.)
DIFFERENCE OF WAGES IN DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF LABOR.
(CONTINUED.)
B. The great economic risk of the work. When a branch of labor necessary to a country is, notwithstanding, attended by many chances of failure to the individual who devotes himself to it, a sufficient supply of the labor can be relied on only in case that the danger attending it is compensated for by a corresponding premium paid to success.[168-1] The choice of a profession or avocation, Adam Smith has compared to a lottery, in which the fortunate winners gain only what the unfortunate have lost. The greater the prizes, the greater also the number of blanks.[168-2] However, the surplus wages in risky kinds of labor are not sufficient to constitute a full insurance premium. This is connected with the vanity of men who, as a rule, over-estimate not only their talent but their good fortune,[168-3] and especially in youth, when they decide on the choice of a profession, etc. According to this, wages must be specially low where even complete failure does not endanger the living or the social position of the workman. Partly on this account are the industries carried on by women so poorly remunerated;[168-4] as also such work as is done by a large class of people to fill up their leisure hours.[168-5]
The prospect of frequent interruptions in any kind of labor must have the same effect on the wages paid for it as its economic or business risk.[168-6] Thus, for instance, a mason or roofer must earn at least enough, during the days he can work, to enable him to live during the time he is prevented working by bad weather. Hence, the highness of his wages may, in some respects, be called an apparent one.[168-7] Wages paid by the week more generally tend to equality than wages paid by the day, and more so yet wages paid by the year, for then winter and summer compensate the one for the other. When the workman must be ever ready to perform his task, account must be taken not only of the number of hours he is engaged, but also of fractions of his waiting hours, which must be paid for likewise.[168-8] Two half days cost almost everywhere more than one whole one.
The number of holidays plays a very important part here. In Protestant countries, the workman must, in about three hundred work days, earn enough to live on for about sixty holidays as well. In Catholic countries, before the time of Clement XIV., he had to earn enough in addition to support himself for about one hundred and fifty holidays, on ninety of which he performed no work whatever.[168-9] So large a number of holidays produces a higher rate of wages or necessitates a low standard of life among the working classes.[168-10] Something similar is true of evening leisure and rest;[168-11] i. e., of the time when labor ceases.
[168-1] The greater the preparatory cost of labor is, the more difficult it is for workmen to go from one kind of labor to another; but, at the same time, the more certain it is that, without the inducement of a premium paid, there will be no after increase or recruiting of labor-force.
[168-2] Thus, for instance, in the country, where doctors generally get along well enough, the most skillful never obtains any very distinguished position. But, in large cities, on the other hand, there is the greatest difference between first-class physicians and obscure practitioners. Great generals usually obtain a larger income and greater influence than great admirals; and so it is that prizes in the military lottery are greater, and there are therefore more blanks than in the naval lottery. The common soldier is almost everywhere worse paid than the common sailor. (Adam Smith.) To some extent, this depends on the prison-like life of the seaman in times of service, and in the absence of an attractive uniform. As to the extent that the lottery comparison is defective, see Macleod, Elements, 215.
[168-3] Who, otherwise, would have anything to do with a lottery in which the mass of players were certain to lose, and the keeper of it to gain? And this accounts for the fact well known to all financiers, that the amount of the budget remaining the same, a greater eagerness to enter the military service of the country is inspired by endowing the higher positions munificently—provided they are attainable by all—and paying the lower ones in a very niggardly way, than when the pay is made more uniform. Something similar is to be observed in the ecclesiastical service of the Roman and Protestant churches, inasmuch as the former, considered from an economic point of view, offers more magnificent prizes, but also more blanks, while the latter divides its emoluments more equally.
[168-4] As most seamstresses are, when the worst comes to the worst, supported by their parents, connections by marriage, brothers, etc., the condition of those who have to live by their needle must be a pretty hard one. Who is not familiar with the refrain to Hood's celebrated song of the shirt: "Oh God, that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap!" There is a "distressed needlewoman's society" in London. They undoubtedly suffer from an overcrowding of their avocation, yet their chief desire is that the competition of all who do not live exclusively by the labor of their hands should be prohibited; for instance, that of seamstresses who are paid for their work outside of factories. (Edinb. Rev., 1851, 24.) In Paris, in 1845, the yearly earnings of women workers averaged 375 francs, their yearly wants 500 francs. (Journal des Economistes, X, 250.) This does not apply to female servants whose wages, especially in highly cultured localities as the vicinity of large cities (Holstein, Brandenburg), is very high. In England, the wages of female domestics is frequently higher than in the United States; and hence nearly two-thirds of all English girls between fifteen and twenty-five years of age serve as maids. Browning, Political and Domestic Condition of Great Britain, 413; Carey, Rate of Wages, 92. A remarkable indication that women thrive only in the family. (Compare § 250.)