To this category belong the kinds of labor which require extraordinary effort,[169-2] or which put life or health in unusual jeopardy.[169-3] But, indeed, when the danger attending any kind of work is made glorious by the romantic light of honor, or by still higher motives, it ceases to have any influence on wages.[169-4] On the other hand, the disreputableness of a business in itself raises wages;[169-5] whereas, scholars, poets, etc., leaving the charm inherent in their occupations out of account, are for the most part remunerated only by the honor paid them, and, not unfrequently, only by fame after they have gone hence.[169-6] And yet their talents are so rare, the preparation so laborious, the economic risk so great! Nor is there for the really creative workman any such thing as evening rest. (Riehl.) Common intellectual labor is worse paid in our days than it was, comparatively speaking, a generation ago; because the increased average education makes it less burthensome to most people, and even seem positively agreeable to many. It would, indeed, be a dangerous retrogressive step towards barbarism, if it should come to such a pass, that labor preponderantly intellectual should be permanently more poorly remunerated than mere muscular labor.[169-7] [169-8]
[169-1] Thus the chase, fishing in rivers (compare Theocrit., Idyll., 21), gardening, fine female manual labor, and literature.
[169-2] The high wages paid to mowers and threshers may be accounted for on this ground (§ 160). In countries that have a strong heavy soil, wages are frequently 20 per cent. higher than under circumstances otherwise similar where it is sandy or light. In Mexico, a digger gets about twice the wages of an agricultural laborer. (Senior, On the Value of Money, 56.)
[169-3] Almost every trade predisposes to some special disease. Compare Halfort, Enstehung, Verlauf und Behandlung der Krankheiten der Künstler und Gewerbetreibenden, 1845. Livy, Traité d'Hygiène publique et privée, 1850, II, 755. It has been noticed, in Sheffield, that thoughtless steel polishers look unfavorably on certain new inventions intended to protect workmen against inhaling small particles of stone and iron dust. They dread that if these inventions come into general use, their wages would be lowered in consequence; and prefer a short and merry life to one longer and more quiet.
In places in which nearly all kinds of work are dangerous, the danger cannot of course relatively raise the wages of anyone. Thus, in the Thuringian forest, the wages of the haulers of wood are very low. (Lotz, Revision, III, 151.)
[169-4] Missionaries! Besides the extremely small wages paid to common soldiers (in the German infantry only 36.5 thalers cash per annum, to which in Leipzig, for instance, rations, etc., add about 34 thalers more) is an outlay made by the government principally to effect a levy of the tax of the compulsory labor that lies in conscription. (Knies.) In the volunteer system, the difference between officers and men is wont to be much smaller. Thus, Gustav Wasa paid his German mercenaries as follows: 6 marks a month to captains, five to lieutenants and 4 to common soldiers. (Geijer, Schwed. Gesch., II, 125 seq.) Similarly in the case of the Greek hired troops. (Böckh, Staatshaushalt der Athener, I, 165 ff.) As to how little at the outbreak of a war, soldier earnest money is increased, and positions as officers most sought after, see Hermann, II, Aufl., 479.
[169-5] Thus, for instance, the skinning or flaying of dead animals is comparatively well paid, to which the rarity of the application of the work of executioners contributes. (J. Moser, Patr. Ph., I, No. 34.) The high wages of actors, singers, dancers, and especially of the female members of the stage, depends principally on the contempt with which they were formerly looked upon; excommunicated by the Catholic church, and a scarcely milder sentence passed upon them by the Protestant, until about the middle of the eighteenth century. (Schleiermacher, Christliche Sitte, 681.) Compare even J. J. Rousseau, Lettre sur les Spectacles à Mr. d'Alembert sur son Article Genève.
[169-6] Schiller's "Theilung der Erde." Blanqui says of the learned: "They are most frequently satisfied with a citizen-crown, and think themselves remunerated when justice has been done to their genius. Their magnanimity impels them, to their own injury, to diffuse their knowledge as rapidly as possible. Thus they are like the light of day which no one pays for, but which all enjoy, without thanking the giver as they ought." The reward of intellectual labor is called an honorarium. (Riehl, Die Deutsche Arbeit, 1861, 232.) According to J. B. Say, Traité, II, ch. 7, the poor wages of savants depends on the fact that they take to market, and all at once, a great quantity of what they produce, which cannot even be used up.
[169-7] In Switzerland, journeymen are often better paid than the clerks kept by the greater tradesmen. (Böhmert, Arbeiterverhältnisse, II, 168.) In England, also, since 1850, the wages for "unskilled labor" has risen, relatively, most. (Tooke, Hist. of Prices, VI, 177.) It would be a frightful peril to our whole civilization if school teachers and subordinate officials should be turned into enemies of the entire existing state of things by want.
[169-8] The high wages paid to engineers on railroads is accounted for by the wear, physical and mental, their employment entails, and also by their unavoidable expenses away from home; further, by the importance of the interests confided to their trust. On the Leipzig-Dresden Railway, locomotive engineers, for the most part previously journeymen blacksmiths, earned 900 thalers a year. Similarly, in the case of pilots. The high wages paid on board ships engaged in the slave-trade arose from the unhealthiness of the African coast, where formerly one-sixteenth of the crew died yearly (Edinburg Rev., 480), from the moral turpitude of the business, and from the severe penalties under which it was afterwards prohibited. On the other hand, the low wages paid to European mining laborers is largely the consequence of the certainty of being cared for in old age, of those so employed. Weavers' wages are low because the facility of learning the trade makes it possible for the business to be carried on at home; and hence there is a comparatively great pressure to engage in it. (Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture, 485 ff.)