Page:Progress and poverty - an inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions, and of increase of want with increase of wealth - the remedy (IA progresspovertyi00georiala).pdf/215

Chap. VI. their effects, for sometimes the same cause operates in both ways) may be separated into two classes, according as they tend only to raise apparent wages or as they tend to raise real wages—that is, to increase the average reward for equal exertion. The high wages of some occupations much resemble what Adam Smith compares them to, the prizes of a lottery, in which the great gain of one is made up from the losses of many others. This is not only true of the professions by means of which Dr. Smith illustrates the principle, but is largely true of the wages of superintendence in mercantile pursuits, as shown by the fact that over ninety per cent. of the mercantile firms that commence business ultimately fail. The higher wages of those occupations which can only be prosecuted in certain states of the weather, or are otherwise intermittent and uncertain, are also of this class; while differences that arise from hardship, discredit, unhealthiness, etc., imply differences of sacrifice, the increased compensation for which only preserves the level of equal returns for equal exertions. All these differences are, in fact, equalizations, arising from circumstances which, to use the words of Adam Smith, "make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments and counterbalance a great one in others." But, besides these merely apparent differences, there are real differences in wages between occupations, which are caused by the greater or less rarity of the qualities required—greater abilities or skill, whether natural or acquired, commanding on the average greater wages. Now, these qualities, whether natural or acquired, are essentially analogous to differences in strength and quickness in manual labor, and as in manual labor the higher wages paid the man who can do more would be based upon wages paid to those who can only do the average amount, so wages in the occupations requiring superior abilities and skill must depend upon the common wages paid for ordinary abilities and skill.

It is, indeed, evident from observation, as it must be from theory, that whatever be the circumstances which produce the difference of wages in different occupations, and