SECTION CLXVIII.. Difference of Wages in Different Branches of Labor. (continued.)

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.