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Chapter VIII
OF THE WAGES OF LABOUR

In this section, Smith describes how the wages of labour are dictated primarily by the competition among labourers and masters. When labourers bid against one another for limited opportunities for employment, the wages of labour collectively fall, whereas when employers compete against one another for limited supplies of labour, the wages of labour collectively rise. However, this process of competition is often circumvented by combinations among laborers and among masters. When labourers combine and no longer bid against one another, their wages rise, whereas when masters combine, wages fall. In Smith's day, it should be noted, organized labour was dealt with very harshly by the law.

In societies where the amount of labour is in abundance to the amount of revenue which may be used to pay for waged labour, the competition among workers is greater than the competition among masters, and wages fall; inversely, where excess revenue is in abundance, the wages of labour rise. Smith argues that, therefore, the wages of labour only rise as a result of greater revenue disposed to pay for labour. Labour is the same as any other commodity in this respect thought Smith,

"the demand for men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men; quickens it when it goes on too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast. It is this demand which regulates and determines the state of propagation in all the different countries of the world, in North America, in Europe, and in China; which renders it rapidly progressive in the first, slow and gradual in the second, and altogether stationary in the last."

However, the amount of revenue must be increasing constantly in proportion to the amount of labour in order for wages to remain high. Smith illustrates this by juxtaposing England with the North American colonies. In England, there is certainly a greater amount of revenue than in the colonies; however, the wages of labour are lower, because more workers would flock to new employment opportunities to which the large amount of revenue gives occasion, eventually competing against each other as much as they did before. By contrast, as capital continues to be introduced to the colonial economies at least at the same rate that population increases to "fill out" this excess capital, the wages of labour there are kept much higher than in England.

Smith was highly concerned about the problems of poverty. He writes,

"poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children... It is not uncommon... in the Highlands of Scotland for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two alive... In some places one half the children born die before they are four years of age; in many places before they are seven; and in almost all places before they are nine or ten. This great mortality, however, will every where be found chiefly among the children of the common people, who cannot afford to tend them with the same care as those of better station."

the only way to decide whether a man is rich or poor only depends on the amount of labour he is able to afford to purchase. "Labour is the real exchange for commodities"

Smith also describes the relation of cheap years and the production of manufactures versus the production in dear years. He argues that while some examples such as the linen production in France shows a correlation, another example in Scotland shows the opposite. He concludes that there are too many variables to make any statement about this.



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