[Born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, and educated at Glasgow University and Oxford University, Adam Smith (1723-1790) held professorships first of logic and then of moral philosophy for thirteen years at Glasgow University. He also gave public lectures on English literature, jurisprudence, and political economy. He abandoned his academic career for a time to become private tutor to a young Duke. The pension from this enabled him to retire for ten years to his home town, where he worked on one of the most influential books of his time and afterwards, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), usually referred to simply, in abbreviation, as The Wealth of Nations. In 1778, Smith was appointed commissioner of customs and moved to Edinburgh, and in 1787 he was elected rector of Glasgow University.

        Smith wrote other books--The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1762-1763, published posthumously in 1963), and Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1795)--but none was as important as The Wealth of Nations, which became the foundation of classical economics and is still a standard textbook. Gathering ideas from others, Smith was so comprehensive and broadly illustrative that his book soon became an authority, and it went into five editions in Smith's lifetime (2nd edition, 1778; 3rd edition, 1784; 4th edition, 1786; 5th edition, 1789). The clarity and illustrative examples of Smith's book truly helped and continue to help explain a subject vital to all of us: economics; far fewer people should be averse to this academic subject, which deals with the crucial issues to all of us, except the super rich, of jobs (from manual labor and occupation, to profession), the work world, salaries, prices, the accumulation and expenditure of money, investments, taxes, and so on.

        As usual with eighteenth-century British prose stylists, Smith is fond of balance and parallelism (sometimes with alliteration, as in "their opinion of his fortune, probity, and prudence" [par. 15]), which he uses to great effect for comparison and contrast, as well as for a rather subtle ironic humor (cf. Edward Gibbon in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). An example of Smith's balance and parallelism used for comparison contrast, along with Smith's subtly ironic humor occurs in his examples and his structuring of them in the second paragraph, which culminates in a rather surprising illustration of a well-paid occupation of Smith's time.

        Other notable stylistic devices used by Smith in this selection, all explained in the Engl. 1101 composition handbook and your collegiate dictionary, to help convey or communicate his ideas include transitional words and phrases, metaphor, analogy (akin to metaphor and simile), allusion, paradox, and variation in sentence length. For example, Smith's clear transitional words and phrases (e.g., "First" in the first sentence of par. 2) help bring out the organization and movement of this chapter part, aiding the reader in following Smith's discussion. The metaphor of "the lottery" of the job market for lawyers (par. 16) helps explain their salary. The analogy of a worker and a manufacturing machine (par. 5) helps Smith explain management's expenditure of money on the job, comparing salary to outlay on equipment. The allusion to Theocritus (par. 3), one of the two great ancient Greek writers of pastoral literature, helps contrast the pastoral simplicity of earlier, more primitive cultures and the modern industrial world, from Smith's time to today. Smith's keen observation notes many paradoxes in the place of certain activities or jobs from ancient times to the modern world: e.g., an apparent inversion of the status of the job and its pay (par. 2), or the transmutation of an activity from essential to recreational (par. 3). Smith tends not to use very long sentences in his attempt to present a difficult, though crucial, subject clearly; however, his very first sentence is lengthy in its presentation of all the components of his subject (par. 1). In contrast, a short sentence may be used for the presentation of an example and to make a point more forcefully: e.g., "His work is much easier"(par. 2).

        Key terms and concepts that Smith uses are capital and stock. The economic system of the United States is a form of capitalism: money, capital, is put up by private persons (rather than the government) to establish a business (providing goods or services), including paying for necessary supplies, equipment, and workers. As Smith uses the term, stock refers not to the paper (or electronically-registered) securities so much in the news since the 1980's but rather the supply of goods or workers needed to make the business function. Thus, Smith refers to how the small stock of a tavern (the alcoholic beverages served in a tavern of eighteenth century England) yields, in comparison to the stock required by other businesses, an apparently disproportionately high profit (par. 4).

        [1] The five following are the principal circumstances that, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense, of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust that must be reposed in those who exercise them; and fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them.

        [2] First, the wages of labor vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honorableness or dishonorableness, of the employment. Thus in most places, take the year round, a journeyman tailor earns less than a journeyman weaver. His work is much easier. A journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith. His work is not always easier, but it is much cleanlier. A journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom earns so much in twelve hours as a collier, who is only a laborer, does in eight. His work is not quite so dirty, is less dangerous, and is carried on in daylight and above ground. Honor makes a great part of the reward of all honorable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavor to show by and by. Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.

        [3] Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become in its advanced state their most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity. In the advanced state of society, therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade what other people pursue as a pastime. Fishermen have been so since the time of Theocritus. A poacher is everywhere a very poor man in Great Britain. In countries where the rigor of the law suffers no poachers, the licensed hunter is not in a much better condition. The natural taste for those employments makes more people follow them than can live comfortably by them, and the produce of their labor, in proportion to its quantity, comes always too cheap to market to afford anything but the most scanty subsistence to the laborers.

        [4] Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labor. The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business. But there is scarce any common trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit.

        [5] Secondly, the wages of labor vary with the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense, of learning the business. When any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinary work to be performed by it before it is worn out, it must be expected, will replace the capital laid out upon it, with at least the ordinary profits. A man educated at the expense of much labor and time to any of those employments that require extraordinary dexterity and skill may be compared to one of those expensive machines. The work that he learns to perform, it must be expected, over and above the usual wages of common labor, will replace to him the whole expense of his education, with at least the ordinary profits of an equally valuable capital. It must do this, too, in a reasonable time, regard being had to the very uncertain duration of human life in the same manner as to the more certain duration of the machine.

        [6] The difference between the wages of skilled labor and those of common labor is founded upon this principle. The policy of Europe considers the labor of all mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers as skilled labor, and that of all country laborers as common labor. It seems to suppose that of the former to be of a more nice and delicate nature than that of the latter. It is so, perhaps, in some cases; but in the greater part it is quite otherwise, as I shall endeavor to show by and by. The laws and customs of Europe, therefore, in order to qualify any person for exercising the one species of labor, impose the necessity of an apprenticeship, though with different degrees of rigor in different places. They leave the other free and open to everybody. During the continuance of the apprenticeship, the whole labor of the apprentice belongs to his master. In the meantime, he must, in many cases, be maintained by his parents or relations, and in almost all cases must be clothed by them. Some money, too, is commonly given to the master for teaching him his trade. They who cannot give money give time, or become bound for more than the usual number of years, in consideration which, though it is not always advantageous to the master on account of the usual idleness of apprentices, is always disadvantageous to the apprentice. In country labor, on the contrary, the laborer, while he is employed about the easier, learns the more difficult parts of his business, and his own labor maintains him through all the different stages of his employment. It is reasonable, therefore, that in Europe the wages of mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers should be somewhat higher than those of common laborers. They are so accordingly, and their superior gains make them in most places be considered as a superior rank of people. This superiority, however, is generally very small; the daily or weekly earnings of journeymen in the more common sorts of manufactures, such as those of plain linen and woollen cloth, computed at an average, are, in most places, very little more than the day wages of common laborers. Their employment, indeed, is more steady and uniform, and the superiority of their earnings, taking the whole year together, may be somewhat greater. It seems evidently, however, to be no greater than what is sufficient to compensate the superior expense of their education.

        [7] Education in the ingenious arts and in the liberal professions, is still more tedious and expensive. The pecuniary recompense, therefore, of painters and sculptors, of lawyers and physicians, ought to be much more liberal: and it is so accordingly.

        [8] The profits of stock seem to be very little affected by the easiness or difficulty of learning the trade in which it is employed. All the different ways in which stock is commonly employed in great towns seem, in reality, to be almost equally easy and equally difficult to learn. One branch either of foreign or domestic trade cannot well be a much more intricate business than another.

        [9] Thirdly, the wages of labor in different occupations vary with the constancy or inconstancy of employment. Employment is much more constant in some trades than in others. In the greater part of manufactures, a journeyman may be pretty sure of employment almost every day in the year that he is able to work. A mason or bricklayer, on the contrary, can work neither in hard frost nor in foul weather, and his employment at all other times depends upon the occasional calls of his customers. He is liable, in consequence, to be frequently without any. What he earns, therefore, while he is employed, must not only maintain him while he is idle, but make him some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so precarious a situation must sometimes occasion. Where the computed earnings of the greater part of manufacturers, accordingly, are nearly upon a level with the day wages of common laborers, those of masons and bricklayers are generally from one half more to double those wages. Where common laborers earn four and five shillings a week, masons and bricklayers frequently earn seven and eight; where the former earn six, the latter often earn nine and ten, and where the former earn nine and ten, as in London, the latter commonly earn fifteen and eighteen. No species of skilled labor, however, seems more easy to learn than that of masons and bricklayers. Chair-men in London, during the summer season, are said sometimes to be employed as bricklayers. The high wages of those workmen, therefore, are not so much the recompense of their skill, as the compensation for the inconstancy of their employment.

        [10] A house carpenter seems to exercise rather a nicer and more ingenious trade than a mason. In most places, however, for it is not universally so, his day-wages are somewhat lower. His employment, though it depends much, does not depend so entirely, upon the occasional calls of his customers; and it is not liable to be interrupted by the weather.

        [11] When the trades which generally afford constant employment happen in a particular place not to do so, the wages of the workmen always rise a good deal above their ordinary proportion to those of common labor. In London, almost all journeymen artificers are liable to be called upon and dismissed by their masters from day to day, and from week to week, in the same manner as day-laborers in other places. The lowest order of artificers, journeymen tailors, accordingly, earn their half a crown a day, though eighteen pence may be reckoned the wages of common labor. In small towns and country villages, the wages of journeymen tailors frequently scarce equal those of common labor; but in London they are often many weeks without employment, particularly during the summer.

        [12] When the inconstancy of employment is combined with the hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of the work, it sometimes raises the wages of the most common labor above those of the most skillful artificers. A collier working by the piece is supposed, at Newcastle, to earn commonly about double, and in many parts of Scotland, about three times the wages of common labor. His high wages arise altogether from the hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of his work. His employment may, upon most occasions, be as constant as he pleases. The coal-heavers in London exercise a trade that in hardship, dirtiness, and disagreeableness, almost equals that of colliers; and from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrivals of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labor, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four and five times those wages. In the inquiry made into their condition a few years ago, it was found that at the rate at which they were then paid, they could earn from six to ten shillings a day. Six shillings are about four times the wages of common labor in London; and in every particular trade, the lowest common earnings may always be considered as those of the far greater number. How extravagant soever those earnings may appear, if they were more than sufficient to compensate all the disagreeable circumstances of the business, there would soon be so great a number of competitors as, in a trade which has no exclusive privilege, would quickly reduce them to a lower rate.

        [13] The constancy or inconstancy of employment cannot affect the ordinary profits of stock in any particular trade. Whether the stock is or is not constantly employed depends not upon the trade but the trader.

        [14] Fourthly, the wages of labor vary according to the small or great trust which must be reposed in the workmen. The wages of goldsmiths and jewelers are everywhere superior to those of many other workmen, not only of equal, but of much superior ingenuity, on account of the precious materials with which they are entrusted. We trust our health to the physician; our fortune and sometimes our life and reputation, to the lawyer and attorney. Such confidence could not safely be reposed in people of a very mean or low condition. Their reward must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in the society which so important a trust requires. The long time and the great expense which must be laid out in their education, when combined with this circumstance, necessarily enhance still further the price of their labor.

        [15] When a person employs only his own stock in trade, there is no trust; and the credit which he may get from other people depends not upon the nature of his trade but upon their opinion of his fortune, probity, and prudence. The different rates of profit, therefore, in the different branches of trade cannot arise from the different degrees of trust reposed in the traders.

        [16] Fifthly, the wages of labor in different employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them. The probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for the employment to which he is educated, is very different in different occupations. In the greater part of mechanic trades, success is almost certain, but very uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, [and] there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes; but send him to study the law, [and] it is at least twenty to one if ever he makes such proficiency as will enable him to live by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession where twenty fail for one who succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. The counselor at law who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only of his own so tedious and expensive education, but of that of more than twenty others who are never likely to make anything by it. How extravagant soever the fees of counselors at law may sometimes appear, their real retribution is never equal to this. Compute in any particular place what is likely to be annually gained and what is likely to be annually spent by all the different workmen in any common trade such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum will generally exceed the latter. But make the same computation with regard to all the counselors and students of law in all the different inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a very small proportion to their annual expense, even though you rate the former as high and the latter as low, as can well be done. The lottery of the law, therefore, is very far from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honorable professions, is, in point of pecuniary gain, evidently under-recompensed.

        [17] Those professions keep their level, however, with other occupations, and, notwithstanding these discouragements, all the most generous and liberal spirits are eager to crowd into them. Two different causes contribute to recommend them: first, the desire of the reputation which attends upon superior excellence in any of them; and, secondly, the natural confidence which every man has more or less not only in his own abilities but in his own good fortune. To excel in any profession, in which but few arrive at mediocrity, is the most decisive mark of what is called genius or superior talents. The public admiration which attends upon such distinguished abilities makes always a part of their reward, a greater or smaller [one] in proportion as it is higher or lower in degree. It makes a considerable part of that reward in the profession of physic [medicine], a still greater perhaps in that of law; in poetry and philosophy, it makes almost the whole.

        [18] There are some very agreeable and beautiful talents of which the possession commands a certain sort of admiration, but of which the exercise for the sake of gain is considered, whether from reason or prejudice, as a sort of public prostitution. The pecuniary recompense, therefore, of those who exercise them in this manner, must be sufficient, not only to pay for the time, labor, and expense of acquiring the talents, but for the discredit which attends the employment of them as the means of subsistence. The exorbitant rewards of players [actors], opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc., are founded upon those two principles: the rarity and beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this manner. It seems absurd at first sight that we should despise their persons and yet reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. While we do the one, however, we must of necessity do the other. Should the public opinion or prejudice ever alter with regard to such occupations, their pecuniary recompense would quickly diminish. More people would apply to them, and the competition would quickly reduce the price of their labor. Such talents, though far from being common, are by no means so rare as is imagined. Many people possess them in great perfection, who disdain to make this use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if anything could be made honorably by them.
 

[Vocabulary (asterisked terms used in other than most common or usual sense)

rector (P1, intro); Glasgow (P1, intro); political economy* (P1, intro); jurisprudence (P1, intro); customs* (P1, intro); Edinburgh (P1, intro); Belles Lettres (P2, intro); posthumously (P2, intro); averse (P2, intro); parallelism (P3, intro), alliteration (P , intro), analogy (P , intro), paradox (P , intro), pecuniary (P1); reposed* (P1, P14, P15); exercise* (P1, et seq.); et seq. (previous vocabulary item); journeyman (P2); smith (P2); artificer (P2); collier (P2); odious (P2); detestable (P2); rude* (P3); agreeable* (P3); Theocritus (P3); poacher (P3); rigor (P3); taste* (P3); afford* (P3); subsistence (P3); suffers* (P3); stock* (P4 et seq.); exercises* (P4); creditable (P4); capital (P5); dexterity (P5); duration (P5); nice* (P6 et seq.); apprentice (P6); bound* (P6); linen (P6); uniform* (P6); compensate (P6); species* (P6, P9); ingenious* (P7, P10); tedious (P7, P16); recompense (P7); liberal* (in "recompense more liberal") (P7 et seq.); domestic* (P8); intricate (P8); mason (P9); calls* (P9, P10); anxious* (P9); desponding (P9); precarious (P9); shillings (P9); liberal* (in "liberal professions") (P9, P16); Chair-men* (P9; = men who carried sedan chairs on the streets of London in the eighteenth century, comparable to rickshaw drivers in Asian countries, who are to be found even today); nicer* (P10); crown* (P11); pence (P11); reckoned (P11); piece* (P12); Newcastle (P12); goldsmith (P14); ingenuity* (P14); probity (P15); prudence (P15); mechanic* (P16); liberal* (professions) (P16); proficiency (P16); blanks* (P16); retribution* (P16); inns of court (P16); lottery* in "lottery of the law" (P16); liberal* (spirits) (P17); attends* (P17); excel (P17); mediocrity (P17); physic* (P17); discredit (P18); exorbitant (P18); players* (P18); absurd (P18); profuse (P18); liberality* (P18); alter (P18); apply to* (P18); disdain (P18)]

[Study Questions

1. (a) What are the five factors or components that affect how much pay or salary is attached to a job, an occupation, or a profession? In which paragraph of the essay does Smith first state these? (b) What mnemonic system can you invent to help remember the five factors or components affecting a job's pay or salary? (c) How does the essay divide into the following parts: par. 1, pars. 2-4, pars. 5-8, pars. 9-13, pars. 14-15, and pars. 16-18? (d) What various synonyms does Smith use throughout his essay for pay or salary -- e.g., "pecuniary gain"?

2. What paradox is there about the relation of salary or pay - money - relative to whether the occupation or job is honorable or disgraceful, according to Smith, in par. 2?

3. What paradox is there about how hunting and fishing have changed as jobs or occupations in the elapse of history, as noted by Smith, in par. 3?

4. Why does Smith allude (the figure of speech is allusion) to Theocritus in par. 3? How does this allusion help Smith convey his meanings or ideas in this paragraph?]

5. (a) What analogy -- a sort of extended simile -- does Smith set up in par. 5 between a worker and a machine?  How does the analogy bear on what a worker should be paid? (b) How does Smith's comparison and contrast between skilled labor and "common labor" in par. 6 relate to the main component of salary being discussed in this portion of the essay? How is each of these categories associated with a certain region or territory by Smith in par. 6? (c) What new area of work, or category of workers, is discussed in par. 7?  How are some of the workers discussed in par. 7 discussed elsewhere in the essay, relative to a different component of salary?

6. (a) In pars. 9 and 11, how does the component of salary being discussed relate to location, region, or territory? (b) How does the relation of the component of salary to location, region, or territory in pars. 9 and 11, recall par. 6?

7. (a) Smith usually discusses the components of salary independently of each other; does he do so in par. 12? (b) What do you suppose the difference is between the occupation of colliers and coal-heavers, discussed in par. 12?

8.  According to Smith in par. 14, how are jewelers, physicians, and attorneys alike?

9. What does Smith mean (in par. 16) by his metaphor or analogy of the "lottery" of the law?  How does this metaphor or analogy apply to Smith's discussion of salaries people are paid?

10. What new subject does Smith discuss in par. 17, as related to what he discusses in par. 16?

11. How did Smith turn out to be quite wrong in some of the things he concludes about popular entertainers in par. 18?]