An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
History
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Smith, Adam
Economics
In time of
peace, and in the merchant-service, the London price is from a guinea to
about seven-and-twenty shillings the calendar month. A common labourer in
London, at the rate of nine or ten shillings a week, may earn in the
calendar month from forty to five-and-forty shillings. The sailor, indeed,
over and above his pay, is supplied with provisions. Their value, however,
may not perhaps always exceed the difference between his pay and that of
the common labourer; and though it sometimes should, the excess will not
be clear gain to the sailor, because he cannot share it with his wife and
family, whom he must maintain out of his wages at home.
The dangers and hair-breadth escapes of a life of adventures, instead of
disheartening young people, seem frequently to recommend a trade to them.
A tender mother, among the inferior ranks of people, is often afraid to
send her son to school at a sea-port town, lest the sight of the ships,
and the conversation and adventures of the sailors, should entice him to
go to sea. The distant prospect of hazards, from which we can hope to
extricate ourselves by courage and address, is not disagreeable to us, and
does not raise the wages of labour in any employment. It is otherwise with
those in which courage and address can be of no avail. In trades which are
known to be very unwholesome, the wages of labour are always remarkably
high. Unwholesomeness is a species of disagreeableness, and its effects
upon the wages of labour are to be ranked under that general head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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