the inequalities of wages are generally in an opposite direction to the equitable principle of compensation, erroneously represented by Adam Smith as the general law of the remuneration of labor.
(3.) One of the points best illustrated by Adam Smith is the influence exercised on the remuneration of an employment by the uncertainty of success in it. If the chances are great of total failure, the reward in case of success must be [pg 208] sufficient to make up, in the general estimation, for those adverse chances. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes; but send him to study the law, 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 that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. How extravagant soever the fees of counselors-at-law may sometimes appear, their real retribution is never equal to this.
§ 2. Differences arising from Natural Monopolies.
The preceding are cases in which inequality of remuneration is necessary to produce equality of attractiveness, and are examples of the equalizing effect of free competition. The following are cases of real inequality, and arise from a different principle.
(4.) “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 intrusted.” The superiority of reward is not here the consequence of competition, but of its absence: not a compensation for disadvantages inherent in the employment, but an extra advantage; a kind