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Сизифов труд
What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract
usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same.
The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible.
The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter
in order to lower the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon
all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the
other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number,
can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least
does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen.
We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work;
but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can
hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant,
though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or
two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not
subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without
employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as
his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though
frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that
masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters
are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform
combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To
violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of
reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear
of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural
state of things, which nobody ever hears of. |