If all kinds of labour were perfectly free,if no unfounded prejudice invested some parts,and perhaps the least useful,of the social task with great honour,while other parts are very improperly branded with disgrace,there would be no difficulty on this point,and the wages of individual labour would be justly settled by what Dr Smith calls the "higgling of the market."Unfortunately,labour is not,in general,free;and,unfortunately there are a number of prejudices which decree very different rewards to different species of labour from those which each of them merits.

Unfortunately,also,there is,I think,in general,a disposition to restrict the term labour to the operation of the hands.But if it should be said that the skill of the practised labourer is a mere mechanical sort of thing,nobody will deny that the labour by which he acquired that skill was a mental exertion.The exercise of that skill also,as it seems to me,requiring the constant application of judgment,depends much more on a mental than on a bodily acquirement.Probably the mere capacity of muscular exertion is as great,or greater,among a tribe of Indians as among the most productive Europeans;and the superior productive power of Europeans,and of one nation over another,arise from the different nature of their fixed capital.

But I have shown that the greater efficacy of fixed capital depends on the skill of the labourer;so that we come to the conclusion that not mere labour,but mental skill,or the mode in which labour is directed,determines its productive powers.I therefore would caution my fellow labourers not to limit the term labour to the operations of the hands.

Before many of our most useful machines and instruments could be invented,a vast deal of knowledge gathered in the progress of the world by many generations was necessary.At present also a great number of persons possessed of different kinds of knowledge and skill must combine and cooperate,although they have never entered into any express contract for this purpose,before many of our most powerful machines can be completed and before thy can be used.The labour of the draughtsman is as necessary to construct a ship as the labour of the man who fastens her planks together.The labour of the engineer,who "in his mind's eye"sees the effect of every contrivance,and who adapts the parts of a complicated machine to each other,is as necessary to the completion of that machine as the man who casts or fits any part of it,without being sensible of the purpose for which the whole is to serve.In like manner the labour and the knowledge of many different persons must be combined before almost any product intended for consumption can be brought to market.The knowledge and skill of the master manufacturer,or of the man who plans and arranges a productive operation,who must know the state of the markets and the qualities of different materials,and who has some tact in buying and selling,are just as necessary for the complete success of any complicated operation as the skill of the workmen whose hands actually alter the shape and fashion of these materials.Far be it,therefore,from the manual labourer,while he claims the reward due to his own productive powers,to deny its appropriate reward to any other species of labour,whether it be of the head or the hands.The labour and skill of the contriver,or of the man who arranges an adapts a whole,are as necessary as the labour and skill of him who executes only a part,and they must be paid accordingly.

I must,however,add that it is doubtful whether one species of labour is more valuable than another;certainly it is not more necessary.But because those who have been masters.Planners,contrivers,etc.,have in general also been capitalists,and have also had a command over the labour of those who have worked with their hands,their labour has been paid as much too high as common labour has been under paid.The wages of the master,employer or contriver has been blended with the profit of the capitalists,and he may probably be still disposed to claim the whole as only the proper reward of his exertions.On the other hand,manual labourers,oppressed by the capitalist,have never been paid high enough,and even now are more disposed to estimate their own deserts rather by what they have hitherto received than by what they produce.This sort of prejudice makes it,and will long make it,difficult even for labourers themselves to apportion with justice the social reward or wages of each individual labourer.No statesman can accomplish this,nor ought the labourers to allow any statesman to interfere in it.The labour is theirs,the produce ought to be theirs,and they alone ought to decide how much each deserves of the produce all.While each labourer claims his own reward,let him cheerfully allow the just claims of every other labourer;but let him never assent to the strange doctrine that the food he eats and the instruments he uses,which are the work of his own hands,become endowed,by merely changing proprietors,with productive power greater than his,and that the owner of them is entitled to a more abundant reward than the labour,skill and knowledge which produce and use them.

Masters,it is evident,are labourers as well as their journeymen.In this character their interest is precisely the same as that of their men.But they are also either capitalist,or the agents of the capitalist,and in this respect their interest is decidedly opposed to the interest of their workmen.