210 ADAM SMITH. 



wages cannot descend. Both these positions are founded 

 on this : that the labourers are, generally speaking, 

 persons wholly dependent on their labour. Therefore, 

 in the first place, they cannot keep their labour out of 

 the market when the demand for it is slack, as a man 

 of property will keep his goods back when their price 

 is low ; and, in the second place, the labourer would 

 cease to work if he could not earn enough to support 

 himself in the manner in which persons of the lower 

 order usually live, with a surplus for supporting his 

 family, without which his race would be extinct. Hence 

 there is a necessary connection between the wages of 

 labour and the prices of the necessaries of life ; and 

 though the demand for work, compared with its sup- 

 ply, must regulate wages within certain limits, that is, 

 between the lowest point to which they can fall and 

 the highest to which they can rise, the latter point de- 

 pends upon the demand, the former upon the cost of 

 maintaining the labourer and his family. This will not 

 vary with each variation of the prices of necessaries ; 

 indeed, a scarcity, by throwing hands out of employ- 

 ment, may even lower wages instead of raising 

 them. But upon the average price of necessaries the 

 amount of wages certainly does and must depend ; for, 

 if the average price is high, some proportion must 

 be kept by wages, else the workman would either 

 perish or emigrate, and so labour would leave the 

 market, until its recompense became equal to the cost 

 of living ; and again, if the average is low, the compe- 

 tition of workmen and the increase of their numbers 

 by the progress of population will bring down the price, 

 that is the wages, to the level of prices ; so that the 

 average rate of wages never can be much beyond the 

 cost of living, that is, it must fall towards the average 

 price of the necessaries of life. 



We may here stop to observe how soon we are 

 brought, by discussing speculations on the foundations 

 of labour and value, or real prices, to the very practi- 



