WEALTH OF NATIONS. 137 



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 sur- 

 plus for supporting his family, without which his race 

 would be extinct. Hence there is a necessary connexion 

 between the wages of labour and the prices of the neces- 

 saries of life; and though the demand for work, com- 

 pared with its supply, must regulate wages within cer- 

 tain limits, that is, between the lowest point to which they 

 can fall and the highest to which they can rise, the lat- 

 ter point depends 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 neces- 

 saries ; indeed, a scarcity, by throwing hands out of em- 

 ployment, 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 competition of workmen and the in- 

 crease 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 



