—d 
.. 
f 
‘- 
¥ 
. 
f.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 103 
receive more pay for amusing jobs, varied jobs, and, up to a point, pleasant 
jobs, because there are, in proportion to the demand, fewer people able 
to do these. Those engaged on them belong to fairly high grades, qualities 
being required which, whether owing to heredity or educational advantages, 
are comparatively rare. Where the powers are equal it is true enough that 
any charm belonging to the work will lower the wages. I remember a 
discussion, initiated by a group of business men on the startling differences 
between their own incomes and those of professional workers of at least 
equal ability and more expensive training, being brought to a close by a 
member of the group saying that he supposed members of the professional 
classes were paid in self-satisfaction. It is probably true that men and 
women depress the rates in certain professions simply through their liking 
for the work. Few would object to rates being lowered in this fashjon. 
Those who earn them accept pleasure in their work in lieu of money. 
But for the most part earnings are low in occupations that offer no 
special attractions and are filled by workers who, thanks to heredity, or 
sex, or environment, have little chance of entering others. The able man 
or woman has not only the fun of being clever, but the advantage of high 
earnings through belonging to a grade in which the numbers are relatively 
small. 
Work for which the ‘ normal’ or ‘ fair’ wage is low may be of great 
importance. The fact that a man’s work is worth little may mean not 
that those who use his services could readily dispense with such services, 
but merely that they could readily dispense with him because of the 
numbers ready to fill his place. The thing done or service rendered by an 
ill-paid worker may be more essential than the services or products of 
many better-paid workers, but the relative wage rates in different grades 
are affected by relative quantities and every grade contains some workers 
doing essential and some doing non-essential work, 
Workers are not, and are aware that they are not, entirely responsible 
for being of a particular type, for belonging to a grade in which numbers 
are ereat, for having entered an occupation for the products of which 
demand is small or has fallen. Their parents are responsible for their 
existence and largely for their early environment ; their teachers and the 
State are largely responsible for their education or lack of education. 
Human beings do not come into the world in response to economic demand. 
- Human life precedes economic activity and special talents do not appear 
in exact and speedy response to the call for them. Hence the normal 
wage is frequently low for reasons outside the control of the worker. 
It is, perhaps, unfortunate that wages which reflect the value of the 
work done should be known as fair wages. It has already been stated 
that they are known as fair because they are, if mobility is perfect and 
competition free, equal to those of other workers of equal capacity and 
doing work offering equal attractions. It is the equality that has led to 
_ the epithet ‘fair.’ But it is a not very convincing fairness to the man 
receiving a low wage whose work is worth little through no fault of his 
own. For when the demand price sufficient to absorb all the workers in 
a given grade is small or, in more technical language, when the marginal 
net productivity of such workers is low, when the workers in that grade 
_ are neither bad nor careless, other members of the community gain by 
_ cheap goods as the workers lose in low pay. It is often thought, and it is 
