Understanding the #UnitedStatesofAmerica - The Wealth of Nations: Book One, Chapter Eight (Part Seven) "Up and Down Pressures on Wages"

(yours truly messed up on page count somewhere)

BOOK I

CHAPTER EIGHT: OF THE WAGES OF LABOR
Pages: 19 (rest of Chapter 8)

·UP AND DOWN PRESSURES ON WAGES·

Pg 69

It is because the demand for labor increases in years of sudden and extraordinary plenty, and diminishes in those of sudden and extraordinary scarcity, that the money price of labor sometimes rises in the one and sinks in the other.
In a year of sudden and extraordinary plenty, many of the employers of industry have funds sufficient to maintain and employ more industrious people than had been employed the year before; and this extraordinary number can’t always be had. So the masters who want more workmen bid against one another to get them, which sometimes raises both the real price and the money price of their labor.
The opposite of this happens in a year of sudden and extraordinary scarcity. The funds destined for employing industry are less than they were the year before. Many people are thrown out of employment; they bid one against another in order to get it, which sometimes lowers both the real and the money price of labor. In 1740, a year of extraordinary scarcity, many people were willing to work for bare subsistence. In the following years of plenty it was harder to get laborers and servants. The scarcity of a dear year, by diminishing the demand for labor, tends to lower its price, while the high price of provisions tends to raise it. The plenty of a cheap year, by increasing the demand for labor, tends to raise its price, while the cheapness of provisions tends to lower it. In the ordinary variations of the prices of provisions those two opposite causes seem to counterbalance one another, which is probably one reason why the wages of labor are everywhere so much more steady and permanent than the price of provisions.

Pg 70

The increase in the wages of labor necessarily increases the price of many commodities, by increasing the part of it that depends on wages, and to that extent tends to diminish the consumption of the commodities, both at home and abroad. But the same cause that raises the wages of labor— namely the increase of stock—tends to increase labor’s productive powers so that a smaller quantity of labor produces more work. The owner of the stock that employs many laborers necessarily tries, for his own advantage, to divide and distribute employment in such a way that the greatest possible quantity of work is produced. For the same reason, he tries to supply them with the best machinery that he or they can think of. What takes place among the laborers in a particular factory takes place for the same reason among those of a large society. The greater their number, the more they naturally divide themselves into different classes and subdivisions of employments. More heads are occupied in inventing the best machinery for doing the work of each, making it more likely that it will be invented.
In consequence of these improvements, many commodities come to be produced by less labor than before—so much less that the increase in its price is more than made up for by the lessening of its quantity

You can read Volume I the Wealth of Nations for yourself here → https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/smith1776_1.pdf