le
discrepancies of wages for the same work may arise; although the
facilities for the spread of information regarding wages has greatly
improved, especially in the more skilled trades. Then there are, also,
various expenses of removal, both material and psychological, such as
are involved in the shifting of a family from the city in which it has
long been established.[31] There are, also, the handicaps and hazards
attached to the learning of a new job or trade even though the new job
holds out hopes of considerably better wages than the old one. All such
facts as these--for but a few examples have been chosen from among
many--however, are reconcilable with the theory of a general rate of
wages. They are but minor qualifications of a broad general principle.
Other facts challenge that theory more seriously. They really do point
to the existence of relatively separate groups of wage earners, each
with an economic career somewhat independently determined.

First among them must be put the inequality of natural ability possessed
by individuals, and the consequent fact that the numbers who possess the
inborn capacity required for certain kinds of work is relatively small.
It results from this limitation of the higher forms of natural ability,
that the wages received for the more skilled forms of labor may be
considerably higher than for the less skilled forms without such an
increase of numbers in the more skilled groups as would bring down their
wages to the general level. The competition for employment on the tasks
demanding skill is limited; separate groups develop. It is impossible to
tell the extent to which differences in inborn capacity would lead to
the formation of relatively separate groups of labor, if all the other
assumptions underlying the theory of a general rate of wages were
fulfilled in fact. Prof. Taussig has expressed this well. "What would be
the differences in wages, and to how great an extent would groups and
classes persist, if all had the same opportunities, and if choice of
occupation were in so far perfectly free? Would wages then differ only
so far as they might be affected by attractiveness, risk, and other
causes of equalizing variations? Would coarse manual labor, for
instance, then receive a reward nearly as high as any other labor, nay,
conceivably (since the work is dirty and disagreeable) higher than any
other? Would the soft-handed occupations lose entirely the advantages in
pay which the