172 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cuar. X cents. Again, in the comparison between the capitalist’s and laborer’s income, we ought to say that the laborer who receives $500 a year, with an expenditure of effort appraised at $250, is only receiving one half as great an income as the capitalist who obtains, during the same period, dividends and interest to the extent of $500, with no effort whatever. : Tt may be asked how an appraisement of labor is possible. From a practical or statistical standpoint the appraisement is difficult, if not impossible. Yet certain data are obtain- able. A servant applying for work asks not simply in regard to the wages, but in regard to the difficulty of the work, and will consent to do extra or disagreeable tasks only on condition of a definite increase in wages. In this case we may say that the increase in wages which is necessary to procure the consent of the laborer represents subjectively, to him or her, the increased difficulty of the work. In like manner, a government employee who has at any time the option of retiring on half-pay may, at the point when he de- cides to retire, be said to regard the difficulty of his work as equal in his estimation to half of the income he receives for it. In general we may say that the proper method of apprais- ing the disagreeable element involved in one’s work is to de- duet from the gross income that sum which the worker would be willing to sacrifice were it possible for him so to avoid the disagreeable element. That is, he is supposed to imagine an alternative condition, considered as an equivalert in his mind to the actual conditions under which he works, but which differs from them in two particulars: in being free from the labor or pain of toil; and being deprived of a cer- tain amount of its earnings or rewards. If, for instance, the laborer who obtains $2 a day for eight hours’ work estimates that this would be to him the equivalent of $1.50 without labor, he has virtually made a deduction of 50 cents a day for the irksomeness of his work.