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 obtainable.
 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 decides
 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 appraising
 the disagreeable element involved in one’s work is to deduet
 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 certain
 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.