HKB
as will enable the higher wages to be paid without injuring the trade, or reducing the profits below the minimum socially required for the maintenance of a privately conducted industry.
Our evidence leads to the conclusion that, while a rise of wages is nearly always attended by a rise of efficiency of labour and of the product, the proportion which the increased productivity will bear to the rise of wage will differ in every employment. Hence it is not possible to make a general declaration in favour of a policy of high wages or of low wages.
Sec. 5. The economically profitable wages and hours will vary in accordance with many conditions, among the most important being the development of machinery, the strain upon muscles and nerves imposed by the work, the indoor and sedentary character of the work, the various hygienic conditions which attend it, the age, sex, race, and class of the workers.
In cotton-weaving in America it pays better to employ women at high wages to tend six, seven, or even eight looms for short hours, than to pay lower wages to inferior workers such as are found in Germany, Switzerland, or even in Lancashire. But in coal-mining it appears that the American wages are economically too high--that is to say, the difference between American and English wages is not compensated by an equivalent difference of output. The gross number of tons mined by United States miners working at wages of $326 per annum is 377, yielding a cost of 86-1/2 cents per ton, as compared with 79 cents per ton, the cost of North Staffordshire coal produced by miners earning $253, and turning out 322 tons per head.[233] So also a ton of Bessemer pig iron costs in labour about 50 cents more in America than in England, the American wages being about 40 per cent. higher.[234]
It is, indeed, evident from the aggregate of evidence that no determinable relation exists between cost in labour and wages for any single group of commodities.
Just as little can a general acceptance be given to the opposite contention that it is the increased efficiency of labour which causes the high wages. This is commonly the view of those business men and those economists who start from the assumption that there is some law of competition in accordance with whose operation every worker necessarily receives as much as he is worth, the full value of the product of his labour. Only by the increased efficiency of labour can wages rise, argue these people; where wages are high the efficiency of labour is found to be high, and vice versa; therefore efficiency determines wages. Just as the advocates of the economy of high-wages theory seek by means of trade-unionism, legislation, and public opinion to raise wages and shorten hours, trusting that the increased efficiency which ensues will justify such conduct, so the others insist that technical education and an elevation of the moral and industrial character of the workers must precede and justify any rise of wages or shortening of hours, by increasing the efficiency of labour. Setting aside the assumption here involved that the share of the workers in the joint product of capital and labour is a fixed and immovable proportion, this view rests upon a mere denial of the effect which it is alleged that high wages and a rise in standard of comfort have in increasing efficiency.
The relation between wages and other conditions of employment, on the one hand, and efficiency of labour or size of product on the other, is clearly one of mutual determination. Every rise in wages, leisure, and in general standard of comfort will increase the efficiency of labour; every increased efficiency, whether due directly to these or to other causes, will enable higher wages to be paid and shorter hours to be worked.