to 1s. 8d., Mr. Brassey remarks, "Yet with this immense difference in the rate of wages, sub-contracts on the Irish railway were let at the same prices which had been previously paid in South Staffordshire.""

"In India, although the cost of daily labor ranges from 4 to 6d. a day, mile for mile the cost of railway work is about the same as in England." "In Italy, masonry and other work requiring skilled labor is rather dearer than in England."

66

"Great pains were taken to ascertain the relative industrial capacity of the Englishman3 and the Frenchman on the Paris and Rouen 'line; and on comparison of half a dozen 'pays,' it was found that the capacity of the Englishman was to that of the Frenchman as five to three.' Mining is perhaps the most exhausting and laborious of all occupations. It has been found that in this description of work the English miner surpasses the foreigner all over the world. On the Continent, long after earth-work and all the other operations involved in the construction of railways had been committed to the native workmen, English miners were still employed in the tunnels."

"In the quarry at Bonnières, in which Frenchmen, Irishmen, and Englishmen were employed side by side, the Frenchman received three, the Irishman four, and the Englishman six francs a day. At those different rates, the Englishman was found to be the most advantageous workman of the three."

Such differences in industrial efficiency as have been indicated may exist not only between nations, but between geographical sections of the same people. The very mi

1 Work and Wages, p. 69:

2 Ibid., p. 90.

* Four thousand Englishmen were sent over to work on this road. -Ibid., p. 79.

Two thousand English and Scotch were sent to Australia to work on the Queensland line.

* Ibid., p. 115.

5 Ibid., p. 82.

nute and careful researches of M. Dupin in the early part of this century seemed to establish a decided superiority in productive power of the artisans of northern over those of southern France. In England the superiority of the agricultural population of the northern counties is unmistakably very great. "Any one," says Mr. Mundella, M.P., "who has witnessed agricultural operations in the west of England, will agree that the ill-paid and ill-fed laborer of those parts is dearer at 9s. or 10s. per week than the Nottinghamshire man at 16s." "It would be a great mistake," says Mr. Walter Bagehot, in the Economist," "to put down as equal the day's hire of a Dorsetshire laborer and that of a Lincolnshire laborer. It would be like having a general price for steam-engines not specifying the horsepower. The Lincolnshire man is far the more efficient man of the two."

From a single page of the Report for 1869 of the Commission on the Employment of Children, Women and Young Persons in Agriculture, I extract the following testimony respecting the inefficiency of the laborers of Berkshire: "I would rather pay a Northumbrian hind 16 shillings a week than a Berks carter 12 shillings,' testifies one farm bailiff. "Our men here," says another, "are very inferior to Scotch laborers; two men there do as much as three here." Another bailiff testifies that "he was obliged to employ as many men in Berkshire, at certain kinds of work, as he had been accustomed to employ of women in Perthshire."

1 Social Sc. Trans., 1868, p. 524.

3

2 January 24th, 1874.

3 "I protest," so writes a farmer, " that one of the Scotchmen whom I formerly employed would do as much work as two or even three Suffolk laborers. It makes one's flesh creep' to see some of the latter at work.”—Clifford, Agricultural Lock-out of 1874, p. 25, note.

4 Second Report, p. 105. I have myself in Northumberland heard a Northumbrian farmer declare that one of the strong big-boned women who worked in his fields was worth much more than any average southern laborer."-Clifford, Agric. Lock-out of 1874, p. 25.

In view of such wide differences in the productive power of individuals, communities, and peoples, no attempt at a philosophy of wages can omit to inquire into the causes of the varying efficiency of labor. These causes I shall enumerate under six heads; but the possible effect of no one cause will be fully apprehended unless it be held constantly in mind that the value of the laborer's services to the employer is the net result of two elements, one positive, one negative, namely, work and waste; that in some degree waste, using the term in its broadest sense to express the breakage and the undue wear and tear of implements and machinery, the destruction or impairment of materials,' the cost of supervision and oversight to keep men from idling or blundering, and, finally, the hinderance of many by the fault or failure of one, is inseparable from work; and that, with the highly finished products of our modern industry, with its complicated and often delicate machinery, and its costly materials, themselves perhaps the result of many antecedent processes, it is frequently a question of

2

1 On this point of waste I select two illustrations. The first is taken from an address of George J. Holyoake, the historian of Co-operation:

"It has been calculated that the working colliers at Whitwood and Methley could, by simply taking the trouble to get the coal in large lumps, and by reducing the proportions of slack, add to the colliery profits £1500 a year. If they would further take a little extra care below ground in keeping the best coal separate from the inferior, they could add another £1500 to the profits." (Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1865, p. 482.) All this without diminishing their own earnings.

The second is the result of an experiment, noticed in the Statistical Journal (xxviii., pp. 32, 33), for the economy of coal in an engine-furnace, through giving the stokers a share in the money value of whatever saving might be effected. The result was to reduce the consumption of fuel, without loss of power, from 30 to 17.

2 H. B. M. Consul Egerton, in his admirable report of 1873 (Textile Factories), notes the great irregularity of attendance at work in Russia. It is therefore essential to have a large staff of supernumeraries who have learnt their work, so as to be ready to supply the vacant places."-P. 112.

more or less waste whether work shall be worth having'

or not.

The various causes which go to create differences in industrial efficiency may be grouped under six heads, as follows:

I. Peculiarities of stock and breeding.

II. The meagreness or liberality of diet.

III. Habits, voluntary or involuntary, respecting cleanliness of the person, and purity of air and water. IV. The general intelligence of the laborer.

V.

Technical education and industrial environment. VI. Cheerfulness and hopefulness in labor, growing out of self-respect and social ambition, and the laborer's interest in the results of his work.

2

The first reason which we are called to recognize for the great differences in industrial efficiency which exist among men is found in peculiarities of stock and breeding. Of the causes which have produced such widely diverse types of manhood as the Esquimaux, the Hottentot, and the Bengalee at the one extreme, and the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the American of to-day at the other, it is not necessary to speak here at all. The effects of local climate and national food, continued through generations, upon the physical structure, have become so familiar to the public through the writings of geographers and ethnologists that they may fairly be assumed for our present purpose. The scope and power of these causes are far more likely to

1"It may appear incredible," remarks Mr. Carleton Tuffnell, the Poor-Law Commissioner, " that a great demand for labor may exist simultaneously with a multitude of people seeking employment and unable to find it. The real demand is not simply for labor, but trained labor, efficient labor, intelligent labor."

2 M. Batbie states the results of certain experiments with the dynamometer by which it appears that while the figure 50 represents the sheer lifting-weight of a native of Van Diemen's Land, 71 represents that of an Anglo-Australian cultivator.-Nouveau cours de l'Économie politique, i. 70.

be magnified than disparaged by the scientific spirit of this age. But we have also to recognize large differences as existing between far advanced and highly civilized peoples as to average height, strength, manual dexterity, accuracy of vision, health, and longevity.

1

Thus, for example, the mean height of the Belgian male was given by MM. Quetelet and Villermé, about 1836, as 5 feet 63 inches; that of the Frenchman, as 5 feet 4 inches; that of the Englishman, 5 feet 9 inches. Such differences in stature exist as well between sections of the same country; thus the Breton peasants are notably deficient even as measured by the low French standard; while the proportion of "tall men" (i.e., 6 feet) examined for the British army was out of every 10,000 English, 104; out of every 10,000 Scotchmen, 194; out of every 10,000 Irishmen, 91.1

At the same time, the largest proportion of rejections for unsoundness was among the Irish, the least among the Scotch. MM. Quetelet and Villermé give the following determinations of mean weight for the same three countries :

1 This statement is taken from Mr. Thornton "On Labor," p. 16, n. Of the (very) “ tall men” (6 feet 3 inches) enlisted in the U. S. army, 1861-5, there were of each 100,000-of English birth, 103; of Scotch, 178; of Irish, 84 (Statistical Memoirs of the Sanitary Commission, p. 159); while of the "short men" (under 5 feet 1 inch) there were in 100,000 -of English, 690; of Scotch, 610; and of Irish, only 450, the proportional number of Germans in this class rising to 770, and of Frenchmen to 950. (Ibid., p. 177.) The mean height of the native soldiers was much reduced by the enlistment of large numbers of very young persons; but if we take the soldiers from 35 years upwards, we find the natives of the United States surpassing in stature those of every other nationality. Thus the mean height of soldiers from New-England was, in inches, 68.300; New-York, New-Jersey, and Pennsylvania, 68.096; Ohio and Indiana, 68.980; Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, 68.781; Kentucky and Tennessee, 69.274, etc.; while the mean height of soldiers born in Canada was 67.300; England, 66.990; Scotland, 67.647 Ireland, 67.090; France, Belgium, and Switzerland, 66.714; Germany, 66.718; Scandinavia, 67.299. (Ibid., pp. 104, 105.)