an amount of good work equal in value to what it cost, he will disappear from the labour market, and the workshop will be closed. This is a truism, no doubt: but truisms are the main-springs of human life and of Political Economy, and are the very things most apt to be forgotten.

The market-value of labour, the quantity of money which an employer ought to give and a labourer to receive, is a problem of supreme interest for every country, but it is also one which is incapable of being pre-determined by science. In the labour, as in every other market, there are endless causes which act on the settlement of the price ultimately reached. Price is fixed experimentally by trial. Each party to the exchange of labour for wages has a desire to satisfy and an effort to make. Each tries to make the satisfaction as large and the effort as small as may be; each avails himself of the circumstances of the market at the time to effect this double purpose. For the purchaser the capital point is the value of the article he buys with wages, the worth of the labour purchased compared with its cost. But it is very important to distinguish carefully between the cost of labour and the rate of wages paid. High wages may easily co-exist with a low cost of labour and very cheap production. The highest paid workman may be, indeed generally is, the cheapest of labourers. Cost of labour is measured by the value of its product; it is high or low according as the results, the work, procured from it possess greater or smaller value. Of this fact the ordinary colonial state furnishes an excellent illustration. In Australia wages are very high, the selling price of the crop extremely small; yet the cost of

labour to the farmer is very light, because the virgin powers of the soil enable him to dispense with many expenses which burden the English farmer in addition to what he spends on labour. A little labour in the colony, though it wins but a scanty yield of low-priced corn, nevertheless produces a crop which when sold fetches a sum of money which is large compared with what has been spent on wages.

In economical writings the general principle laid down as regulating the cost of labour is its efficiency, that is, the quantity and quality of the work given in exchange for the wages; but this does not quite exhaust the whole of the matter. The selling price of the goods produced by the labour must also be taken into account. A body of labourers engaged in a particular industry may be all energetic and may all produce a large amount of the best work during the day, and yet the cost of labour may become too heavy for the continuance of the business. From causes quite external to the manufacture the goods may command only a price so low as not to repay the cost. Just as the Australian crop, though sold at a very low price, nevertheless yields very high wages for the labourers as well as a handsome profit for the farmer, so on the contrary, the goods produced by a thoroughly efficient body of workmen may realise so small a sum on sale as to annihilate wages altogether. However, it remains a very important truth that as between workman and workman the efficiency of the labour largely affects the expense of it to the giver of wages as well as the cost of production of the commodities produced. The sluggish, weak-bodied, unintelligent workman is incom

parably the dearest. His wages cannot be easily lowered to the standard of the worth of his efforts. Were piece-work universally applicable, and pay measured out strictly by service done, a partial remedy might be found; but even then there would be a loss on the result accomplished by the machinery and the fixed capital engaged in the business. The wages paid by

the piece might be strictly equal to the value of the work made, but there would be fewer goods to meet the same charges for working the engines and machines.

The good workman, even at an exceptionally high wage, is the man first chosen by an employer. Of his comparative cheapness, Mr Brassey gives some striking illustrations in the construction of the Basingstoke Railway Station.

"The contract for the Paris and Rouen line included some difficult works. At one time there were five hundred Englishmen living in the village of Rollebois, most of whom were employed in the adjacent tunnel. Although these English navvies earned 5s. a day, whilst the Frenchmen employed received only 2s. 6d. a day, yet it was found on comparing the cost of two adjacent cuttings in precisely similar circumstances that the excavation was at a lower cost per cubic yard by the English navvies than by the French labourers."

Again, "It has been many times stated in the course of this work that from superior skill or greater energy the more highly-paid workman will in many, perhaps in most, cases turn out a greater amount of work in proportion to the wages he receives. An opportunity occurred some years ago, during the construction of the refreshment room at Basingstoke for testing this pro

blem with great accuracy. On one side of the station. a London bricklayer was employed at 5s. 6d. a day and on the other two country bricklayers at 3s. 6d. a day. It was found, by measuring the quantity of work performed without the knowledge of the men employed, that the one London bricklayer laid, without undue exertion, more bricks in a day than his two less skilful country fellow-labourers." *

The variations in the efficiency of labour are as striking amongst nations as amongst individuals. Macaulay was wont to declaim on the hard toil and low wages to which the Irish labourer was subjected in many countries. "In cotton spinning we find from the best international statistics available that the number of spindles attended by a single operative to-day in England ranges from two to four times the corresponding number on the continent. The statistics of the iron industry of France show that on the average forty-two men are employed to do the same work in smelting pig-iron as is done by twenty-five men at the Clarence factory on the Tees."+ References to the differences in money wages are not equally conclusive of inferior efficiency; for excess of numbers, cheapness of food, and other causes, may have led to a lower money wage. But in the above instances, superiority of personal power is shewn in some men compared with others, and experience has abundantly proved how much more is got in return for the money given out of the energetic workman. And if this is so with equally willing but inferior labourers, how much greater yet is the addition to the cost of labour, when temper or bad will or mistaken policy * "Work and Wages." +"Wages Question."-44.

acts on the feeling of the working-classes in the application of their labour, and the fulfilment of their contract.

One inference becomes very clear. The day's labour is no measure of the work accomplished,-is not everywhere the same thing. Even where the industry is the same, and the moral qualities are not supposed to differ, the length of the day's work furnishes no common measure of the labour given. "It would be a great mistake," writes Mr Bagehot, "to put down as equal the day's hire of a Dorsetshire and that of a Lincolnshire labourer. It would be like having a general price for steam engines, not specifying the horse-power."

The employer has the initiative; he comes to the market in search of labourers. With what strength of demand does he appear? Here it is precisely that the character of modern commerce harasses the labour market with fluctuations of the most distressing kind. There are countries in which the stationary state has prevailed for ages. The round of annual existence varies little. Population is unaltered; equally so industry. In such countries the amount of capital and the rate of wages may continue unaltered for long periods of time. But that is not the condition of the world at the present day. Movement abounds on every side. Most countries are being rapidly developed, production multiplies, and the wealth now distributed in wages and profits is enormous. International trade daily receives fresh development; the steamboat and the railway carry goods into every region, and bring back products which, without them, never would have come into existence. But international trade is exposed to immense fluctuations. If England is the supplier of