es 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, t