weaver to work thirteen hours is a physical
impossibility."[235] The complexity of modern machinery and the
superhuman celerity of which it is capable suggest continually an
increased compression of human labour, an increased output of effort
per unit of time. This has been rendered possible by acquired skill
and improved physique ensuing on a higher standard of living. But it
is evident that, where it appears that each rise in the standard of
living and each shortening of the working-day has been accompanied by
a severer strain either upon muscles, nerves, or mental energy during
the shorter working day, we are not entitled to regard the higher
wages and shorter hours as clear gain for the worker. Some limits are
necessarily imposed upon this compressibility of working effort. It
would clearly be impossible by a number of rapid reductions of the
working day and increases of time wages to force the effectiveness of
an hour's labour beyond a certain limit for the workers. Human nature
must place limits upon the compression. Though it may be better for a
weaver to tend four looms during the English factory day for the
moderate wage of 16s. a week than to earn 11s. 8d. by tending two
looms in Germany for twelve hours a day, it does not follow that it is
better to earn 20s. 3d. in America by tending six, seven, or even
eight looms for a ten-hours day,[236] or that the American's condition
would be improved if the eight-hours day was purchased at the expense
of adding another loom for each worker.

The gain which accrues from high wages and a larger amount of leisure,
over which the higher consumption shall be spread, may be more than
counteracted by an undue strain upon the nerves or muscles during the
shorter day. This difficulty, as we have seen, is not adequately met
by assigning the heavier muscular work more and more to machinery, if
the possible activity of this same machinery is made a pretext for
forcing the pace of such work as devolves upon machine-tenders.

In many kinds of work, though by no means in all, an increase of the
amount of work packed into an hour could be obtained by a reduction of
the working-day; but two considerations should act in determining the
progressive movement in this direction: first, the objective economic
question of the quantitative relation between the successive
decrements of the working-day and the increments of labour put into
each hour; second, the subjective economic question of