the effect of
the more compressed labour upon the worker considered both as worker
and as consumer.

There is not wanting evidence to show that increased leisure and
higher wages can be bought too dear.

In drawing attention to this consideration it must not, however, be
assumed that the increase of real wages and shortening of hours traced
in progressive industries are necessarily accompanied by a
corresponding increase in the compression of labour. In the textile
and iron industries, for example, it is evident (_pace_ Karl Marx)
that the operatives had obtained some portion of the increased
productivity of improved machinery in a rise of wages. Even where more
machinery is tended we are not entitled to assume a correspondent
increase in felt effort or strain upon the worker. A real growth of
skill or efficiency will enable an increased amount of machinery to be
tended with no greater subjective effort than a smaller amount
formerly required. But while allowance should be made for this, the
history of the factory system, both in England and in other countries,
clearly indicates that factory labour is more intense than formerly,
not, perhaps, in its tax upon the muscles, but in the growing strain
it imposes upon the nervous system of the operatives.

The importance of this point is frequently ignored alike by advocates
of a shorter working-day and by those who insist that the chief aim of
workers should be to make their labour more productive. So far as the
higher efficiency simply means more skill and involves no increased
effort it is pure gain, but where increased effort is required the
question is one requiring close and detailed consideration.

Sec. 7. Another effect of over-compressed labour deserves a word.

The close relation between higher wages and shorter hours is generally
acknowledged. A rise of money wages which affects the standard of
living by introducing such changes in consumption as require for their
full yield of benefit or satisfaction an increase of consuming-time
can only be made effective by a diminution in the producing time or
hours of labour. When, for example, the new wants, whose satisfaction
would be naturally sought from a rise of the standard living, are of
an intellectual order, involving not merely the purchase of books,
etc., but the time to read such books, this benefit requires that the
higher wages should be supplemented by a diminution in the hours of
labour in cases where t