English factory day,
and intensify the labour, would be a benefit, and the rise of wages
which might follow would bring a double gain to the workers. But any
endeavour to further shorten and intensify the working-day might
injure the workers, even though their output were increased. Such an
instance, however, may serve well to bring home the relativity which
is involved in all such questions. The net benefit derived from a
particular quantitative relation between hours of labour, intensity,
and earnings would probably be widely different for English and for
Indian textile workers. It would, _a priori_, be unreasonable to
expect that the working-day which would bring the greatest net
advantage to both should be of the same duration. So also it may well
be possible that the more energetic nervous temperament of the
American operative may qualify him or her for a shorter and intenser
working-day than would suit the Lancashire operative. It is the
inseparable relation of the three factors--duration, intensity, and
earnings--which is the important point. But in considering earnings,
not merely the money wage, nor even the purchasing power of the money,
but the net advantage which can be obtained by consuming what is
purchased must be understood, if we are to take a scientific view of
the question.

It should be clearly recognised that in the consideration of all
practical reforms affecting the conditions of labour, the "wages"
question cannot be dissociated from the "hours" question, nor both
from the "intensity of labour" question; and that any endeavour to
simplify discussion, or to facilitate "labour movements," by seeking a
separate solution for each is futile, because it is unscientific. When
any industrial change is contemplated, it should be regarded, from the
"labour" point of view, in its influence upon the net welfare of the
workers, due regard being given, not merely to its effect upon wage,
hours, and intensity, but to the complex and changing relations which
subsist in each trade, in each country, and in each stage of
industrial development between the three.

But although, when we bear in mind the effects of machinery in
imparting intensity and monotony to labour, in increasing the number
of workers engaged in sedentary indoor occupations, and in compelling
an ever larger proportion of the working population to live in crowded
and unhealthy towns, the net benefit of machinery to the working
classes may be qu