o tamper with the earnings of
his spinners, and never consents to reduce them till absolutely forced
to it by a want of remuneration for the capital and skill embarked in
his business" (_Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 330). This does not,
however, prevent Dr. Ure from pointing out a little later the grave
danger into which trade-union endeavours to raise wages drive a trade
subject to the competition of "the more frugal and docile labour of
the Continent and United States" (p. 363). Nor do Dr. Ure's statements
regarding the high wages paid in cotton-mills, which he places at
three times the agricultural wages, tally with the statistics given in
the appendix of his own book (cf. p. 515). Male spinners alone
received the "high wages" he names, and out of them had to pay for the
labour of the assistants whom they hired to help them.

[228] _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 132. In regarding the advance of recent
average wages it should be borne in mind that the later years contain
a larger proportion of adults. In considering the net yearly wages a
deduction for unemployment should be made from the sums named in the
table.

[229] Account must be taken of the depressed condition of hand-loom
weavers, who had not yet disappeared.

[230] Here Schulze-Gaevernitz appears to strain his argument. Though
official reports lay stress upon the silver question as an important
factor in the rise of Bombay mills, there seems no doubt of the
ability of Bombay cheap labour, independently of this, to undersell
English labour for low counts of cotton in Asiatic markets. Brentano
in his work, _Hours and Wages in Relation to Production_, supports
Schulze-Gaevernitz.

[231] Mr. Gould's general conclusion, from his comparison of American
and European production, is "that higher daily wages in America _do
not mean a correspondingly enhanced labour-cost to the manufacturers_"
(_Contemporary Review_, Jan. 1893). This he holds to be partly due to
superior mechanical agencies, which owe their existence to high wages,
partly to superior physical force in the workers. But Mr. Gould's
evidence and his conclusion here stated, taken as testimony to the
"economy of high wages," are insufficient, for they only show that
high wages are attended by increased output of labour, not by an
increase _correspondent_ to this higher wage.

[232] Ure's _Philosophy of Manufactures_, pp. 367-369. Dr. Ure
regarded mechanical inventions as the means whereby capital should
k