e acceptable as a
basis for distribution, any attempt to base wages solely upon
considerations of individual or group output must rest on a false
assumption. Any laws or principles for the determination of wages must
reckon with a far wider and more numerous set of considerations than
those taken into account by the scientific management theories of wages.
These can only be understood by a study of the economic facts and
arrangements which govern distribution, and by weighing many questions
of social and economic expediency. To talk about basing wages solely on
the effort of the worker is to ignore the obvious fact that much of the
most laborious work is the worst paid.

The exponents of scientific management have not discovered a law of
wages; they have simply elaborated a method of wage payment. Mr. G. D.
H. Cole has expressed that well. "Clearly, although scientific
management methods may reduce the possible margin or error in
determining piece-work prices, they cannot altogether remove it, and
even if the time that ought to be taken for a job is clearly established
a further complication confronts us. All the time-study in the world
cannot show how much ought to be paid for a job. It can only show at
most the length of time a job ought to take. That is to say, it cannot
determine what is to be the standard of living or of remuneration of the
workers.... This, indeed, is only another way of saying that Scientific
Management has only devised a further method of payment under the wage
system."[17]

The exponents of these theories fell into the error of believing they
have unveiled a law of wages because they grasped one important truth.
That truth is that where the productivity of labor is high, where labor
is efficient, there is a greater chance, all other circumstances being
the same, of securing high wages than when the reverse is the case. Or
as the matter has been put in one of the reports of the U. S. Industrial
Commission (1912-16) "A close causal relationship exists between
productive efficiency and _possible_ wages. Greater efficiency and
output makes _possible_ higher wages in general and better conditions of
employment and labor."[18] (Italics mine). That the scientific
management doctrine of wages consists of nothing more than a method of
wage payment is clearly established by its failure to substantiate in
practice its claims of furnishing a scientific and equitable method of
fixing wage rates. On that p