THE GROSS AND NET GAIN OF RISING WAGES. 655 



compensation, although the net gain, taking matters strictly, may 

 hardly be appreciable. 



The next head of complaint is the increase in the severity of 

 labor and the want of any proportionate remuneration. 



On this head it may be admitted, to begin with, that there is 

 apparent foundation for some of the complaints. Workmen in 

 particular employments do not get a reward at all in proportion 

 to the increase of production in those employments. The illus- 

 tration of a cotton-mill is familiar. A single attendant on a num- 

 ber of machines will " produce " as much in an hour as formerly 

 in a year or two, but his wages are only double or perhaps not 

 quite double what they were when the production was so much 

 less. A great steamship supplies another illustration. The ship 

 does many times the work which could have been performed by 

 the sailing ship it has displaced, and with much fewer men in 

 proportion to the tonnage conveyed. But the wages of the aver- 

 age member of the crew are again only double, or not quite 

 double, what they were when the conveyance done was so much 

 less. In these and similar cases, who gets the benefit of all the 

 increase of production ? The workmen in the particular employ- 

 ments concerned, receiving only a fraction of the gain, may be 

 excused for suspecting that there is something inexplicable in 

 those social and economic arrangements by which the benefit is 

 spirited away from them. 



But, however natural the question, it is not difficult to point 

 out that there is a good reason why workmen in some given em- 

 ployments should only receive a fraction of the benefit from the 

 increased productiveness of those employments, and that this fact 

 is quite consistent with an improvement in the position of work- 

 men all round in proportion to the generally increased product- 

 iveness of labor, which is the real question we are now investigat- 

 ing, for the purpose of comparing this increase of productiveness 

 with the increase of the severity of labor throughout society. 

 The short explanation is that the employments in which there is 

 a great increase of production, being mainly the employments in 

 which there are great mechanical improvements from time to 

 time, constitute only a part of the whole employment for labor, 

 and that by a natural law labor in each employment finds its 

 level, the increase of the return arising from an invention in a 

 particular employment resulting in a gain, not to the particular 

 laborers concerned, but to the whole community of laborers. 

 That the gain may be general, it is, in fact, essential that laborers 

 generally should gain as consumers rather than as producers, 

 which implies that in a given employment wages should increase, 

 not in proportion to the increased productiveness of that employ- 



