THE TIME-LABOUR SYSTEM 125 



raent fixing some intermediate price. But what a wretched 

 way of finding out the market price as compared with the usual 

 one where every egg that changes hands helps to determine 

 what the true price ought to be, the price which all can give 

 and receive without rancour. 



How does it come then that the price of labour cannot be 

 settled by the simple natural process which fixes the price of 

 eggs ? In some cases it can be and is. Domestic servants' 

 wages are settled by the market method. There is a continual 

 market open. Employers give different wages ; not only do 

 various degrees of merit command various rates of pay, but the 

 same degrees of merit are paid for at different rates ; above all, 

 there is no combination among masters not to give more than a 

 certain rate for a housemaid ; nor among housemaids not to 

 work for less than a certain rate of pay. Competition is free 

 and incessant. The condition of the market is patent to all : 

 either there is or is not a difficulty in procuring the labour at 

 the old rate of wages and the price rises or falls accordingly. 

 The rise or fall stops when the supply and demand are equal. 

 The reason why the price of labour in factories cannot be 

 settled in a similar way is obvious enough. 



When a hundred men are working side by side at weekly 

 wages, doing work of the same quality, they will never be con- 

 tented unless they are paid at equal rates. When B. gives 18/. 

 to a housemaid this does not entail a rise in the wages paid bv 

 A. to his housemaid of equal merit, engaged six months before 

 at 16/. Not only are the housemaids engaged for longer periods, 

 but there is a tacit understanding that the agreement, though 

 nominally for a quarter, really is intended to apply for much 

 longer. But this state of things is only possible under the 

 condition that the housemaids are not in the same house or 

 hotel, working for the same master. Now this is at the root of 

 the whole matter. A master wanting more workmen than he 

 can get at the actual rate of wages, cannot have recourse to the 

 natural plan of offering a slight advance in the wages of new 

 hands, unless he is prepared to raise the wages of the thousand 

 workmen he is already employing a much more serious affair. 

 It is as if a buyer having bought a thousand eggs at sixpence 

 a dozen and wanting a hundred more, could not offer sevenpence 



