THE TIME-LABOUR SYSTEM 127 



such a price, or I must discharge you ten men unless you will 

 work for less.' The men, as sellers of labour, could also employ 

 the tentative process, saying ' We ten will leave, unless you raise 

 our wages,' or ' We ten unemployed will come at lower wages.' In 

 theory this would give a tentative method by which the market 

 price of labour could be ascertained, but neither method is con- 

 ceivable because of the natural and laudable self-respect of the 

 men. There is no disgrace in selling eggs at a lower price than 

 your neighbour got ; the market is falling and you may regard 

 it as a misfortune, but there is no question of shame. You are, 

 however, disgraced if you sell your own labour for less than that 

 of your neighbour, knowing it to be as valuable and as good as 

 his. In consequence of this feeling of pride, any change in 

 men's weekly wages must occur unnaturally at a bound instead 

 of gradually. Xo system at present exists by which the change 

 can occur gradually, but one may perhaps be found. Just as 

 there is no competition among the men and can be none among 

 men of equal merit, so there is and can be very little competition 

 among masters. One master will now and then offer a slight 

 advance of wages beyond his fellows, if he finds a difficulty in 

 getting hands, but there is not and never has been such a brisk 

 competition with a continual fluctuation in prices as will enable 

 a market price to be tentatively determined. 



A very large number of writers, especially in the Press, fre- 

 quently insist on the fact that if men would compete with one 

 another this would settle a market price. If men of equal merit 

 would consent to work at different wages, this would be so, as 

 explained above, but the writers alluded to often speak as if 

 the competition were to be between men of different degrees of 

 merit, which is a totally different thing and beside the question. 

 The market price of a certain quality of goods is in the main 

 settled by competition between the buyers and between sellers of 

 that particular quality ; not by the competition of one quality 

 of goods as against another quality. It is certainly desirable 

 that the best men should be paid more than the worse, but 

 supposing masters and men were to agree in ranking the men in 

 categories, each of which was to be paid five per cent, more than 

 the one below it, this would do nothing to settle the rate of 

 wages of the whole mass. Even if there were a keen competition 



