THE TIME-LABOUR SYSTEM 131 



Employers can as easily insist that, owing to changed circum- 

 stances, the whole scale must be lowered. Payment by a share 

 in profits, besides being extremely inconvenient, is liable to the 

 same objection as the sliding scale. The workman remains at 

 liberty to demand a larger share the employer to offer him a 

 smaller share. The question for solution is not what is the best 

 form of wages, but what is the amount which a given state of 

 the market will entitle the workman to claim. Payments by 

 sliding scale or by shares in profits are changes in the form of 

 payment, convenient or inconvenient, but leaving the main 

 question ' how much ' absolutely untouched. Co-operation need 

 not be spoken of here. The cases in which it is possible are 

 unfortunately rare. Piece-work is a good enough mode of pay- 

 ment, but is not very generally applicable. Employers like it 

 because men will compete under this form of contract, inasmuch 

 as the underseller can frequently say with justice that it is 

 because of his excellence as a workman that he can afford to 

 undersell his competitor; so that the low price at which he 

 tenders may actually be a subject of boasting, if his gains at 

 the end of the week are large. Trade-unions do not like it, 

 because upon this system no general rate of wages can be fixed 

 or known, and because it tends to introduce uncomfortably hard 

 work. Whether piece-work be in the main good or not, need 

 not be argued here, for it is evident that piece-work does not 

 settle the rate of weekly wages, the problem with which we are 

 now occupied. There remains so far the one solution of strikes, 

 which do settle wages, but at a great loss to workmen, employer 

 and consumer. 



The object of the present article is to suggest that under a 

 new system of contract between employer and workman, a true 

 labour market would be established : a market in which day by 

 day the demand and supply could be watched and in which 

 wages might tentatively rise and fall so as at all times to secure 

 an approximate equality between supply and demand. More- 

 over, the system suggested is one which calls for no sacrifice of 

 self-respect either by man or master. Recurring to an original 

 description of the process by which prices are determined in a 

 market, we see that underselling only occurs when buyers buy 

 few goods at the price first quoted : outbidding occurs only 



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