cuments of
various kinds would be printed, that no want of employment could be
felt. Much of the work, too, such as the justifying, correcting, making
into pages, &c., cannot be done by machinery, or not profitably, so that
there would be plenty of work even for those who would not consent to
work machines.

The fact is that #wages are increased by increasing the produce of
labour, not by decreasing the produce#. The wages of the whole working
population consist of the total produce remaining after the subtraction
of rent, interest, and taxes. People get high wages in Lancashire
because they use spinning machinery, which can do an immense quantity of
work compared with the number of hands employed. If they refused to use
machinery, they would have to spin cotton by hand like the poor
inhabitants of Cashmere. Were there no machinery of any kind in England
we should, nearly all of us, be as poor as the agricultural labourers of
Wiltshire lately were.

People lose sight of the fact that #we do not work for the sake of
working, but for the sake of what we produce by working#. The work
itself is the disagreeable price paid for the wages earned, and these
wages consist of the greater part of the value of the goods produced. It
is absurd to suppose that people can become richer by having less
riches. To become richer we must make more riches, and the object of
every workman should be not to make work, but to make goods as rapidly
and abundantly as possible.

#56. Piece-Work.# Some trades unions endeavour to prevent their members
from earning wages by piece work, that is, by payment for the quantity
of work done, instead of payment for the time spent in doing it. If a
man is paid tenpence an hour, whether he work quickly or slowly, it is
evidently for his interest to work slowly rather than quickly, provided
that he be not so lazy as to run a risk of being discharged. It is a
well known fact that men employed on piece-work do much more work in the
same time than those employed on time jobs, and it is altogether better
that they should be paid by the piece when the work done can be exactly
measured and paid for. The men earn better wages because they are
incited to do so much more, and they earn it more fairly, as a general
rule. Trades-unions, however, sometimes object to piece-work, the reason
given being that it makes the men work too hard, and thus injures their
health. But this is an absurd reason; for men must generally