." (_Diseases of Occupation_, p. 33.)

[214] Mulhall, _Dictionary of Statistics_, p. 545.

[215] Cf. Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, vol. i. p. 315.

[216] D.A. Wells, _Contemporary Review_, 1889, p. 392.

[217] Taylor, _Modern Factory System_, p. 435.

[218] Cf. the comparison of conditions of town and country labour in
Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, Bk. I., chap. x., part 2.

[219] _Diseases of Occupations_, pp. 25, 26.

[220] _The Social Horizon_, p. 22.

[221] Ure, _Philosophy of Manufactures_, chap. i. p. 19.

[222] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, p. 265.

[223] Cf. chap. x.

[224] Cf. Marshall, p. 265.

CHAPTER X.

THE ECONOMY OF HIGH WAGES.

Sec. 1. _The Economy of Low Wages._
Sec. 2. _Modifications of the Early Doctrine--Sir T. Brassey's
Evidence from Heavy Manual Work._
Sec. 3. _Wages, Hours, and Product in Machine-industry._
Sec. 4. _A General Application of the Economy of High Wages and
Short Hours inadmissible._
Sec. 5. _Mutual Determination of Conditions of Employment and
Productivity._
Sec. 6. _Compressibility of Labour and Intensification of Effort._
Sec. 7. _Effective Consumption dependent upon Spare Energy of the
Worker._
Sec. 8. _Growth of Machinery in relation to Standard of Comfort._
Sec. 9. _Economy of High Wages dependent upon Consumption._

Sec. 1. The theory of a "natural" rate of wages fixed at the bare
subsistence-point which was first clearly formulated in the writings
of Quesnay and the so-called "physiocratic" school was little more
than a rough generalisation of the facts of labour in France. But
these facts, summed up in the phrase, "Il ne gagne que sa vie," and
elevated to the position of a natural law, implied the general belief
that a higher rate of wage would not result in a correspondent
increase of the product of labour, that it would not pay an employer
to give wages above the point of bare sustenance and reproduction.
This dogma of the economy of cheap labour, taught in a slightly
modified form by many of the leading English economists of the first
half of the nineteenth century, has dominated the thought and
indirectly influenced the practice of the business world. It is true
that Adam Smith in a well-known passage had given powerful utterance
to a different view of the relation between work and wages:--"The
liberal reward of labour as it encourages the propagation so