iciencies since--to say the least of it--the days of the Greeks and
Romans. An ancient gem-engraver would to-day be eminent among modern
craftsmen. The implements of the Roman surgeons, the proportional
compasses used by the Roman architects, the force-pumps and taps used in
the Roman houses--all things that could be produced by a man directing
his own muscles--were produced in the Rome of Nero as perfectly as they
could be produced to-day. To this fact our museums bear ample and minute
witness; while the Colosseum and the Parthenon are quite enough to show
that the masons of the ancient world were at least the equals of our
own. If no advance, then, in the quality of manual labour as such has
taken place in the course of two thousand years, it is idle to contend
that its powers have increased in the course of eighty. But a still more
remarkable proof that they actually have not done so, and that no such
increase has contributed to the increase of modern wealth, is supplied
by events belonging to these eighty years themselves. I refer to the
policy pursued by the trade-unions of reducing the practical efficiency
of all their members alike to the level which can be reached by those of
them who are least active and dexterous. Bricklayers, for example, are
forbidden by the English unions to lay, in a given time, more than a
certain number of bricks, though by many of them this number could be
doubled, and by some trebled, with ease. Now, although, from the point
of view of those bodies who adopt it, such a policy has many advantages,
and is perhaps a tactical necessity, this levelling down of labour to
the minimum of individual efficiency is denounced by many critics as a
prelude to industrial suicide, and the alarm which these persons feel is
doubtless intelligible enough. It is, however, largely superfluous. The
levelling process in question must of course involve a certain amount of
waste; but its effect on production as a whole is under most
circumstances inappreciable. Building as a whole is not checked by the
fact that the best bricklayers may do no more than the worst. All kinds
of commodities are multiplied, improved, and cheapened, while thousands
of the operatives whose labour is involved in their production are
allowed to attend to but one machine, when they might easily attend to
three. In a word, while the unions have been doing their effective best
to keep labour, as a productive agent, stationary, or even to di