[44 ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

payment to the labourer is, in practice, made to depend on
the work done. The two leading varieties of wage-payment
are time-wages and piece-wages. The former, in which the
amount earned depends directly on the time spent at work,
offers no stimulus to economy of time, while the latter, proportioning
 payment to quantity of work done, stimulates to
the performance of a large amount of work, but does not
directly check the deterioration of its quality which may
result from undue haste.
It is clear that the employer cannot be indifferent to
either the amount of work secured for a given time-wage, or
the quality of work done on piece-wages. The fact that, in
many employments, the workman is afforded the assistance
of costly appliances means that slow work is expensive work,
even if only paid for in proportion to the quantity of product,
much more if paid by time. The earner of time-wages,
therefore, risks loss of employment if he fall below a satisfactory
 standard of speed, while the piece-worker will need
to attain to a minimum standard in the quality of his work,
under a like penalty. The conditions which determine the
rates paid have been considered in the present and preceding
chapters. Where the choice can be made between the two
methods of assessing the payment, that one will be chosen
which gives the cheapest work, and thus an influence, tending
to make the two modes of payment give substantially the
same result, so far as cost of labour is concerned, is operative,
Some kinds of work are not readily adapted to payment by
the piece, and for them time-wages must be used, and any
stimulus to smartness will come from the supervision of the
employer or his foreman. Under piece-work men are said
to be apt to overstrain themselves, wearing themselves out
at an early age. This is not universally observable, though
in some cases trade unions substantially restrain their
members from setting too severe a pace, independent of
their own powers of standing the strain. Various methods
are employed to check the spoiling of the work through too
great haste, such as fines for defects, graded according to
the nature of the defect, or the rejection of bad work
entirely.