146

ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

employer. Should the system of progressive wages be
applied to the group, a further stimulus to diligence is
provided. In such cases of group-wages, we have to
consider the conflicting tendencies, of the desire of each to
prevent loss to himself through incapacity or neglect on the
part of his fellows, and of the weakening of the motive for
exertion by the fact that the benefits resulting from extra
exertion do not accrue wholly to the man who is called on
for the exertion. The part assigned to any one individual
may be sufficiently small to make it appear hardly worth
while striving for. The larger the group, the smaller the
stimulus to do work from which the chief gain falls to others,
and the more ineffective the mutual concern to check fellowworkmen
 from bringing loss on the group.
A number of developments of group-payment, aiming at
enlisting the personal interests of the workmen in the
efficient performance of work, have been devised. A typical
form is that of assessing the cost of a particular task, assigned
to a group of workmen, in accordance with a standard or
usual rate of working and of payment. The workmen are
secured the regular rate of time wages, and share in any
difference by which the actual wages-cost of the task may
fall short of the standard rate as assessed, It will be obvious
that this plan affords a stimulus to extra effort so long as
the standard rates are not reduced in correspondence with
what experience shows to be possible rates. Should the
workmen suspect that the opportunity for gain, held out as
an inducement, was being nullified by fixing the standard
cost in accordance with the actual wages-cost attained by
unusual exertion, not only would the motive for exertion be
gone, but the willingness of the workmen to work diligently
might be reduced even below what it would have been had
no such premium-plan been tried. It will be clear that the
whole of the economy on standard cost will not be assigned
to the workers as a rule, for, in order to effect the greatest
possible economy of time, some co-operation from the side of
the employers is needed, and this may involve expense. In
one way or other, there must be a prospect of profit to the
employers from the realisation of the economy on the part