The new industrial revolution and wages

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1804651486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-193069

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Lauck, William Jett http://d-nb.info/gnd/173237126

Title:: The new industrial revolution and wages

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Funk & Wagnalls

Year of publication:: 1929

Scope:: ix, 308 S.; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VIII. Acceptance and general application of the theory of productive efficiency

Collection:: Economics Books

162 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES tween wages and labor costs, and had pointed out the fal- lacy of assuming that low rates of pay to workmen neces- sarily meant lower costs of production. Adam Smith him- self had pertinently commented on this fact as follows:? The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in propor- tion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer and the com- fortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low; in England, for example, than in Scotland; in the neighbourhood of great towns, than in remote country places. John Stuart Mill also discussed the same subject as follows :2 Wages, and the cost of labor; what labor brings in to the laborer, and what it costs to the capitalist; are ideas quite distinct, and which it is of the utmost importance to keep so. For this purpose it is essential not to designate them, as is almost always done, by the same name. Wages, in public discussions, both oral and printed, being looked upon from the same point of view of the payers, much oftener than from that of the receivers, nothing is more common than to say that wages are high or low, meaning only that the cost of labor is high or low. The reverse of this would be oftener the truth: the cost of labor is frequently at its highest where wages are lowest. . . . We continually hear of the disadvantage under which the British producer labors, both in foreign markets and even in his own, through the lower wages paid by his foreign rivals. These lower wages, we are told, enable, or are always on the 1 “The Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith, edited by Edwin Cannon. Methuen & Co., London, 1904; Val. I, p. 83. 2 “Principles of Political Economy,” John Stwart Mill. Appleton, New York, 1874; p. 512, Vol. I; pp. 251, 252, 254, Vol. II.

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