DIFFERENCES IN LABOR COSTS 171 
terms (stated values) was known, and where it was also known 
that the prices and qualities of the products were virtually the 
same. For butter, e.g. the net output in Great Britain was found 
to be, in money terms, £125 per head, in the United States £242 
per head. Differences in price for the article between the two 
countries were negligible. It follows that physical output was in 
the ratio of the value output, that is, nearly 1 to 2. So in the 
case of ice. The value output was £212 per head in Great Britain, 
£307 in the United States; the prices of ice in the two countries 
were, as it happened, identical. The physical output per head was 
therefore in the ratio roughly of 2 to 3. 
For another commodity, window glass, figures are available 
from a different quarter, and comparisons of a similar sort can be 
made; in this case for the United States, Belgium, and Sweden. 
The figures were put together by the Tariff Commission of Sweden, 
being computed as part of an investigation of the relation between 
costs of production in that country and costs in the important 
competing countries.! They are of special interest because for the 
United States they give two sets of data, one for the hand-blown 
glass, the other for the glass made by machine. The industry 
in the United States has been revolutionized in recent times by the 
invention and successful operation of elaborate machinery.? The 
new process — one further phase of the conquering march of the 
machine processes — has largely displaced in this country the glass 
blower who dominated in the older handicraft stage of the industry. 
During the Great War, as it happened, there was a pause in this 
process of displacement. Various neutral countries turned to the 
United States for supplies, since Belgium (which had been the 
most important country of export) was in chains. Consequently 
!T am indebted for these figures to Professor B. Ohlin, of the University of 
Copenhagen, who called my attention to them during his sojourn in the United 
States in 1923. 
*On this striking industrial development see an excellent publication of the 
United States Department of Commerce, Miscellaneous Series No. 60 (1917): 
The Glass Industry, Report on the Cost of Production of Glass in the United 
States. — The machines are blowing devices: an intricate apparatus for doing with 
compressed air what the hand blower did with his lunes.