answered only suggestively, since volumes may be and have been written
on all the points involved. For skilled and unskilled labor alike, the
differences in industrial efficiency go far toward regulating the wage,
and have been grouped under six heads by General Frances A. Walker,
whose volume on the Wages Question is a thoughtful and careful study of
the problem from the beginning. These heads are--1. "Peculiarities of
stock and breeding. 2. The meagreness or liberality of diet. 3. Habits
voluntarily or involuntarily formed respecting cleanliness of the
person, and purity of the air and water. 4. The general intelligence of
the laborer. 5. Technical education and industrial environment. 6.
Cheerfulness and hopefulness in labor, growing out of self-respect and
social ambition and the laborer's interest in his work."

With this in mind, we must accept the fact that the value of the
laborer's services to the employer is the net result of two
elements,--one positive, one negative; namely, work and waste. Under
this head of waste come breakage, undue wear and tear of implements,
destruction or injury of materials, the cost of supervision of idle or
blundering men, and often the hindrance of many by the fault of one.
Modern processes involve so much of this order of waste that often
there is doubt if work is worth having or not, and the unskilled laborer
is either rejected or receives only a boy's wage.

The various schools of political economists differ widely as to the
facts which have formulated themselves in what is known as the iron law
of wages; this meaning that wages are said to tend increasingly to a
minimum which will give but a bare living. For skilled labor the law may
be regarded as elastic rather than iron. For unskilled, it is as
certainly the tendency, which, if constantly repeated and so
intensified, would end as law. Many standard economists regard it as