choked the increased demand. It has happened often that the workmen
who could only work the old way, and were not able to take up the new
machine, have been reduced to starvation. Even then, after this
generation has passed away, the new machine-workers have been better
off than their predecessors.

Employers of labour cannot pay as wages more than the labour is
worth: no organisation or rules will make them. But employers may pay
a good deal less than the labour is worth, and often have done so.
However great their profits, there is, according to J. S. Mill,
always a tacit understanding among all employers of labour to pay the
minimum the labourers can be induced to accept. It is only by
combination that the labourers can get the full value of their
efficiency. Here Mr. Arch comes in: I have little doubt that the
flail-threshers might, under a well-managed large trade combination,
have got nine shillings a week instead of eight shillings forty years
ago.

But every rise in wages gained by the workmen, unless springing from
or in conjunction with an increase in efficiency, will tell against
themselves; it must increase the price of the article, whether
houses, wheat, or boots; this must diminish the demand for the
article, and this must throw some of the workmen out of employ.

It is difficult to find an example of price of wages which presents
any difficulty of explanation when we apply to it the consideration
of efficiency. If bricklayers were to offer to exert themselves to
the utmost, and do in eight hours the same amount and quality of work
they now do in nine, the speculative builders would doubtless be
willing to give the same wages for eight hours' work that they now