wages (amounting in some cases to 50 per cent) by the improvements in
efficiency in all the trades around them.

To sum up: No man in ordinary business will give a price for anything
that he intends to sell again unless he expects to profit by selling
it again. No capitalist will pay a workman to make a table unless he
expects to sell the table for a sum somewhat exceeding the cost of
the wood and the workman's labour. It follows directly that the one
grand object of the workman, both as an individual, a trade, and a
class, should be to improve the efficiency of his labour. He may gain
something by combination and higgling for the turn of the market, but
the limit to what he can get is the value of his labour to his
employer.

In order to attain this improved efficiency the most important
practical aid is piecework. This has done much even in agriculture:
the turnip-hoer by the acre earns more, while he does his work at his
own time with more comfort to himself than the old day-labourer. What
is more important, the men who by head and hand are superior at
turnip-hoeing are able to do the work cheaper than ordinary
labourers, and turnip-hoeing thus falls entirely to the most
efficient hoers, whose efficiency thus again gets constantly
improved. There is no doubt to me that, if the London bricklayers
would arrange to work by contract, they would soon obtain more wages
without being compelled (as they imagine would be the case) to work
more severely or longer hours to gain those wages. If they were more
efficient, nothing could prevent the competition of employers soon
giving extra wages for extra value of work.

But it may, finally, be urged that there is surely such a thing as