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GROSS AND NET GAIN OF RISING WAGES 93
the remuneration cannot be reduced. And that this is
really the case in many employments may be easily
enough illustrated. It is quite certain that the driver
of an express engine could not go through the very
formidable labours he undergoes if he only had the
food of the rude labourer of a former time, and only
lived in the way that such a labourer used to live. He
would not, under such conditions, have the energy or
brain 1l0wer for the work to be done. I t is the same
with workmen in a factory who have to attend to many
machines. The constant strain simply could not be en·
dured if the workman had to live as the factory worker
of a former time had to live. The present worker is
really cheaper than the former worker, because he does
more in proportion j but dear as he is, yet, in another
respect, he may perhaps be viewed, according to a
suggestion already made, as really engaged at a mini.
mum wage-without which he could not do the work at
all. This is not a question merely of a rise in the scale
of living, though that question is intermixed with it.
It is a question of the actual necessity on the part of
the workman that certain things should be put into
him, or supplied to him, as a condition of his doing the
work which he actually performs. What is true of the
workman specially referred to is of course still more
true of the higher kinds of work involving artistic or
other skill.
It may also be added, that the suggestion already
made as to the reason for the non·increase of remunera-
tion in certain directions being that the work done has
not itself improved in quality, is fully confirmed by the
general view thus stated. If the work which has im-
proved in quality is itself only so remunerated as to
make it doubtful whether the remuneration is adequate,
whether the game is worth the candle, and is, in fact,
at the point of minimum, so as to enable the work to
be done at all, out of what fund is the remuneration of
the work that has not improved in quality to come?
In the midst of plenty. apparently. such workmen, by