consequence how much of it the different workers can get in exchange for their certificates for hours of work. We have no Law of Distribution, to get which was the chief object of this theory of value, none, save one impossible of application-that each one should get in proportion to his work, or as much of the objectified time-products as he had given in average labour-time.

The

Thus, then, we see that even with respect to the workers of a single factory, hours of work would be an imperfect and unequal measure of work. Even if it could be applied it would very imperfectly realize justice, which is the object in view; while it could not be applied without the greatest difficulty. difficulty increases if we compare the labour in a given industry with the labour of connected or subsidiary industries, the labour of weaving with spinning, or with the labour of transport or circulation of the product;—still more, if we compare one kind of productive labour with another; agricultural labour with mining, or with carpentering, weaving, or navigating a ship. The difficulty of comparing in this way productive with unproductive labour is too obvious, e.g, the labour of a magistrate and a business manager, or of a soldier, a school-master, and an artisan, while, with respect to some kinds of unproductive labour, though highly important, time has little or nothing to do with the work or its value.

The fact is, that where time as a measure is applicable roughly, it is already applied, and workers for the same time in the same species of work are paid by time and paid the same amount. In other cases

where it would be impossible to tell how many hours they have really worked they are still paid by time -the day, week, or month. They are paid a certain amount per week agreed on for their work, without the vain attempt to estimate how many minutes or hours of their work is objectified in the final material product. In other cases again they are paid not by time but by the job, or for the special service, where the time-consideration is not the important point.

II.

As to Marx's theory that skilled labour is ordinary labour intensified or multiplied, we must ask in what sense it is common labour multiplied or intensified?

An hour's labour of the skilled sort is not two or three or any number of times as severe or painful, or disagreeable, as an hour of common labour, it is probably less so, possibly it is even pleasant, though even were it otherwise, there is no quantitative measure of these degrees. Nor can we say that skilled labour requires greater muscular effort, of which there is a quantitative measure in the number of foot pounds lifted a given height. Thus estimated, we should have to reverse the Marxian proposition, and say that average labour was skilled labour multiplied. But perhaps skilled labour consumes greater nervous, including brain energy, though less muscular effort or energy, and that taken all together the quantity of energy consumed by skilled labour is greater. Now it is, perhaps, true that there is a greater quantity of energy on the whole consumed by the skilled than the unskilled labour, but science

as yet is not able to state the law of relation between muscular and nervous energy, nor by consequence to tell how much of one sort is equal to how much of the other. It is not even able to measure nervous energy other than muscular. The muscular effort, the dead strain of lifting a weight through a height by a navvy or a dock-hand it can measure, not the various efforts of the worker in a skilled art, all directed to realize one end; some slight and delicate, some more tense, some drawing on the brain, some mechanical but deft, as in the arts of the weaver, the working jeweller, or any other. Here there is no measure of the quantity of the energy or of the quantity of the labour, consequently no possibility of comparing this kind of labour with common labour, which consists mainly, though not altogether, of the former kind of effort. To take examples, how many times is the labour of the carpenter, the sailor, the type-setter, the weaver, the working jeweller, the carver in wood or stone, more than Marx's unskilled labour? There is no common quantitative measure or rule for unskilled and skilled labour, and the unskilled cannot be made a standard, for the other cannot possibly be converted into it. And as for skilled being common labour intensified, this has been refuted by implication in the above, because in considering all possible differences in quantity we were thrown on differences of degree, as the only conceivable way of trying to estimate differences of quantity. We have considered all respects in which they could be imagined to differ in intensity, namely, in severity of effort, or in painful

ness in general, with the result that if any proposition could at all be laid down, it would be one the reverse of Marx's, that is, that unskilled labour is skilled labour multiplied.

By intensity of work, indeed, Jevons understands degree of painfulness, and as skilled labour is undoubtedly in general more pleasant or less painful than unskilled, by this measure of intensity, common labour would be skilled labour multiplied. An hour of common labour would, perhaps, be two or three hours' skilled labour, and in the Socialist field of industry should be paid accordingly, which might be glad tidings for the poor, though not contained in the gospel according to Marx.

We must emphasize this point, because it is fundamental with Marx and the Socialists, and with the failure to establish it, much goes down. The Marxian theory of value goes down; which makes value depend on the quantity of labour, because it requires a reduction of skilled labour to unskilled, and we see that this reduction cannot be made, in any single case, save arbitrarily. It must be laid down arbitrarily or assumed. We could not, therefore, tell how much of one commodity would be equal to how much of another save arbitrarily. At present, we do at least know something as to what determines the normal values of things. We know, at least, where there is no monopoly, that they depend on the money expenses of production, while demand has something to do with them. In the Collectivist Commonwealth there would be no law of value except what it pleased the rulers to lay down, on

some imaginary principle or on none at all. Further, there is no law of Distribution. So long as we could say that any particular skilled labour was three times or five times unskilled or common labour, there would be a reason, and even a necessity on the Socialist principle of "to each in proportion to the amount of his work," for unequal wages in the same proportion. Each one is to get in proportion to his hours of average labour, and since the skilled counts as so many times average labour, the skilled worker must be credited with so many more hours of labour in his labour certificates, and will have a correspondingly larger order on the general stock of commodities. But the moment the fallacy of the whole doctrine is shown, the reason for giving higher wages vanishes, while the question is raised whether it should not be the unskilled that should get higher wages, on the ground that it is skilled labour multiplied-multiplied in painfulness, which is Jevons' mark of intensified. labour, or multiplied in muscular effort, the only circumstance connected with the theory of which we really have a quantitive measure.5

There would thus be no reason for the skilled receiving higher than the unskilled on the theory in question. Even if the skilled could be shown to be common labour multiplied, still if the acquisition of the skill be paid for by the State, as it would

5 I add that Ricardo's Theory of Value, the supposed rock on which the whole theory of Marx reposes, goes down by the preceding analysis equally, and is proved to be a very sandy one. The values of things do not now depend, any more than they would in the Socialist kingdom, on quantity of labour.