ABSTRACT
At present most sorts of labourers are paid according to the quantity of labour-power they give out, and according to the market-price set upon a unit of each several sort of labour-power. This means that the actual weekly earnings of some grades of labourer are much higher than those of other grades, not because the work takes more out of them, or because it involves a higher standard of living, but because some natural, some fortuitous, or some organised scarcity of supply exists in the former grades, while there is abundance of supply in the latter.1 Moreover, the weekly earnings for any of these sorts of labour will vary from week to week, from month to month, or year to year, with the variations of Supply and Demand in the Labour Market. The income of the working family will thus vary for reasons utterly beyond its control, though its requirements for economic and human efficiency show no such variation. Thus there is no security for any class standard of living.
