ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to inquire how far under the two principal methods of industrial remuneration, time-wages and piece-wages, may expect the requirement to be satisfied. Even where the open payment of higher time-wages as a reward of higher efficiency is prevented by friction and jealousy, the result aimed at may sometimes be attained by secret payments. For, otherwise, the stimulus to effort, which piece-wages are designed to afford, will be, in great measure, destroyed, and, as a result, output may be much reduced; and this is a second unintended consequence. In order, therefore, that a piece-wage system may yield fair wages, various allowances must be made under it to provide for divergent conditions of work. On the average of a long period, no doubt, accidents of the kind would be spread fairly evenly among all the workpeople employed, so that everybody would get approximately fair wages on the whole.
