ABSTRACT
As between dissimilar persons fair wages mean in any given set of circumstances, wages which are proportioned to efficiency and which, therefore, bear to one another a certain definite numerical relation. At first sight it may be supposed that this numerical relation, like the relation of equality required for fairness between similar persons, will be the same in all circumstances. This, however, is not so; for the reason that the comparative efficiencies of different persons possessing given qualities and capacities are not the same in all circumstances. It is convenient to distinguish differences between workpeople under two heads: differences in the degrees of a given kind of ability; differences in the kinds of ability that they severally possess. The chapter concludes that there is only one kind of ability distributed to different people in different degrees.
