The efficiency of labor, in this connection, is highly important in its practical aspects, and as affecting the labor question, because as a function of cost of labor, that is, as an element affecting the quantity of things advanced to the laborers in comparison with the quantity of things returned to the employer, it includes the whole influence of machinery, labor-saving devices, and the results of invention. The quantity of produce depends, for a given advance, on the kind of machinery, the speed with which it is run, and on the general state of the arts and industrial inventions. The extent to which the productive capacity of a single laborer has been increased in the United States has been almost incredible. Instead of weaving cloth by hand, as was done a hundred years ago, “one operative in Lowell, working one year, can produce the cotton fabric needed for the year's supply of 1,500 to 1,800 Chinese.” Moreover, there is no question as to the fact that no nation in the world compares with ours in the power to invent, construct, and manage the most ingenious and complicated machinery. The inventive faculty belongs to every class in our country; and, in studying cost of labor, it must be well borne in mind that the efficiency of American labor, particularly as combined with mechanical appliances, is one of the great causes of our enormous production. The result of this, for instance, has been that, without lowering profits, although the price of cloth has been greatly reduced, employers have been able to raise the wages of operatives, and shorten their hours of labor, because machinery has so vastly increased the production for a given outlay. As one of a few facts showing this tendency in the last fifty years, note the following table, taken from the books of the Namquit cotton-mill in Bristol, Rhode Island:
| Kind Of Labor. | 1841. | 1884. |
| Card-room help, per week | $3.28 | $5.40 |
| Card-strippers, per week | 4.98 | 6.00 |
| Weavers, per week | 4.75 | 6.00 |
| Carding-room overseer, per week | 7.00 | 13.50 |
The hours per week have decreased in the same time from 84 to 66, while the product of the mill in pounds has increased 25 per cent. It may be unnecessary, perhaps, to say that these figures represent the current wages in [pg 230] other mills at the same periods; and that these facts can be sustained by the records of other mills.
In its economic effect we must also consider, under efficiency, the whole question of natural advantages of soil, climate, and natural resources. Laborers of the same skill, paid the same real wages, of the same cost, will produce a vastly greater amount of wheat in Dakota than in Vermont or England. This is the chief reason why profits are so high in the United States. In many industries we have very marked natural advantages, which permits a high reward to labor, and yet yields a high profit to the capitalist. This applies not merely to agriculture, but to all the extractive industries, such as the production of petroleum, wood, copper, etc.
In short, the whole matter of ease and difficulty of production, of high or low cost of production, taking it in the sense of great or little sacrifice (compare carefully [Book III, Chap. II, § 4]), comes in under the element of efficiency, in cost of labor. The reader can not be too strongly urged to connect different parts of the economic system together. And the questions of Cost of Labor and Cost of Production are of paramount importance to a proper understanding of political economy.
If labor generally became more efficient, without being more highly rewarded; if, without its becoming less efficient, its remuneration fell, no increase taking place in the cost of the articles composing that remuneration; or if those articles became less costly, without the laborers obtaining more of them; in any one of these three cases, profits would rise. If, on the contrary, labor became less efficient (as it might do from diminished bodily vigor in the people, destruction of fixed capital, or deteriorated education); or if the laborer obtained a higher remuneration, without any increased cheapness in the things composing it; or if, without his obtaining more, that which he did obtain became more costly; profits, in all these cases, would suffer a diminution. And there is no other combination of circumstances in which the general rate of profit of a country, in all employments indifferently, can either fall or rise.
The connection of profit with the three constituents of cost of labor may probably be better seen by aid of the following illustration; it being premised that as yet money is not used, [pg 231] and that the laborers are paid in the articles which their money wages would have bought had money been used. For simplicity we will suppose that all articles of the laborer's consumption are represented by corn. Imagine a large woolen-mill employing 500 men, and paying them in corn; and suppose that one yard of woolen cloth exchanges for one bushel of corn in the open market. In the beginning, with a given condition of efficiency, suppose that each man produces on an average 1,200 yards of cloth, for which he is paid 1,000 bushels of corn:
500 men, each producing 1,200 yards, give a total product of 600,000 yards.
500 men, each paid 1,000 bushels, cause an outlay of 500,000 yards.
Profit: 100,000 yards.
(1.) Now suppose a change increasing the efficiency of labor to such an extent that each laborer produces 1,300 instead of 1,200 yards, then the account will stand, if the other elements remain unchanged:
500 men, each producing 1,300 yards, give a total product of 650,000 yards.
500 men, each paid 1,000 bushels, cause an outlay of 500,000 yards.
Profit: 150,000 yards.