It cannot be helped. When a worker starts a job, he does not know just what speed his machine must run at for that job. True, experience is a good guide, but it means trying a speed before he can be certain. And trying a speed means a certain amount of care and watchfulness; then it probably means making adjustments of speed and tool. This means stoppages, readjustments, retrials, and an all-round loss of time and efficiency. Now, is the man a better workman for all this? If it proved eventually that all men became of the same opinion as regards speeds, forms of tools, and methods of working, and if all men became highly efficient, one could at least say that the result justified the method, in spite of the enormous waste of time and talk and temper. But, as a matter of fact, one rarely gets two workmen of the same opinion or of the same proficiency, and a man never turns out as much work as he is capable of. Added to all this is the deadening monotony of the daily round of toil with no variation, no release from the fixed hours, no inducement to do one's best, no chance of getting any extra pay unless by occasional overtime. Theoretically, day work is the fairest method, because if a man does his best he ought to get the same wages as any other man, no matter what his production may be; but in practice this is impossible, hence one is driven to the conclusion that day work, as it is practised at present, stands condemned, and ought to be limited to such jobs and working conditions where it is impossible to apply other methods. (_b_) PIECE WORK. Piece work has one great advantage over day work--namely, the worker is paid in exact proportion to his production. But that is the only advantage. If work could be correctly priced according to the amount which a conscientious average man could do, and that price always held good, piece work would have the additional advantages that both worker and employer would know the conditions were fair, and the worker would work diligently and be paid proportionally to his skill and production. Under ordinary piece work conditions, however, such an arrangement is impossible, and the objections to piece work are, if anything, greater than the objections to day work, because of the necessary dishonesty on the part of both worker and employer. The average employer will not believe what an enormous difference there is in the quantity of work which different men are capable of producing. He is under the impression that, within small limits, any man can produce the same amount of work as any other man in a given time. This is entirely wrong. Investigations have proved that some good men can produce three times as much as an average man, the quality of work being quite as good.