Professor Bowley (p. 52) pertinently observes: “How far this 23 per cent., or £133,000,000 together with a relatively small sum (probably well under £10,000,000) for the salaries of managers of companies, is an excessive or unnecessary remuneration for the organization of industry employing 6,000,000 wage-earners and £1,200,000,000 capital, and producing £340,000,000 wages is a question that may properly be debated: _it is this sum that formed the only possible source of increased earnings in this group with industries conducted as before the war and production at its then level_” (the italics are mine). Supposing the absurd: that in 1907 the whole of this £133,000,000 had been taken from employers, and handed over to the wage-earners, the total average earnings of men fully employed in the industries in question, as Professor Bowley shows (p. 39), would have been only 41_s._ 6_d._ per week. Supposing half of the £133,000,000 had been handed over, the total average earnings of men fully employed (including tradesmen) would have been 35_s._ 2_d._ per week. But even to have handed over half, would, by reason of the great disparity between the profit-earning power per man employed of different firms in the same industry, have resulted in closing down many of the less profitable concerns. These figures show conclusively that in industry, as a whole, though there may be exceptions in certain particular industries, the ability to pay higher permanent wages depends upon greater and more efficient production. The Settlement of Wages