"High wages, instead of leading to thankfulness of temper and improvement of mind, have, in too many cases, cherished pride and supplied funds for supporting refractory spirits in strikes wantonly inflicted upon one set of mill-owners after another throughout the several districts of Lancashire for the purpose of degrading them into a state of servitude." (_Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 366.) So again (p. 298):--"In fact, it was their high wages which enabled them to maintain a stipendary committee in affluence, and to pamper themselves into nervous ailments by a diet too rich and exciting for their indoor occupation." The experiments of Robert Owen in raising wages and shortening hours in his New Lanark mills failed utterly to convince his fellow-manufacturers that a high standard of comfort among the workers would bring a correspondent rise in working efficiency. The history of the early factory system, under which rapid fortunes were built out of the excessive toil of children and low-skilled adult workers paid at rates which were, in many instances, far below true "subsistence wages," furnished to the commercial mind a convincing argument in favour of "cheap labour," and set political economy for half a century at war with the rising sentiments of humanity.[227] Even now, the fear frequently expressed in the New World regarding the "competition of cheap labour" attests a strong survival of this theory, which held it to be the first principle of "good business" to pay as low wages as possible.