§ 2. The trend of more recent thought has been in the direction of a progressive modification of the doctrine of the "economy of low wages." The common maxim that "if you want a thing well done you must expect to pay for it" implies some general belief in a certain correspondence of work and wages. The clearer formulation of this idea has been in large measure the work of economic thinkers who have set themselves to the close study of comparative statistics. The work in which Mr. Brassey, the great railway contractor, was engaged gave him an opportunity of making accurate comparison of the work and wages of workmen of various nationalities, and his son, Sir Thomas Brassey, collected and published a number of facts bearing upon the subject which, as regards certain kinds of work, established a new relation between work and wages. He found that English navvies employed upon the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada, and receiving from 5s. to 6s. a day, did a greater amount of work for the money than French-Canadians paid at 3s. 6d. a day; that it was more profitable to employ Englishmen at 3s. to 3s. 6d. upon making Irish railways than Irishmen at 1s. 6d. to 1s. 8d.; that "in India, although the cost of dark labour ranges from 4-1/2d. to 6d. a day, mile for mile the cost of railway work is about the same as in England;" that in quarry work, "in which Frenchmen, Irishmen, and Englishmen were employed side by side, the Frenchman received three, the Irishman four, and the Englishman six francs a day. At those different rates the Englishman was found to be the most advantageous workman of the three." Extending his inquiries to the building trades, to mining, and to various departments of manufactures, he found a general consensus of opinion among employers and other men of practical experience making for a similar conclusion. In France, Germany, and Belgium, where wages and the standard of living were considerably lower than in England, the cost of turning out a given product was not less, but greater. In the United States and in a few trades of Holland, where the standard of comfort was as high or higher than in the corresponding English industries, more or better work was done. In short, the efficiency of labour was found to vary with tolerable accuracy in accordance with the standard of comfort or real wages. In his introduction to his work on _Foreign Work and English Wages_, Sir Thomas Brassey gives countenance to a theory of wages which has frequently been attributed to him, and has sometimes been accepted as a final statement of the relation of work and wages--viz., that "the cost of work, as distinguished from the daily wage of the labourer, was approximately the same in all countries." In other words, it is held that, for a given class of work, there is a fixed and uniform relation between wages and efficiency of labour for different lands and different races.