weaver to tend four looms during the English factory day for the moderate wage of 16s. a week than to earn 11s. 8d. by tending two looms in Germany for twelve hours a day, it does not follow that it is better to earn 20s. 3d. in America by tending six, seven, or even eight looms for a ten-hours day,[236] or that the American's condition would be improved if the eight-hours day was purchased at the expense of adding another loom for each worker. The gain which accrues from high wages and a larger amount of leisure, over which the higher consumption shall be spread, may be more than counteracted by an undue strain upon the nerves or muscles during the shorter day. This difficulty, as we have seen, is not adequately met by assigning the heavier muscular work more and more to machinery, if the possible activity of this same machinery is made a pretext for forcing the pace of such work as devolves upon machine-tenders. In many kinds of work, though by no means in all, an increase of the amount of work packed into an hour could be obtained by a reduction of the working-day; but two considerations should act in determining the progressive movement in this direction: first, the objective economic question of the quantitative relation between the successive decrements of the working-day and the increments of labour put into each hour; second, the subjective economic question of the effect of the more compressed labour upon the worker considered both as worker and as consumer. There is not wanting evidence to show that increased leisure and higher wages can be bought too dear. In drawing attention to this consideration it must not, however, be assumed that the increase of real wages and shortening of hours traced in progressive industries are necessarily accompanied by a corresponding increase in the compression of labour. In the textile and iron industries, for example, it is evident (_pace_ Karl Marx) that the operatives had obtained some portion of the increased productivity of improved machinery in a rise of wages. Even where more machinery is tended we are not entitled to assume a correspondent increase in felt effort or strain upon the worker. A real growth of skill or efficiency will enable an increased amount of machinery to be tended with no greater subjective effort than a smaller amount formerly required. But while allowance should be made for this, the history of the factory system, both in England and in other countries, clearly indicates that factory labour is more intense than formerly, not, perhaps, in its tax upon the muscles, but in the growing strain it imposes upon the nervous system of the operatives.