The importance of this point is frequently ignored alike by advocates of a shorter working-day and by those who insist that the chief aim of workers should be to make their labour more productive. So far as the higher efficiency simply means more skill and involves no increased effort it is pure gain, but where increased effort is required the question is one requiring close and detailed consideration. § 7. Another effect of over-compressed labour deserves a word. The close relation between higher wages and shorter hours is generally acknowledged. A rise of money wages which affects the standard of living by introducing such changes in consumption as require for their full yield of benefit or satisfaction an increase of consuming-time can only be made effective by a diminution in the producing time or hours of labour. When, for example, the new wants, whose satisfaction would be naturally sought from a rise of the standard living, are of an intellectual order, involving not merely the purchase of books, etc., but the time to read such books, this benefit requires that the higher wages should be supplemented by a diminution in the hours of labour in cases where the latter are unduly long. But it is not so clearly recognised that such questions cannot be determined without reference to the question of intensity of labour. Yet it is evident that an eight-hours day of more compressed labour might be of a more exhausting character than a ten-hours day of less intense labour and disqualify a worker from receiving the benefits of the opportunities of education open to him more than the longer hours of less intense labour. The advantage of the addition of two hours of leisure might be outweighed by the diminished value attached to each leisure hour. In other words, the excess of intense work might be worse in its effects than the excess of more extended work. This possibility is often overlooked in the arguments of those who support the movement towards a shorter working-day by maintaining that each unit of labour-time will be more productive. When the argument concerns itself merely with alleging the influence of higher wages, without shorter hours, upon the efficiency of labour, this neglect of the consideration of intense labour has a more urgent importance. It may be gravely doubted whether the benefit of the higher wages of the Massachusetts weavers is not overbalanced by the increased effort of tending so large a number of looms for hours which are longer than the English factory day. The exhausting character of such labour is likely to leave its mark in diminishing the real utility or satisfaction of the nominally higher standard of living which the high wages render possible. Where the increased productivity of labour is largely due to the improved machinery or methods of production which are stimulated by high wages without a corresponding intensification of the labour itself, the gain to labour is clear.