The surest support of the "economy of high wages" is the conviction that it will operate as a stimulus to industry through increased consumption. The working classes, especially in the United States and in England, show a growing tendency to employ their higher wages in progressive consumption. Upon the steady operation of this tendency the economic future of the working classes, and of industry in general, largely depends. FOOTNOTES: [225] _Wealth of Nations_, vol. i. p. 86. [226] Cf. _Northern Tour_, vol. ii. p. 86. [227] It is true that out-and-out defenders of the factories against early legislation sometimes had the audacity to assert the "economy of high wages," and to maintain that it governed the practice of early mill-owners. So Ure, "The main reason why they (_i.e._ wages) are so high is, that they form a small part of the value of the manufactured article, so that if reduced too low by a sordid master, they would render his operatives less careful, and thereby injure the quality of their work more than could be compensated by his saving in wages. The less proportion wages bear to the value of the goods, the higher, generally speaking, is the recompense of labour. The prudent master of a fine spinning-mill is most reluctant to tamper with the earnings of his spinners, and never consents to reduce them till absolutely forced to it by a want of remuneration for the capital and skill embarked in his business" (_Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 330). This does not, however, prevent Dr. Ure from pointing out a little later the grave danger into which trade-union endeavours to raise wages drive a trade subject to the competition of "the more frugal and docile labour of the Continent and United States" (p. 363). Nor do Dr. Ure's statements regarding the high wages paid in cotton-mills, which he places at three times the agricultural wages, tally with the statistics given in the appendix of his own book (cf. p. 515). Male spinners alone received the "high wages" he names, and out of them had to pay for the labour of the assistants whom they hired to help them. [228] _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 132. In regarding the advance of recent average wages it should be borne in mind that the later years contain a larger proportion of adults. In considering the net yearly wages a deduction for unemployment should be made from the sums named in the table. [229] Account must be taken of the depressed condition of hand-loom weavers, who had not yet disappeared. [230] Here Schulze-Gaevernitz appears to strain his argument. Though official reports lay stress upon the silver question as an important factor in the rise of Bombay mills, there seems no doubt of the ability of Bombay cheap labour, independently of this, to undersell English labour for low counts of cotton in Asiatic markets. Brentano in his work, _Hours and Wages in Relation to Production_, supports Schulze-Gaevernitz.